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GENERAL HISTORY τ 
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CHURCH: 


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JOSEPH TORREY, 
PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. 


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«My kingdom is not of this world.’? “ΤῸ kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven.”” Words of our Lord. 
“The Lord is that Spirit ; and where the Bpirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Words of the Apostle Paul» 
«* En Jésus-Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordées.’’ Pascal. 


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VOLUME FIRST: τὸ 4 


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BOSTON: _ % Ne 


PUBLISHED BY CROCKER & BREWSTER. 
LONDON: WILEY & PUTNAM. 


1847. ἊΝ ᾿ 








PPPPAPBPPPLE PPP Δ Δ Δ Δ. Δ. Δ. 4 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, 
By CROCKER & BREWSTER, 
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 


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STEREOTYPED BY 
SAMUEL N. DICKINSON AND CO., 
BOSTON. 


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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 


Tue translator deems it proper to state, that his labors 
on NeEanper began, and were prosecuted to the comple- 
tion of several successive volumes or parts of the present 
work, many years ago,—though not before a partial 
translation, of the same work had already appeared in 
England. 

He has certainly no reason to regret, but rather much 
reason to congratulate himself; that his first translation 
did not find its way to the press. In 1843, Dr. Neanper 
sent forth a second edition of the first volume of his 
work, embracing the history of the church in the first 
three centuries. In this new edition, the alterations are 
numerous and important. The great features of the 
original work, its method and spirit, are, indeed, faithfully 
preserved; but, in other respects, there are very decided 
improvements. 

These important changes, occurring not here and there, 
but through entire pages and paragraphs, have made it 
necessary to translate nearly the whole of the first volume 
anew. ‘The translator has submitted to this labor with 
the more cheerfulness, as it enables him to present the 
work to the English reader in the form in which Dr. 
Neanper has been pleased to express his wish that it 
should appear. 

It has been, throughout, the translator’s aim and effort 
to render a faithful version of the original. He has 
never felt himself at liberty, on any account whatever, 
to add any thing to the text, or to omit any thing from it. 


812073 


1V TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. ADVERTISEMENT. 


He has never resorted to notes for the purpose of explain- 
ing any thing which could be made sufficiently plain in 
the place where it stood. On the extreme difficulty of 
giving an exact transcript in English of an author’s lan- 
guage, so exceedingly idiomatic, so thoroughly German 
in all his habits of thought and modes of expression as 
the author of this History, he need not enlarge. If 
allowance be made for the slight but necessary modifica- 
tions which for this reason have sometimes been resorted 
to, the translator believes it will be found, that as he has 
clearly conceived his author’s meaning, so he has faith- 
fully expressed it in some form of English that can be 
understood. 

In conclusion, he would take this occasion to express 
his grateful acknowledgments to all those friends who 
have encouraged and assisted him in the execution of 
his task; and in a very particular manner to the Rev. 
JosEPpH Tracy, whose consent to overlook the proof- 
sheets before they came under the translator’s final re- 
vision, was an act of real kindness, which will not by 
him be very easily forgotten. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


Tue publishers have concluded to issue this first vol- 
ume, without waiting for the second, now in the press. 
Meantime, the translator has been informed that a new 
edition of the second volume has appeared just in Ger- 
many. It is his intention to procure this new edition as 
early as possible, and to incorporate all the important 
additions and improvements it may contain with the 
second volume of the translation before it goes forth to 
the public. | 


DEDICATION OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 


TO F. VON SCHELLING, THE PHILOSOPHER. 


As the first volume of my Church History is about to make its appearance in a 
better shape, I feel constrained to take this opportunity of presenting you a testi- 
mony of my sinéere respect and love, and my hearty thanks for all the instruction 
and excitement to thought derived from what you have said, both publicly and in 
the intercourse of private life, and for all you have done, during your residence 
here, in the service of our common holy cause. When I dedicate a work of this - 
character to a philosopher like you, I know that it is nothing foreign from your 
philosophy ; for that takes history for its point of departure, and would teach us to’ 
understand it according to its inward essence. In striving to apprehend the history 
of the church, not as a mere juxtaposition of outward facts, but as a development 
proceeding from within, and presenting an image and reflex of internal history, I 
trust that [ am serving a spirit which may claim some relationship to your philoso- 
phy, however feeble the powers with which it may be done. In what you publicly 
expressed respecting the stadia in the development of the Christian church, how 
much there was which struck in harmony with my own views! I might feel some 
hesitation in laying before a man of your classical attainments, such a master of 
form as well as of matter, a work of whose defects, when compared with the idea 
at its foundation, no one can be more conscious than its author. But I know, too, 
that fellowship of spirit and feeling will be accounted of more worth by you, than 
all else besides. 

Trusting, then, that you will accept this offering in the same spirit with which 
it is presented, 1 conclude with the sincerest wishes that a gracious God may long 
preserve you in health, and the full enjoyment of your powers; that he would 
make you wholly our own, and long keep you in the midst of us, to awaken the 
ἔρως πτεροφύτωρ in the minds of our beloved German youth; to exert your power- 
ful influence against all debasement and crippling of the intellect; to lead back 
those who are astray, from the unnatural and the distorted to a healthful simplicity ; 
to exhibit a pattern of right method and of true freedom in science; to testify 
of that which constitutes the goal and central point of all history; and —so far as 
it comes within the province of science —to prepare the way for that new, Chris- 
tian age of the world, whose dawn already greets us from afar; that, for such ends 
as these, He would prolong the evening of your life, and make it even more glori- 
ous than was its morning. 

These are the sincere and fervent wishes of him who calls himself, with his 


whole heart, Yours, Cie ΤΠ 
Ber in, JULy 11, 1842. 


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 


To exhibit the history of the Church of Christ, as a living witness of the divine 
power of Christianity; as a school of Christian experience; a voice, sounding 
through the ages, of instruction, of doctrine, and of reproof, for all who are dis- 
posed to listen ; this, from the earliest period, has been the leading aim of my life 
and studies. At the same time, I was always impressed with the magnitude of the 
undertaking, and with the great difficulties which must attend it, if so conducted 
as to answer the demands of science and of the great practical want which Ihave 
mentioned ; for both of these are, in the present case, closely connected. Nothing 
but what can stand as truth before the scrutiny of genuine, unprejudiced science, 
—of a science which does not see through the glass of a particular philosophical 
or dogmatic school, — can be profitable for instruction, doctrine, and reproof; and 
wherever a science relating to the things of God and their revelation and evolu- 
tion among mankind has not become, by mismanagement of human perversity, an 
insignificant caricature, or a lifeless skeleton, it must necessarily bear these fruits. 
Science and life are here designed to inter-penetrate each other, if life is not to 
be exposed to the manifold contradictions of error, and science to death and inanity. 

Although I certainly felt the inward call to such an undertaking, yet the sense 
of its weight and its responsibleness — especially at the present time, which so 
much needs the historiam vite magistram, as a sure compass in the storm and tumult 
of events —has continually deterred me from attempting to realize the favorite 
idea which so long floated before my mind. After several preliminary essays, 
on works connected with church history, I was led by various motives, personal 
and outward, to engage in a task which, if too long delayed, might never be 
accomplished. 

The immediate outward occasion was, that my respected publisher invited me to 
prepare for the press a new edition of my work on the Emperor Julian; and, at 
the same time, a more full and ample treatment of the subject, which in that work 
had been only a fragment. But, in setting about this task, I found that the book, 
according to the views which I then entertained, would have to take an entirely 
new shape, and, if it came to any thing, to be wrought into a far more comprehen- 
sive whole. Thus was suggested to me the thought of publishing, in the first place, 
the history of the church in the three first centuries, as the starting point of a gen- 
eral Church History; and the encouragement received from my publisher con- 
firmed me in the plan. 

I here enter, then, upon the execution of this work, and present to the public 
the first great division of the history of the church during the three first centuries. 
The second division, if it please God, shall follow by the next Easter fair. The 
history of the Apostolic church as a whole, is, to my own mind, of so much impor- 
tance, that I could not prevail on myself to incorporate it immediately with the 
present history. Hence, in this work, I have simply presupposed it; and I reserve 
for a future opportunity the publication of it, as a separate work by iself. ‘ 

May He who is the fountain of all goodness and truth, attend the commence- 
ment of this work with His blessing, and grant me both the ability and the right 
disposition to prosecute it to the end. 

To conclude, I offer my hearty thanks to all the friends who have attended this 
work, in its transition through the press, with their kind assistance ; and especially 
to my excellent friend, one of our promising young theologians, (soon afterwards 
removed to a better world,) the theological student, Srvaer. ΤῸ his assiduity and 
care, accompanied with no small labor in correcting the proofs, the appearance of 
this volume is greatly indebted. The indexes referring to the matter of the work, 
which, it is hoped, will contribute much to the reader’s convenience, are also due 
to the industry of this valued and beloved friend. 

A. NEANDER. 


Berry, OcTosBer 18, 1825. 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 


First of all, I would thankfully acknowledge the Divine goodness which has 
enabled me—beyond any expectations [ could have formed when, seventeen 
years ago, I commenced the publication of my Church History — to prosecute the 
work so far, and also to recast the first volume of it in a better shape. The first 
edition having been disposed of within a year, a reimpression of the text and 
doubling the number of copies made it possible to defer the preparation of a new 
edition for so long a period. For this I am indebted to the prudent arrangement 
of my respected publisher ; for had I undertaken to prepare a new edition at any 
earlier period, it would hardly have been in my power to carry forward the work 
so far as I have. Besides, owing to the long interval which has elapsed, I had be- 
come almost a stranger to this ‘portion of it, in its original form; and hence the 
defects which demanded correction, could not fail to appear to me the more 
glaring. Many of the corrections have been suggested by the remarks of friends 
and of enemies; and [I trust I shall ever be glad 1 to listen also to the latter, when 
the truth speaks through them. 

I must still hold fast to the same fundamental position in theology, and in the 
contemplation of history, which I held at the outset of my undertaking. I must 
strenuously defend it, over against, and in opposition to, the same main tendencies 
which I then had to combat. On many points, history, in the mean time, has 
already decided. Nothing will remain hidden: principles must unfold themselves, 
and bring out to the light the results which lie within them. When this has been 
done, all ‘the shifts are in vain, by which men would seek to reverse the decision 
of history, and repeat over again the old trick of deception. 

When, at the commencement of my labors, seventeen years ago, I dedicated my 
work to the friend who was about to leave me, WILHELM Boumer, —a young man 
whom I looked upon as the representative of a whole class inspir ed with the same 
disposition ; who has since, as a man, maintained his standing among the learned 
theologians and teachers of the church, and with whom I have ever remained 
bound by the same fellowship of spirit, "_T affixed to it the motto of our common 
theology, and of this exhibition of history: “Pectus est, quod theologum facit.” 
We need not be ashamed of this maxim; shame rather to those who were bold 
enough to ridicule it. They have pronounced sentence on themselves. It was the 
watchword of those men who called forth theology from the deadsforms of scholas- 
ticism to the living spirit of God’s word. So let this be our motto still, in despite 
of all starveling or over-crammed Philisters, —of all the foolish men who wrap 
themselves in the conceit of their own superior science, or who allow themselves 
to be dazzled by such vain pretensions. 

The first division of this work, in its present altered shape, will occupy two 
volumes. The second volume, with the Divine permission, will soon follow the 
present; * and 1 hope, also, the continuation of the whole work will no longer 


be delayed. 
A. NEANDER. 
BERLIN, JULY 11, 1842. 





τ 
* The two yolumes are embraced in the first volume of the present translation. 


DEDICATION OF THE SECOND VOLUME. 


TO MY BELOVED AND MUCH-HONORED FRIEND, 
| DR. HEUBNER, 


SUPERINTENDENT-GENERAL AT WITTENBERG, 


THE THEOLOGUS NON GLORIZ SED CRUCIS. 


Wuen, last year, the noble festival was held in commemoration of the twenty- 
fifth anniversary of your Theological Seminary, from which, during that space 
of time, so rich a blessing has flowed to the churches of this country, gladly 
would I have borne some part or other in honor of this occasion so interesting to 
my heart. It was not my happiness to enjoy that privilege. J now come after 
the feast, with a small offering, which assures you of my sincere love and respect. 
There is also a jubilee-festival in commemoration of our ancient friendship. Τὺ is 
now more than five and twenty years since it was my happiness to make your ac- 
quaintance, in the society of that man of God, who but a short time ago was called 
home from the midst of us, BARoN von Korrwitz, a man whose memory thou- 
sands bless, — and from that time I have looked towards you as to a point of light 
amid the darkness of this worldly age. You will receive this tribute of my sincere 
esteem with indulgent good-will. If you find a good deal here, as in other writings 
of mine, which does not accord with your own views of doctrine, this, I am con- 
fident, cannot disturb your kind feelings. You understand how to make subordinate 
differences recede and give place to the higher fellowship grounded on that one 
foundation, which is Christ. You are a disciple of the true spirit of love and free- 
dom, which, so far from insisting that everything shall be cast in the same mould, 
maketh free. 

God grant that you may be spared yet many years, as a blessing to his church, 
which, in these times of encroaching darkness, needs such witnesses above all 
things else. With all my heart, yours, 


BERLIN, JUNE 28, 1843. A. NEANDER. 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME. 


Tue following is that part of the first book of my Church History, which con- 
tains the history of doctrines. The active investigations which have been going 
on, during the few years past, in this department, gave occasion, here especially, 
for the correction or more ample proof of many things which I had advanced ; 
and I am rejoiced that the opportunity has been given me for making these im- 
provements. A tendency which aims at science and spirit by referring everything 
to the head, could, most assuredly, never find in me any thing but an unfashion- 
able opponent. 

In conclusion, I present my hearty thanks to my friend, HERMANN Rosset, for 
the patient and skilful care which he has bestowed on the correction of this volume, 
and in preparing the running-titles, and the indexes at the end. 

The two prefaces to the second and third volumes of the first edition, I leave 
out for want of room. The third volume was dedicated to the beloved man with 
whom, as a colleague, I have since had the pleasure of being permanently connect- 
ed, and was meant as a salutation of hearty love on the occasion of his then recent 
arrival on a visit to this city, in July 19th, 1827. 

The guide to Church History, which I promised some time ago, will now beyond 
all doubt be prepared by a very dear young friend of mine, Hr. Lic. JAcoB1, who 
has already made himself favorably known by his essay on Pelagius, and from 
whom the best which could be done may be expected. 

A. NEANDER. 


BERLIN, JUNE 28, 1848. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


VOLUME FIRST. 


HISTORY OF BHE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH IN THE THREE 


FIRST CENTURIES. 


INTRODUCTION. 


GENERAL RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE WORLD, ROMAN, GREEK AND JEW- 


ISH, AT THE TIME WHEN CHRISTIANITY FIRST APPEARED, AND 
TO MAKE PROGRESS, p. 1—68. 


Christianity, a power transcending man’s nature; but adapted to the 
wants, and called for by the history, of the human race; as this period 
of its first appearance most especially shows: -+--+++++++-++e+eeeee- 


Religious Condition of the Roman, Greek, and Pagan World, 5—35. 


Religion of the Greeks and Romans, of transient significance, and sup- 
planted by the progress of culture. Not a religion for mankind, but 
only a popular and state religion. Antithesis of esoteric and exoteric. 
Superstition regarded by Polybius the strongest pillar of the Roman 
state: so also by Strabo. Varro’s distinction of a threefold theology - - 

Total decline of religion. Epicurianism, skepticism: Lucretius, Lucian. 
Isolated attempts to rescue the fundamental truths of religion: Varro, 
Strabo. Doubt as to all religion: the elder Pliny-----------++-+.--- 

The craving awakened after the religion of the earlier times. Dissatisfac- 
tion with the present, and with the results of a negative philosophy : 
Pausanias, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Artificial faith. Fanaticism. 
Superstition She eles \ilele «νι κεἰ δ ὁ ον le) ὁ κ᾽ WWM) al οἱ ον ᾽ν» 0 ὁ. ον δὴ Φ, a) σ᾽ δι δι ea, σύ 475) ν΄ δ. δ οἱ © 

Superstition. Infidelity. Plutarch on the relation between the two----- 

The more earnest tendencies of the period: Stoicism, Platonism. Rela- 
tion of the two to each other, and to the religious want.--+---+-+-++>- 

Eclecticism growing out of Platonism. Plutaxreh, its representative: ----- 

The speculative mode of apprehending religion as preparing the’way for 
Monotheism. Idea of a simple Original Essence, of the Neo-Pla- 


Representation of worship as sensuous imagery and accommodation. De- 
fence, on this ground, of image-worship: Dio Chrysostom. Apologetic 
doctrines concerning demons: Plutarch, Porphyry. These artificial 
helps of no use to the people. The aristocratic spirit--+-++--++-+++++ 

Religions cravings excited by the attempts to defend and uphold the de- 

* ¢elining religion. Enthusiasm. Goete: Alexander of Abonoteichus, 
Apollonius of Tyana ESSA 2 TI Ft Fe ens Pie ere eee 

The Clementines ade ete Δ δῖ. ὁ ὁ dine Ὁι οὐδε οἷ 6 ye) aie joke 6.0. ὁ, οἱο in) ὦ 04408) 0.19 0) 0, 9,6 0 7 © 9 

Favorable or hostile relation of the state of religion as above described to 


Christianity 2 6 «7 «ale ἈΠ οι τ} οὐδ he a) εκ Clee Gye! ys ple elsaurs, ὁ 9.0/0 00 οἰ μ᾽ fie 


BEGAN 
PAGE 
1—5 
ὅ---- 
8---10 
10—14 
14—15 
15—20 
20—25 
25—27 
27—30 
30—32 
32—33 
33—35 


x TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Religious Condition of the Jews, 35—68. 


Judaism as a divine revelation. Want of accordance between the divine 
subject-matter and its form of manifestation. Hence Judaism only a 
preparatory step. Prophecy. Its end and aim, and the ultimate Bd 
of the Jewish religion. The idea of the Messiah---+--+--++++-.+4-- 

Conception of the Theocracy, and expectations of the Messiah become 
sensuous. Judas of Gamala. The Zealots. False prophets------+-+ 

Three main directions of the Jewish theology. a dead and formal ortho- 
doxy, a superficial religion of the understanding, and Mysticism, rep- 
resented in the three sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes: - - 


Alexandrian Judaism, 49—62. 


Influence of pagan culture on the Jews of Alexandria. Dogmas of a for- 
eign philosophy combined with faith in a revelation. Universal histori- 
cal import of Judaism set forth by ῬΊΠ]Ο- - - - - τ τ τ τ τ τ τσ τσ εκ εκ κεν εν σεν 

Twofold purpose of the Alexandrian philosophy of religion; to ward off 
pagan infidelity, and pharisaical bondage to the letter. In opposition to 
the latter, the allegorical method of interpretation. Two different stages 
in the understanding of revelation; faith in the letter and history, intu- 
ition of the enveloped idea. Sons of the Logos, sons of the ὄν. Dis- 
tinction between esoteric and exoteric religion: --++<++++++++seeeees 

Ascetic tendency growing out of this Idealism. The Therapeute----- + 

Relation of the different religious tendencies among the Jews—of Sad- 
duceeism, Phariseeism, of Jewish Mysticism, of the Alexandrian ace 
ology — to Christianity ον τ ot wp eee aa, ae . 

Spread of Judaism among Greeks and Romans. Proselytes of sate. 
Proselytes of the gate. +--+ eee e cece eee eee eee eee ee eee ar are τὰ 


SECTION FIRST. 


RELATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD, 
69—178. 


Spread of Christianity, 68—86. 


Spread of Christianity generally. Obstacles which hindered it. Causes 
and means by which it was advanced: --++++++++sersee eerste erence 
Christianity, by readily uniting with every thing purely human, and as 
readily attacking every form of ungodliness, destined and suited, from 
the smallest beginnings, to reform entire humanity Sette teen ene - 
Superstition of the lower classes of the people among the Page Sor- 
cerers hinder the entrance of Christianity. Supernatur effects of 
Christianity, contrasted with theggrts of these men----++++++++: tetas 
The devout, ‘enthusiastic life of its confessors, a witness for Christianity, 
and means of its spr CAC e a0 one ce oc 6 w 006 8 0 woe mye. αὶ οὐ 


Diffusion of Christianity in particular Districts, 7T9—86. 


Asia. The accounts in the New Testament. Legend about the corres- 
pondence of Uchomo, Abgar of Edessa, with “Christ. More certain 
evidence of the spread of “Christianity there, in the years 160—170. 
The gospel preached in the Parthian empire, by Peter. In Arabia, 
pare by Paul and Bartholomew. Later, by Panteenus and πος 
n India, according to an old tradition, by Thomas... «+ «: shai 

Africa. Mark, accor ding to the tradition, founder of the church at lines * 
andria. Diffusion of the gospel from thence to Cyrene. To Carthage 
and proconsular Africa, from Rome:::+--+++> sie Wisi eels «cee este ὙΦ 


35—37 


387—39 


39—49 


49—52 


52—58 
58—62 


- 62—66 


66—68 


68—79 


68—71 


71—75 


75—79 


83—84 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. ΧΙ 


_ Europe. First of all, Rome. Lugdunum, Viennain Gaul. From thence 
to Germany. In Spain, probably by Paul. In Britain, through the 
connections with Asia Minor---++:+ssessess eee eeeennee: ἐλ λα, ὁ 84—86 


Persecutions of the Christian Church, 86—178. 
Their Causes, 86—93. 


Limits of Roman toleration. Grounded on a principle exclusively 

political. Christianity a religio nova, illicita. Suspicion of political 

designs, favored by the position taken by the majority of Christians 

in relation to the state and its institutions: +--+ --++++++++ssseete eee 86—92 
Public opinion. Popular TTR CGA ere) re ete π᾿ πο ΠΡ ἜΤ Ἐν Ὑ5 ΣΕ’ Ὁ 5 92---98 


Situation of the Christian Church under the several Emperors, 93—156. 


Under Tiberius. ‘Tertullian’s story of a proposal of the emperor to the 

SOMA CLIPEOTIIGTIT LO Cnristel= ce sie tie cee wre. ie © 6) a6 «s+ avec visto cia ele 98—94 
Under Claudius. Christians confounded with the Jews; and, in con- 

sequence, banishment of the Christians in the year 53. Report of 

ΕΝ Πρὸ τ τ τὺ τ 0m a oh= aioe τ ρς Sha ca. «tal ol «Sain a 94 
Nero. Persecution of the Christians occasioned by the burning of Rome 94—995 
Domitian. Encouragement of informers. Confiscation of goods. Banish- 

ment. ‘Trial of the kinsmen of Jesus---+--+++-++seeeer este κα κεν 96 
Nerva. Prohibition of informers. Trajan. His law against close 

associations. Report of Pliny, governor of Bithynia and Pontus, in 

the year 110. Less favorable situation of the Christians-------+++> 95—101 
Hadrian. Forbids riotous attacks. Complaints against them by the 

Proconsul Serennius Granianus. Rescript of Hadrian to the latter’s 

successor Fundanus. Religious views of Hadrian. Persecution of the 


ΠΕ ES ΓΟ ΠΝ. τ ss wo se τ ὕν 65 se ene sete eee en aes 101—103 
Antoninus Pius. Disapprobation of popular attacks. Pretended rescript 
πρὸς TO κοινὸν τῆς ᾿Ασίας eee rere rere eee e eee rere eee κε σα tenses 103 


Marcus Aurelius. His religious tendency. Sharper measures against 

the Christians. Persecution at Smyrnain 167. Martyrdom of Poly- 

carp. Persecution in Gaul, — Lugdunum, Vienna, Autun. Martyr- 

dom of Pothinus. Examples of Christian heroism. The legio fulminea 103—117 
Commodus. Reason of his milder behavior towards the Christians ---- 117—119 
Situation of the Christians during the political disturbances after the 

death of Commodus. Septimius Severus. Law forbidding Romans 

to embrace Christianity 5 FO SG ΘΙ ΘΕ ἜΤΕΚΕ ὁ Cs Ἐς ΟΡ ΟΕ ΤΗΣ 119—122 
Caracalla. Examples to show how the persecution was conducted---- 122—125 
Tranquillity under Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. The lararium 

of the latter. Collection of imperial rescripts against the Christians 

by Domitius Ulpianus. Yel ga shisiioss),¢) 01 '@ bi eis\ialve)(e jni'el 5,6 κα al(aiiol's 0 δὴν 4m. ᾽να, α ὦ δι 125—1 26 
Popular attacks under Maximin the Thracian. Tranquillity under 

Philip the Arabian. Story of the conversion of this Emperor to 


Christianity MUNI: tae ΠΠΠπΠ τ ules wb ea exe! Wes) 6, 0.00) 6. aie ΚΝ am 126—129 
Remarks of Origen concerning the situation, thus far, of the Christian 
church, and its prospects in the future ----- τ τ τ τ τ see cess rece eee 129—131 


Decius Trajan. Design of the Emperor to supplant Christianity entirely. 
Edict of persecution. Different conduct of the Christians. Cyprian’s 
removal from Carthage. Continuation of the persecution under 
Gallus and Volusianus. Martyrdom of the Roman bishops Cornelius 


τατον... aie Ao) Shay cum ota:, «νι heh « afailarioyer she anita QuelyyCudtutelem sel sus tah ose 131—136 
Persecution under Valerian. Martyrdom of the bishops Sixtus of Rome 
and Cyprian of Carthage δον ὁ Ὁ, οὐδ δ εἶνιο eta: οὐδ νιν siete eleits νι ἐὐρα θην bho: 136—140 


The Christians under Gallienus and Macrianus. Decree of toleration 
by the former. Christianity a religio licita. Consequences of this 
even in the time of Aurelian. Forty years’ repose of the church---- 140—142 
Diocletian. From 284 and onward, alone; then from 286 with Maximian 
Herculius. At first favorable to the Christians. His edict against 


xu TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


the Manicheans. Alarm of the Pagans at the increasing spread of 

the Christian religion. Caius Galerius Maximian. His command, — 

that all the soldiers should take part in the sacrifices, in the year 298. 

Martyrdom of the centurion Marcellus. +--+ Ὁ +++. λιν κι κ κε κα κεν κεν ον 142—147 
Meeting of Diocletian with Galerius at Nicomedia. Destruction of the 

Christian church there. Attempt to destroy the copies of the holy 

scriptures. Examples illustrative of this persecution----++--++++--- 147—153 
Constantius Chlorus. Czesar in Spain, Gaul, Britain. His mildness” 

towards the Christians. Maximin, elevated to the rank of a Cesar, 

continues the persecution. In the year 308, a new command to offer 

sacrifice. Three years later, the edict of toleration by Galerius. - - - - 154—156 


Written Attacks on Christianity, and the Defence of it against such 
Attacks, 156—178. 


Erroneous judgments concerning Christianity, arising out of the form of 

its development, and the singularity of its whole appearance. Lucian. 

Confusion of Christianity with various kinds of superstition. His 

Peregrinus ΠΥ πα ὄ᾿ὌεὔὔοἷἱχὭἷξφ σῆῆΘῆ ὃ teas er 15 .-κι-.5 
Judgment of the stoic Arrian, like that of Marcus Aurelius. The most 

eminent antagonists from the school of Neo-Platonism. Celsus. In- 

quiry relative to his person. His Platonic Eclecticism. Importance 

of his attack entitled, — λόγος ἀληϑῆς. Its contents. -++++---+-+++--- 158—170 
Porphyry the Phenician, towards the close of the third century: like- 

wise a Platonician. His “system of Theology derived from the re- 

sponses of Oracles,” περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας. Oracular responses 

concerning CUaristh es 53 ee re Se eile oe ot cea atte gears 4 2ἢ-- 175 
Hierocles, governor of Bithynia, the last writer against Christianity of 

this age. His book: λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χριστιανούς. Repetition 

of objections already made. Calumnies. Inclination of declining . 

Paganism to oppose to the founder of the Christian religion, the heros 

of their own. Account of the life of Apollonius by the rhetorician 

Piniostratus ss eS os PS ows Suk © aun o's, ΟΊ 173—174 
Christian Apologists after the time of Hadrian. Twofold purpose of 

the Apologies. Relation of the Roman state to them. Appeal of the 

Apologists to the life of the Christians. Reference to prophetic ele- 

ments in Paganism. The Sibyllines. Tertullian’s appeal to testimony 

of the soul, as Christian by nature-.-- σ 6 7 τ seer σ σι ersten ee eeees 174—-178 


SECTION SECOND. 


HISTORY OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION, CHURCH DISCIPLINE, AND 
SCHISMS, 179—248. 


History of the Church Constitution, 179—217. 
History of the Constitution of the Communities generally, 179—201. 


Two periods to be distinguished: the first shaping of the church consti- 
tution in the Apostolic age, proceeding immediately from the essence of 
Christianity, and the further development of it under the foreign in- 
fluences of the succeeding times. 


First Ground-work of the Constitution of the Christian Communities 
in the Apostolic Age, 179—190. 


Christ the one and only High Priest — the end of the whole priesthood. 
All Christians a priestly race. Common participation of all in one 
Spirit. Manifestation of one Spirit in the several spiritual gifts. 
Different position of individuals according to these charismata-+++++ 179—182 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


The charisma of government, χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως. Unsuitableness of 
the monarchical form of government. Shaping of the constitution 
of the Christian communities after the pattern of the Jewish. Council 
of elders, πρεσβύτεροι = Ὁ], also called ἡγούμενοι, ποιμένες, ἐπίσκοποι. 


The names of bishops and presbyters equivalent---+--++-++++++-+++ 
The charisma of teaching, χάρισμα διδασκαλίας. Relation of the office of 
teaching to the administration of government " “5 τ Ὁ τ τ τ τεσσ κεν 
Office of the deacons ιν κἀν ee eee en ee ee νῷ οὐδὲ eee ee ee δ εὐ δὴ ὁ eee 
Form of election to these church offices --+++--++++e++seesreeeeees , 


Changes in the Constitution of the Christian Church after the 
Apostolic Age, 190—217. 


Change more especially in three points: — a. Distinction introduced 
between bishops and presbyters, and development of the monarchico- 
episcopal government of the church. ὦ. Distinction between the 
clergy and the laity, and formation of a sacerdotal caste. c. Multi- 
plication of church offices. 

a. The president of the college of presbyters receives distinctively and 
afterwards exclusively the title of ἐπίσκοπος : continues nevertheless 
to be primus inter pares. Development of the episcopal system favored 
by the circumstances of the times. Influence of the Apostle John in 
this respect. Traces of the earlier equality of rank. Contest between 
the presbyters and episcopi. Cyprian’s activity in this contest. Ad- 
vantages and disadvantages of the episcopal system ++-++--+-++++++- 

b. Furtherance of the idea of a distinct sacerdotal caste by this system. 
Development of this idea. The denominations Ordo, κλῆρος, originally 
without reference to the Levitical priesthood: ---+-++++++++++++++5 

Revolt of the Christian consciousness against the pretensions of the 
ΘΟ er ea ee a ὃν Ὁ ΤΥ ΨῈ 

Change of the original relation between communities and presbyters. 
Separation of the latter from the world. Form of church elections: - 

ο. Multiplication of church offices. Sub-deacons. Readers, lectores, 
dvayvworai. Acolytes. Exorcists. Door-keepers, πολωροΐ, ostiaril - - 


Forms of Union between the several individual Communities, 201—207, 


In place of the gospel equality, subordination of some of the communities 
to others. The country bishop under the city bishop. The provincial 
city under the bishop of the capital. Mother churches. Sedes Apos- 
tolice: Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth -----------+ 

Rome the centre of the world, the mother church of almost the entire 
West, — distinguished by the preaching and the martyrdom of Peter 
ἘΠῚ ῬΑ eG 2 Waele Ἐ  τς ἐμοὶ Wintel περι ἡ των, ctate foie οὐ. οφε κ 

Union between the communities by means of travellers. Ecclesiastical 
correspondence. Episfole formate, γράμματα τετυπωμένα. Origin of 
synods. Advantages and disadvantages of them ---+++-++++-+++e+e+ 


Union of the entire Church in one body, closely connected in all its parts ; the 
Outward Unity of the Catholic Church, and its Representation, 207—217. 


Unity of the church, Conception of the unity of the church as an out- 
ward thing. Ireneus, Cyprian. Resistance to it. Representation 
of this outward unity. Germ of the medieval domination of the 
priesthood ctldleisiglauitiwaly staicecdvrceetssevese διό δυν νον συ 066 6 Ὁ «ὁ δ 

Preéminent rank of Peter. Gradual origin of the view that Rome was 
NN er ee. ee δι κὰν λον 

Arrogant claims of the Roman bishops, as episcopi episcoporum. Resist- 
ance to it. Irenzus, Cyprian rie whee Ὁ ρίῳ ne dima he τὰ + ἀὐιδιὰ a0.6 δἰ» 


VOL. 1. 


x1 
182—184 
184—188 
188—189 
189—190 
190—193 
193—196 
196—198 
198—200 
200—201 
201—203 
203—204 
205—207 
207—211 
211—214 
214—217 


x1V TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Church Discipline. Exclusion from the Fellowship of the Visible 
Church, and Terms of Re-admission, 217—221. 


The Christian church in its not unalloyed manifestation. Necessity of 


church discipline, and of the exclusion of the unworthy. Views 
Of St. Pate ὑπ Ἔν ἢ ἐν ον CNN δος UR ἐπ ΒΝ ΟΝ 197-218 


The church as an institution for education. Church penance. Re- 


admission of the reformed. Church discipline becomes outward and ~ 
ΤΟΥ}. = τον ρον νος ave δος νος :abebavlattefammeguaeguce Sitar aaah side alsaNete sie aan 918—220 


Controversy concerning the re-admission of those who had fallen into 


PROTEAL SUVS) os Woda oie lo sere ls) clade Sele lel νον ρος κι ποῖ. ὦ abel deem ialyie /oiaienmnes 990—221 


History of Church Divisions or Schisms, 221—248. 


Distinction between church divisions and heresies. Furtherance of the 


system of church unity by the two principal schisms -+-+---+-+++++- 221—222 


The Schism of Felicissimus at Carthage, 222—236. 


Cyprian. His conversion and nomination to the episcopate. His 


position with respect to the Carthaginian communities: - - τ τ τιν Στ τσ 222—224 


Novatus. His appointment of Felicissimus to the office of deacon. - - - - 224—225 
Cyprian’s flight from Carthage. Question about the re-admission of the 


lapsed. Cyprian’s decision. Hostility to this by Cyprian’s adver- 
saries, confirmed by the voice of the confessors:++-++-++++++++s+e95 225—230 


Cyprian opposed to the excessive veneration of the confessors. His 


undecided conduct on this point. Influence of the Roman church on 
his way of proceeding OE ee ee ee er τ τ... Gr 930—232 


Church visitation. Resistance of Felicissimus. New outbreak of the 


controversy δῆ, δ᾽ δι ον ape e 8.6 bya 6.4 wie Sie ele 6 0.0 6 06 see τιν τ wists) aisietn ΤῊΝ 939—233 


Synod of Carthage, A.D. 251. Removal of the schism. Last attempts 


of the party. Cyprian’s letter to Florentius Pupianus---++++++++++ 233—236 


Schism of Novatian in Rome, 237—248. 


Novatian — his life and character: +--+ +++. ++ esses eee κα eee κα κεν ees 237—241 
Intermeddling of Novatus in the Roman controversy. Novatian anti- 


bishop to Cornelius. Judgment of Dionysms of Alexandria on the 
schism. Cyprian’s position with relation to its +++++++ss+ereeeeees 241—242 


The two points of dispute : — the nature of penance and the conception 


da. 


b. 


of the church. 

Novatian’s principles on penance. Cyprian’s arguments on the other 

gide:: ‘Their weakness: sic isi νο «ὁ were οὐδε ws. siete ἐν νει eee 949-—247 
Novatian’s conception of the purity of the church. Contaminated by 

toleration of the lapsed. Cyprian’s refutation. Fundamental error 

of both parties: — the confounding together of the visible and the 

invisible church. Victory of the catholic church system as the fruit 

Of the scHismSes <0 +e cecs es δ᾽. οὐοιοιν ον δ 9.9 ὁ οἱ α ἱδδου δέν 247—248 


SECTION THIRD. 
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, 249—335. 


Christian Life, 249—288. 


Christianity a power for sanctification. Testimonies of the church fathers 249—250 
Contrast of pagan and Christian life. Circumstances that furthered and 


hindered the cultivation of the Christian temper. Outward appre- 
hension of Christianity — particularly of baptism «+ -+++++eeese+e+s 250—253 


Entrance of Christianity even into the sensuous representations of men. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Defects of the visible church. Point of view to be taken, in contem- 
plating this primitive period: +++ +++ +++ +++ sere sete κα eee eee 
Prominent virtues of the Christians. Christian brotherly love and 
benevolones +.< ois Fs τε ον δ... aig His Si di A healers as wala κα ou ts 
Position of Christianity in respect to the existing forms and relations of 
society. Collision between civil and religious matters. Different 
views of the Christians on this point δεῖ fe, opi eo: sie) +: ον αὐ γε al δ αἰ ν ie) ὦ ὁ 0° 0,86 
Occupations and trades which were forbidden. Penalty for visiting any 
kind of public a eee ee ee en ae ee ro ee ee 
Christianity in its relation to slavery: ++ +--+ Ὑ ++ ++es eee cece eee κεν 
Different views respecting the propriety of taking any civil or military 
office. Arguments for and against Christians enlisting in the mili- 
tary REET PEs eae =a kon) PINS al νοι eras coxeyeleyayel slau ἐρῖν Aico: eibi sete lens’ ς, ih aMola 
Christian life as. judged of by the Pagans. Christian asceticism. Re- 
sistance against extreme asceticism. The shepherd of Hermas. 
Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος of Clement of Alexandria - Ὁ... τον εν ἐς 
Christian life in the family. Marriage. Dress. Mixed marriages. 
Church consecration of marriage ΟΝ ἀπ ale) e) slip) of chwbona is 
Prayer, the soul of the whole Christian life. Effects. Mode of prayer. 
Times of prayer. Common prayer. Position and gestures of the 
suppliant Bee ΡΤ ahd 90 ἈΦ ΩΣ a! οὐ οὐ ζοῦν tole γε φίκιις. υὐ proba clisye\iurai iin δ θυ κι abe δι eens je. 6 


Of the Common Worship of God, 288—335. 


Character of Christian Worship generally, 258—290. 
Spiritual worship of God in contradistinction to Judaism and Paganism. 


Places of Assembling for Worship, 290—292. 


First, private houses ; later, buildings erected for the purpose. Churches. 
Originally no images. Hatred of art. Causes of it. Images in 
domestic life. Symbolic figures. Churck images. Sign of the cross 


Times of Assembling for Divine Worship and Festivals, 292—302. 


Times consecrated to God. New view of Christianity on this point. 
Origin of festivals. Confounding together of the Old and New 
Testament points GE νον ποι ἘΝ ΘΝ tee Gis lh τοῖν! ον Wietlete οἷς ς᾽ 9 

Weekly and annual festivals. Sunday. Dies stationum. Sabbath. 
Fasts. Annual festivals. Feast of the passover. Difference with 
regard to the celebration of the passover between Jewish and pagan 
ἀρ ΕΗ 5 see ὟΣ το caternemeerey nh 

Disputes concerning the passover. Anicetus and Polycarp. Renewal 
of the dispute. Victor and Polycrates:++-++++++++see reser e κα εν 

Quadragesimal fasts. Fest#val of Pentecost. Origin of the Christmas 
festival. Feast of Epiphany se ot Be SA ee iat sey bin st aighete jlo leva crete eel orele ἃ 


Particular Acts of Christian Worship, 302—335. 


Edification by common hearing of the word, and prayer. Reading of 
the holy scriptures. Translations. Addresses. Preaching. Church 
psalmody. Sacraments. Baptism and the Lord’s supper---------- 


Of Baptism. 


Catechumens. Catechists. Confession of faith. Apostolic confession 
of faith. Its signification. Oral tradition. Formula of renunciation. 
Exorcism. Form of baptism. Formula of baptism. Infant baptism. 
Its signification. Tertullian’s rejection of infant baptism. Doctrine 
of its necessity. Cyprian. Origen on this point. Baptismal sponsors. 


XV 


253—254 
254—258 


258—262 


262—266 


266—269 


269—272 


272—279 


279—283 


283—288 


290—292 


292—294 


294—297 


297—300 


300—302 


302—305 


Unction. Imposition of hands. Confirmation. Fraternal kiss ----- 305—317 
Controversies about baptism PAC abaeas gerne Cerees eeivwescevwe ee .. $17—323 


ΧΥῚ TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Sacrament of the Supper. 


Foundation. Signification of the Lord’s supper. Original celebration 

of it. Love feasts. Degeneration of them. Severance of the Agapx 

from the celebration of the Lord’s supper. Comparison of the supper 

with the pagan mysteries. Prayer of praise and thanksgiving, 

εὐχαριστία. Original idea of the thankoffering. False notion of 

sacrifice. Elements of the Lord’s supper. Domestic participation 

and use of it. Communion of infants: - +--+ τ τ -++see eee e ee eee enes 323—333 
Union of the celebration of the Lord’s supper with the covenant of 

marriage and the celebrations in memory of the dead. Feasts of the 

martyrs. Degeneration of honor paid to the martyrs: ++++-+++++- ++ 3383—335 


SECTION FOURTH. 


HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY APPREHENDED AND DEVELOPED AS A 
SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES. 


General Introductory Remarks. 


Christianity considered as to its effects on thought and knowledge. Dif- 
ferent forms of the apprehension of Christianity. ‘The four funda- 
mental forms. Origin and signification of the heresies ------+-+-++-- 336—339 


Heretical Tendencies. 
The two fundamental heresies»: +--+ sess cckdennde é. si ao ΝΕ ΟΝ ΣῪ Σ rene, 3.9. 


Judaizing Sects. 


Origin of the Judaizing sects. The compromise or henoticon of Jeru- 

salem. Apostolic and heretical Jewish Christians. Influence of the 

Jewish war. Gentile-Christian community at Aulia Capitolina: ----- 341—344 
Ebionites. Their name. Epiphanius. Origen on its meaning. Their 

doctrine. Different kinds. Nazarewans. Gospel of the Nazarzans. 

Transition of Ebionitism to other tendencies: - +--+ -+++++++++seeees 344—353 
The Clementines. Supposition of a primeval religion. Doctrine of 

inspiration. Relation to Judaism and Christianity. Relation to the 

apostle Paul. Position of Judaism and Christianity with regard to 

each other. . Justin... Chiliagsm.. ὁ «οἰ += τὰν += «se. δ εκ ον τον .... 358...) 65 


Sects growing out of the Fusion of Christianity with Ancient Religious Theorves 
of the East. 


The Gnostic Sects. 


General Remarks on the Origin and Character of these Sects, on that which they 
possessed in common, and that in which they differed, 366—390, 


Aristocratic spirit of the ancient world. Opposition between those who 
knew and those who believed, favored by outward faith. Eclectic 
character of Gnosticism. Influence of Parsism and Buddhaism. 
Principle of redemption. Peculiarity of the Gnostic mode of inquiry. 
Its objects. Relation to simple faith. Doctrine of emanation. Doc- 
trine of moral evil. Of the Hyle. Diversity in the mode of appre- 
hending this SRC ewe em ee ewes erm rer en re eeesereeeesseseeesres 866—374 
Prevailing inclination to Monoism or to Dualism, as distingy ioe the 
Alexandrian and Syrian Gnosis. Influence of these different forms 
on the system of morals. Expression in the two different modes of 
considering the Demiurge, the basis of a classification of the systems. 
Common tenets of the two classes. +++++++++++s seer eeees reeseese 374—380 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Judaizing Gnostics: sensual and spiritual Theocracy. Transitive char- 
acter of Judaism. Anti-Jewish Gnostics. Judaism as opposed to 
Christianity PC OT ee eee δ Rat seine Saris 1 sors alsls: ἐἰς 

Influence of this difference on the shaping of the system of morals. On 
the doctrine concerning Christ. Distinction of a heavenly and an 
earthly Christ. Docetism. Biblical interpretation of the Gnostics. 
Secret doctrines. Their position with respect to the principle of the 
Christian ehureh δον CRIN er ὁ οὐδ. © οὐκια κι τ κι.» Oe) ονεκ © 00,8 ἵν, δὴν ὁ. ᾧ δὰ 0 ejeveja © σ' ο 

Gnosticism attacked on one side by the church, on another by Neo- 
Platonism. Plotinus Pee ὦ δἰ ee weer esos ᾿μνῶνκ σα αὶ ἴὸ σ᾽, .6..α, δι rer eeseseses 

Judaizing and anti-Jewish Gnostics. Points of transition between 
Judaism and Gnosticism. The Clementines as opposed to the doc- 
trine of Marcion. Two-fold shaping of anti-Jewish Gnosticism - ---- 


Particular Sects. 


Gnostic Sects connected with Judaism. 
Cerinth. 


Contradictory accounts. Chasm between God and the world. Angels, 
as creators of the world, and givers of the law. Ebionite doctrine 
concerning Christ. Union of the heavenly with the earthly Christ at 
the baptism. Uncertainty with regard to his views concerning the 
resurrection. Continued obligation of the law. Doctrine of the mil- 
lemium: - «eee «ἘΠ cess δ ὅν Ὁ σὺ Ὁ Ρυλυύνεῖ αἰ ὐγυγο \elviel δῆς orate «τἀ ἀὐεαὐνυιθο ὐον liye .. 

Basilides. 

His field of activity. Fundamental view of his system. Evolution of 
the divine powers. The Ogdoad-Dualism. Formation of the world. 
Purification of fallen life. Transmigration of souls through nature 
and humanity. Doctrine of the Archon and of providence. Minister- 
ing spirits. Theodicee. Typical representation of Judaism. Sources 
of the doctrine taught by Basilides. On the Grecian philosophy. 
National gods. Doctrine of redemption. Union of Jesus with the 
Nus at the baptism. Effect of this union on the Archon. On the 
sufferings of Jesus. Doctrine of justifications +++ -+++++++++eeee ees 

Individual religious-moral ideas of the Basilidean school. Doctrine 
concerning faith as the most intimate union with the godlike. System 
of morals. Rejection of excessive asceticism. Recognition of the 
authority of the apostle ἘΝ Προ ποτ προ 6 96 Foes 6 Claas 4, τῶν πὰ oe 


Valentine and his School. 


Birth and residence of Valentine. Relation to Basilides. Self-limitation 
of the Bythus, the ground of the Mons, of the Pleroma. Idea of 
the Horus. Immersion of the divine germs in the Hyle. The 
heavenly wisdom, Achamoth. Three stages of existence: pneumatic, 
psychical, and hylic natures. The Demiurge. The devil. Place of 
the redemption. The Soter, former and redeemer of the lower world. 
His union with the Achamoth. Place of man in the mundane system. 
His elevation above the Demiurge. His exaltation into the syzygies 
of the Pleroma. Ante-Christian revelation. Incompleteness of the 
redemption. Union of the Soter with the psychical Messiah at the 
baptism. Nature of the redemption. Significance of Christ’s suffer- 
ings. Separation of the psychical from the pneumatic Messiah in 
death. Psychical and pneumatic Christianity. The last things-- --- 

Distinguished men belonging to Valentine’s school. Heracleon. His 
commentary on John. Interpretation of the discourse with the 
Samaritan woman. Opposed to the wrong notion of martyrdom: -- - 

Plotemzus. Letter to Flora. Esoteric tradition. Striving towards 
Monoism. Threefold origin of the law.----+++++eeee creer eee ees 

Marcus. Bardesanes. Cabalistic symbolism of Marcus. Native coun- 
try of Bardesanes. Different reports concerning his relation to the 
church. Prominent place attributed to freedom: - - - “τ Ὁ Ὁ 7 7171 11. ve 

* 


xVl 


380—382 


382—386 
386—390 


390—396 


396—400 


400—413 


413—417 


417—434 


434—437 


437—439 


439—442 


XxVill TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Gnostic Sects in Conflict with Judaism. 


Sects which, in opposing Judaism, inclined towards Paganism. 
The Ophites. 


Pantheistic character of the system. Soul of the world. IJaldabaoth. 
Ophiomorphus. Formation of man. Signification of the fall of man. 
Migration of Christ through the heavens. Pantheistic system of 
morals. Probable transition to antichristian tendency. --+-++++++++ 442—447 


Pseudo- Bastlideans. 


Antinomianism. Crucifixion of Simon of Cyrene. Ridicule of martyr- 
COM << + «αὐ MARISA Se wifes Apel οὐδ νυν. ons tease ἜΓΒ bales Shpwele) το ins) evenane 447—448 


Cainites. 


Inversion of the history of revelation. Cain and Judas Iscariot con- 
sidered as the true men of the spirit. +--+ +++ ++ ee ee ee ee cere eeeee εν 448449 


Carpocrates and Epiphanes, Prodicians, Antitactes, Nicolaitans, Simonians. 


Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes. Employment of Platonic ideas. 
A supreme primal essence. Limitation of the revelation of him by 
the several national gods. Equalization of Christ with the wise men 
of all nations. Undisturbed repose of the pneumatic nature. Perfect 
fellowship, as the moral ideal. Carpocratians at Samos. Antitactes, 
Prodicians. Contempt for the moral law. Nicolaitans. Report of 
Ireneus. His mistake with regard to the deacon Nicolaus. Report 
of Clement. Licentiousness of the sect. Simonians; honor paid to 
Simon Magus. Unsettled character of his adherents: ----- sence εν. 449455 


Anti-Jewish Gnostics who strove to apprehend Christianity in its 
Purity and Self- Subsistence. 


Saturnin. 
Formation of the world by the seven star-spirits. Man as the bearer of 
ν ahigher life. Redemption by the Nus --+-++++-+++--- eee e eens 455—456 


Tatian and the Encratites. 


Conversion of Tatian by means of Justin Martyr. His apology. Doc- 
trine of the Hyle. Destruction of God’s image in man by the fall. 
Asceticism. Rejection of marriage-.----- eerste eee ee seceevees 456—458 | 


Marcion and his School. 


Predominant tendency of Marcion to the practical element in Chris- 
tianity. Protestant rejection of tradition. Literal interpretation. 
Pauline conception of faith. Historical significance of Marcion. 
Circumstances of his life and history Separation of the God of 
nature from that of the gospel. Christianity a sudden intervention. 
His residence at Rome. Exclusion from the fellowship of the church. 
Intercourse with Cerdo. Meeting with Polycarp. Rumor of his 
GONVETSION 1.1.5 oe se oe ees wees ον δον οὐδοῦ bie ole 4. tne - 458—466 

Marcion’s system. Separation of the God of the Jews from that of the 
Christians. Demiurge. The Redeemer. Docetism. Relation of 
the Demiurge to the redemption. Moral tendency of his doctrines. 

Criticism of the New Testament ----+ +++ seeeeepececececeeseees 466—473 


Marcion’s Sects. 
Marcus. Lucan. Apelles se eee eoevrveeeeoereeereeee ere eoeeoeeeeeeeeeee 478—476 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


APPENDIX. 


On the Worship of the Gnostics. 


Entire rejection and pompous excess of worship. Marcosians. Two- 
fold baptism. Formula of baptism. Resistance of Marcion to the 
separation of the catechumens and the faithful. Charge brought 
against Marcion of holding to a representative baptism -++-++++++++- 


Mani and the Manicheans, 478—506. 


Character of Manichzism. History of its founder. Western and East- 
ern sources. Acts of Archelaus of Cascar. Scythian and Buddas, as 
predecessors. Mani’s education. Purposed reformation of Chris- 
tianity by fusing it with Parsism. His appearance on the stage of 
action. His Sas ieee hes Aik ox PUM Morenae) he Sars, <peydyocsgace pause ys, ἐς φ ονῷ 

Mani’s doctrines. Connection with the sect of Magusians. Light and 
darkness. The mother of life. The primal man. His immersion in 
the darkness. Origin of the soul of the world. The living spirit. 
Transfer of the Mithras doctrine to Christianity. Crucifixion of 
Christ in nature. Man amicrocosm. Humanity the theatre of the 
great conflict. Enfeebling of the evil principle, the end of the course 
of the world. Sources of information respecting the religion ------- 


The Doctrine of the Catholic Church, as it unfolded itself in opposition 
to the sects. 
Genetic Development of the Church Theology in general; and Character of the 


several different Religious and Dogmatic Tendencies of Spirit, which had a 
particular Influence upon it, 506—057. 


Determination of the church theology by the above oppositions. Judaiz- 
ing, Gnosticising tendencies. Supernatural, rational elements. Greek, 
Roman individualities of character. Mediation betwixt the Eastern 
and Western church: Irenzus. Representation of the West by 


Montanism. 


Importance of Montanus as the founder of the sect. Character of 
Montanism. Tenacity to a rigid supernaturalism, as opposed to the 
mediation of the supernatural and natural. Graduated progress of 
the church by means of outward revelations. Notion of inspiration. 
The Paraclete. Tendency to outward morality. ----+--+-++++++++: 

Montanus. History of his development. His prophetesses . "5 6 τ στ τὴν 

Exhibition of the Montanistic system. Undue prominence given to 
God’s omnipotence. Nearness of the millennium. ‘Tertullian con- 
cerning the church of the Spirit, as opposed to the church of the 
bishops. Assertion of the priestly dignity of all Christians; a falling 
back, at the same time, to the Old Testament point of view -------> 

Attack of the Montanistic notion of inspiration. The new Montanistic 
propositions. Contempt of life among the Montanists. Over-valua- 
tion of celibacy. Concerning second marriages. Strictness of pen- 
ance. Chiliasm. External fate of the βϑοῦ: - - - τ τσ τ τσ σε σκ εν κ κεῖσε 

Relation of the church tendency to Μοπίδη 51. - - " - τ Ὁ 1555 sr eseeeee 


The Alexandrian School. 


Appropriation of the existing culture in behalf of Christianity. Origin 
IN. τ as aS a ἐφ ΣΙ a sae ape ἘΣ ΦΩΝΗ, ole ὁ ἢ 
Relation of the Alexandrian school to the Greeks, to the Gnostics, to 
ΝΟ νυν ρον ἡ τ ιϑυνν θυ i eer eee νοῦ ἐδὼ 


ΧΙΧ 
476—478 
478—488 
488—505 
506—509 
509—513 
513—514 
514—519 
519—524 
524—527 
527—529 


xx TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Conception of Gnosis and Pistis. Clement concerning both, in oppo- 
sition to Pagans and Gnostics. Sources of information respecting 
the Gnosis. Necessity of Grecian culture. Its defence by Clement. 
View of the Christian development of history. Disparagement of 
simple faith. Agreement with the Gnostics. Difference from them. 
Gnostic pride ἘΜ ΤῈ ἘΠ ἋᾺ 

Prosecution of Clement’s ideas by Origen. Fundamental position of 
Origen. The Gnosis in its relation to the facts of Christianity. Faith 
as the lowest stage. Reality of the Redeemer in the system of Origen. 
Imperfection ef all human Gnosis. Pistis and Gnosis, as sensual and 
spiritual Christianity. Different forms of the revelation of Christ. 
Opposition te the Pauline preaching of Christ crucified. Tolerance 
and gentleness of Origen «+--+ +++ sees cere eee eee eee eee eee 


Twofold principle of scriptural exposition. All scripture a revelation - 


of Ged. Gnostic definition of the end of this revelation. Moral sense 
of scripture, between the literal and the spiritual. Dangerous appli- 
cation of these principles of interpretation to the gospel history. 
Counterpoise in the Realism of the West--- +++. ++ ++0+seeeeeeeees 


Development of the several main Doctrines of Christianity. 


The fact of redemption, the central point of Christianity. Reformation 
of the entire religious consciousness commencing from this point. 


Theology. 

Doctrine concerning God. God as omnipresent, as undeniable. Refer- 
ence of Clement, Origen, Theophilus, to this undeniable sense of God. 
Tertullian’s appeal to the testimony of the uncultivated soul. Spiritual 
nature of God. The Alexandrians. Jrenzus, Novatian. Anthro- 
hate a Anthropopathism. Marcion’s denial of the divine justice. 

ertullian opposed to him. His view of God’s condescension to man. 
Subjective apprehension of the divine attribute by the Alexandrians. 
Origen on the Divine wrath. Midway between the other church 
teachers.ana. the Gnostics- > <= ssi ® «iia sees os gol oan 6 Seen Beene 

Doctrine of the creation. Connection of the doctrine of the creation 
with other Christian doctrines. Creation from nothing. Hermogenes. 
Opposition to the Gnostic as well as to the Christian doctrine of the 
the creation. God conceived as eternally giving form to the Hyle. 
Inconsistency of his Goetrinie = οὐ sos ea es a ard ea ae τ πο 

Origen on the creation. Inconceivableness of a beginning of creation. 
Objection of Methodius. Concerning God's omnipotence. Its con- 
nection with the other attributes. Limited number of the creatures 

Doctrine of the Trinity. Fundamental marks of it in the New Testa- 
ment. Dangerous nature of analogies drawn from other religions. 
Progressive development of the practical into the ontological Trinity. 
Son of God in the Old and New Testament. Idea of the Logos: -- - 

The Monarchians. Two classes of them - - «τ τ Ὁ τ 7 τ λ στ seer rece κα σον 

First Class. Said to be dominant in the most ancient Roman church. 
Theodotus. Development of Christ under the influence of the Holy 
Spirit. Supernatural birth. The confessor Natalis. | Artemon. 
Appeal to the Roman bishop Victor. Novatian in opposition to the 
Artemonites. Pretended prevalence of the Artemonite tendency 
until the time of Zephyrinus. Intellectual bent of the sect. Their 
criticism of the New Testament. The Alogi-+++++++++++++eeeeees 

Second Class. Patripassians. Praxeas. Residence in Rome. Journey 
to Carthage. Tertullian opposed to him. Two ways of understand- 
ing his doctrine :— denial of any distinction whatever in God, — dis- 
tinction of God hidden and revealed. Noetus, Distinction of God 
as ὧν and as λόγος eee ee ee ee ee eee re ee αν 

Doctrine of the ehurch. Oriental subordination-system, as opposed to 
the Monarchians, Western striving after the unity of essence. The 


529—544 


544-—552 


552—557 


557—564 


564—568 


568—571 


571—575 
575—579 


-- 


579—583 


583—585 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. ΧΧῚ 


doctrine of the Logos. Justin Martyr, Athenagoras. The Alexan- 

drian doctrine of the Logos. Clement. ‘Transfer of the predicates 

of the Nus to the Logos. Origen. The Logos, as the collective 

revelation of God. Ditterent forms of the revelation of one and the 

same Logos. Eternal generation of the Logos grounded in the divine 

will. Difference of essence. Subordination -.-+-+++++se-+.eeeee 585—591 
Mediatory monarchian tendency: Indwelling of the deity in Christ, 

constituting his personality. Preéxistence in the divine idea. Beryll. 

Disputation with Origen. Sabellius. Discordant views of his doc- 

trine. The Father evolved in the Son and the Spirit. Creation of 

humanity in the Logos. Hypostasizing of the Logos in Christ. As 

such, the Son of God. ‘Transient continuance of this hypostasis. 

Ultimate end. On the continued duration of creaturely existence. 

Gospel of the Egyptians. Paul of Samosata. Deistical tendency. 

Impersonality of the Logos. Indwelling in Christ. Christ as a mere. 

man. Use of the name, “Son of God.” Character and external 

history of Paul. Disputation with Malchion ------+-++-++++++-+-- 591—605 
Difference between the Western and Eastern mode of apprehending the 

doctrine of the Trinity. Tertullian. Unity of essence. Graduated 

series of persons. Diversity not in number but in measure. Retro-» 

cession of the doctrine of subordination. Condemnation of the Ho- 

ποι TEN TIE EE o's Ὁ Woe Gish Bw dies Mle wee Wold ete oye ha plete 605—606 
Dionysius of Alexandria. Prominence given to the doctrine of subor- 

dination. Opposed to him, Dionysius of Rome. Yielding disposition 

RT a neh og dks aaa a νος © Oita πος oa <n Ces 0 5 6 50% χὰ 0) ΘΒ Ὲ 606—608 
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. His personality. Its denial by the Mo- 

narchians and Lactantius. Diversities of doctrine. Justin. Clement 

of Alexandria opposed to the Montanistic doctrine concerning the 

Holy Spirit- HCA Sy ORE ENON κα ΣΦ ὦ Sc 608—610 
Doctrine concerning human nature. Its connection with the doctrine 

concerning God. Both determined by the doctrine of the Redeemer. 

Necessity of redemption ; recipiency for the redemption. Opposition 

between the Christian and the pagan doctrine of human nature. Con- 


ception of moral freedom. Doctrine of spirits-----+-++--+--+--+++> 610612 
Opposition between the church and the Gnostic doctrine of human 
ΕΒ. 52. Ce Ok Ge DOC ek τειν εἶν a ἐν τ νῦν ee i or -e+ 619-—614 


Difference of the North-African from the Alexandrian Tendency. 


Tertullian’s doctrine. Traduction of souls. Corruption of man’s nature ; 
relationship to God. Against Hermogenes’ view of the hylic soul. 
Against the Platonic λογικόν and ἄλογον. On the power of divine grace 614—620 
The Alexandrian church. Clement on the fall of man. Connection 
between grace and free-will. Origen. Derivation of all diversity 
from moral freedom. Moral evil as a fall from true being. The 
corporeal world as the place for purification. Higher intelligences. 
Doctrine of the preéxistence of souls. Natural corruption. The three 
principles of fallen human nature. Separation of fore-knowledge and 
predestination. Grace and free-will.----+--+--+-e+ sees ecee eee 620—630 


Doctrine concerning Christ. 


Assumption of human nature by the Redeemer. Opposed to Docetism ; 
Ignatius, Tertullian. Tertullian on the servant-form of Christ. 
Clement on the absence of all need in Christ. Clement; Origen 
concerning the servant-form. The soul of Christ. Passage in Ire- 
neus. Trichotomy in Justin. Tertullian. Twofold division of the 
human nature. The human soul of the Redeemer. Origen on the 
soul of Christ. Distinction of Psyche and Pneuma. On the sinless- 
ness of the soul of Christ. On Christ’s body. Origen accused of 
separating Pests eee CS COMPRES Ob id Olle Us WUE EIDE Uiealdld es comand 630—~640 


XX1l TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Doctrine of the redemption. Negative and positive moment in it.. In 
reference to the first: victory over Satan by Chnist. To the last: 
Christ as the archetype of humanity, in Ireneus. Justin on the 
sufferings of Christ. ‘The letter to Diognetus on satisfaction. Origen 
on the passion. His view of the SACTi{IGE s+ «+ + «vn - 640—644 

Doctrine concerning faith. Connection of redemption with sanctification. 

Clemens Romanus. Letter to Diognet. Ireneus. Distortion of the 
Pauline conception OF faith > « mobo ΠΡ ΡΤ ate 644—645 

Doctrine of the church (see above, sect. I.) 

Doctrine of the sacraments. Confusion of the sign with the thing signified. 646 

a. Baptism. Irenzeus, Tertullian, Clement. Confounding of the outward 
symbol with the inward grace ; of baptism with regeneration ------- 646—647 

ὃ. Lord’s supper. Ignatius, Justin, Irenzeus. Union of the Logos with 
the wine and bread. Tertullian, Cyprian. Symbolical mode of 
apprehension. Communion of infants. Origen. Distinction of the 
inward substance from its outward sign-+-+-+-+-++++++++: beeen tenes 647--649 


s 


Eschatology. 


Doctrine of the last things. Millenium. Papias. Jrenzus. Anti- 
Chiliast tendency. Opposition to Montanism. Alexandrian theology. 
Caius against Proclus. Nepos. Coracion and Dionysius. Of the 
itettediate SEATS «oe co οι ἐς ἐών oa alte ee 649—654 
Doctrine of the resurrection. Controversy between the church fathers 
and the Gnostics. Mediation of Origen. Continued development 
after death. Origen on the restoration of all things. +--+. +sseeeeee 654—656 


History of the more eminent Teachers of the Church. 
The Apostolic Fathers. 


Barnabas. . Letter of Barnabas: + +: - τι 0*.5¢+ 00s εν 0 Bis πὴ 656—658 
Clement of Rome. Epistle to the Corinthians. Fragment of a second. 
Two letters to the Syrian church. The Clementines. The apostolic 


constitutio HUG oe © woe om were 9.5 0 no) eis) oleic) vij0) 6:i0\ ee) © mien) \el a! )iaio lean eee eee nen 658—660 ἣ 
Hermas, his shepherd ΠΤ ΎΎΥΠῊ τ᾿ nt ee ΄. 660 
Ignatius. Seven letters to churches of Asia Minor. Polycarp.------- 660—661 


The Apologists. 


Quadratus. Aristides ὁ δ © © ee @ 0) 6) 010.6 ἃ οἷο 5.6. δ, 6 πο 6) le). wile oilman et eee 661—662 
Justin Martyr. His education. His two Apologies. Determination of 

the time of the first. The παραινετικὸς πρὸς "EAAnvac. The λόγος πρὸς 

Ἕλληνας. The dialogue with Trypho the Jew. Lost writings. The 

letter to Diognet. Justin’s death - - - τ τ Ὁ τ essere ee ee tree eee eens 662—671 
Tatian. Conversion by means of Justin. Discourse to the Gentiles... 671—673 
Athenagoras: Πρεσβεία περὶ Χριστιανῶν. Hermias: Διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω 

φιλοσόφων seer 555 6 νι eee ee eee ee ee tenn κι κ κα eee κα κα ἐκ κεν κα σον 673—674 
Theophilus of Antioch against the Pagan Autolycus --+++-+++++++++++ 674 


Church Teachers of Asia Minor. 


Hegesippus. His πέντε ὑπομνῆματα ἐκκλησιαστικῶν πράξεων. His relation 


to the Roman church «© ..62-.esceesccsccncstscncees ἐν 674—675 
Subjects written upon by these church teachers. Melito of Sardis. 
Claudius of Apollinaris SS CE ee TORT Ty Onl eR eoee 675—677 


Trenzus. His relation to Polycarp. Position with regard to Monthiiedn, 
Refutation of the Gnostic systems. Treatise on the style of St. Paul. 
The two letters to Blastus and to Florinus..+++++++++++++sereeees 677—681 
Hippolytus. His place of residence. Commentary on the scriptures. 
Defence of the Gospel of John and of the Apocalypse. His work 
against thirty-two heresies. Tract on Antichrist. Exhortation to 
Soverina Ley LCT eT σοΕοέή- . 681—683 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. ΧΧΙΣ 


Church Teachers of North Africa. 
Tertullian. Characteristics. Circumstances of life. His Montanism. 


ΟΣ OR So me | a ee er ee ἢ 6883—685 
Cyprian. Relation to Tertullian. His books of testimonies: - - - - e+e++ 685—686 
Commodian. His instructions: - " “5595 cece wee e reer ene ncc evens 686—687 
Arnobius. His conversion. His Apology -+++--++ -.++seeseeeeeee 687—689 


Church Teachers of Rome. 


Caius. Novatian. Minucius Felix -.-------.- wc cccccccccecs ...ς...- §689—691 


Church Teachers of Alexandria. 


Pantenus. Clement. His writings «ον οι οὐ τὺ δ ΗΝ δὴν wrote  εὲ 691—693 
Origen. History of his life. Theological education. Catechetical 

office. His activity as a theological teacher. Relation to Ambrose. 

His commentaries. Περὲ ἀρχῶν. Persecution by Demetrius. Residence 

in Palestine. The Hexapla. Correspondence with Julius Africanus. 





His other writings. Rates sce τ « cfet ates (e. Ὁ μιν πο 5, ον ΚΣ 693—711 
The school of Origen. Heraclas. Dionysius of Alexandria. Pierius 

and Theognostos. Origenistic and Anti-Origenistic party -------- 711—713 
Hieracas. His exegesis and ascetic tendency. On marriage. Ap- 

proach πη νι (Sears coo fms Vas Rls Fue Ge le oe Wo hese Lehn, ow om, ERE OG 713—716 
Gregory Thaumaturgus. Conversion by means of Origen. His labors 

and writings ον a atichialig W's σεν tie) oC eRcNet a) ois stots welche neice) cies) 6) ui reife ef egevele 716—720 
Methodius. Controversy with Origen. His writings ------+++++++-- 720—721 
Pamphilus. His services rendered to exegesis. Defence of Origen--- 721—722 
Theological school at Antioch. Doritheus. Lucian. Conclusion----- 722—723 
Index to Names and Subjects Ἐπ, οὐ ὦ δ. Ὁ ol fall via) sini eta! μιν 9 5 ὑπο! δ ον οὐδ ein οὐ ofohey siin'e 725—732 


Citations eereerre ese seeeoeeeoee eet es eeeeereeeeeoesee ee ee eee epereere eeee 733—740 




































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INTRODUCTION. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD, ROMAN, GREEK AND JEWISH, AT THE TIME OF THE FIRST 
APPEARANCE AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 


Ir shall be our purpose to trace, from the small mustard-grain, 
through the course of the past centuries, lying open for our inspection, 
the growth of that mighty tree, which is destined to overshadow the 
earth, and under the branches of which all its people are to find a 
safe habitation. The history will show how a little leaven, cast into 
the mass of humanity, has been gradually penetrating it. Looking back 
on the period of eighteen centuries, we would survey a process of de- 
velopment in which we ourselves are included; a process moving 
steadily onward, though not in a direct line, but through various wind- 
ings, yet in the end furthered by whatever has attempted to arrest its 
course ; a process having its issue in eternity, but constantly following 
the same laws, so that in the past, as it unfolds itself to our view, we . 
may see the germ of the future, which is coming to meet us. But 
although the contemplation of history enables us to perceive the powers 
as they are prepared in their secret laboratories, and as they are ex- 
hibited in actual operation, yet in order to a right understanding of 
all this, it is pre-supposed that we have formed some just conception of 
that in its inward essence, which we would study in its manifestation 
and process of development. Our knowledge here falls into a neces- 
sary circle. ΤῸ understand history, it is supposed that we have some 
understanding of that which constitutes its working principle; but it 
is also history which furnishes us the proper test, by which to ascer- 
tain whether its principle has been rightly apprehended. Certainly, 
then, our understanding of the history of Christianity will depend on 
the conception we have formed to ourselves of Christianity itself. 

Now Christianity we regard not as a power that has sprung up out 
of the hidden depths of man’s nature, but as one which descended 
from above, because heaven opened itself for the rescue of revolted 
humanity ; a power which, as it is exalted above all that human nature 
can create out of its own resources, must impart to that nature a new 
life, and change it from its inmost centre. The great source of this 
power is the person whose life its appearance exhibits to us — Jesus of 
Nazareth — the Redeemer of mankind when alienated from God by 
sin. In the submission of faith to him, and the appropriation of the 
truth which he revealed, consists the essence of Christianity, and of 

VOL. I. : il | 


2 RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY 


that fellowship of the divine life resulting from it, which we designate 
under the name of the church. Out of this spriags the common con- 
sciousness, which unites all its members in one, however separated 
from one another by space or time. The continuance of all those 
agencies, whereby Christianity has given a new turn to the life of our 
race, depends on our holding fast to this, its peculiar essence, to the 
same that has been the spring of these agencies from the beginning. 
ΤῸ the Kingdom of God, which derived its origin from these influences 
in humanity, and which must ever continue to spring up afresh from the 
same, may be applied the remark of an ancient historian respecting 
the kingdoms of the world, that they will be preserved by the same 
means to which they were indebted for their foundation. 1 

But although Christianity can be understood only as something 
which is above nature and reason, something communicated to them 
from a higher source, yet it stands in necessary connection with the 
essence of these powers and with their mode of development, — other- 
wise, indeed, it could not be fitted to elevate them to any higher stage; 
otherwise, it would not operate on them at all. And such a connec- 
tion, considered by itself, we must presume to exist in the works of God, 
in the mutual and harmonious agreement of which is manifested the 
divine order of the universe. The connection of which we now speak 
consists in this; that what has by their Creator been implanted in the 
essence of human nature and reason, what has its ground in their idea 
and their destination, can attain to its full realization only by means of 
that higher principle, as we see it actually realized in Him who is its 
Source, and in whom is expressed the original type and model, after. 
which humanity has to strive. And accordingly, we see the evidence 
of this connection, whenever we observe how human nature and reason 
do, by virtue of this, their original capacity, actually strive, in their his- 
torical development, towards this higher principle, which needs to be 
communicated to them in order to their own completion ; and how, by 
the same capacity they are made receptive of this principle and conduct- 
ed onward till’ they yield to it, and become moulded by its influence. 
It is simply because such a connection exists, because im all cases 
where, through the historic preparation, the soil has been rendered suit- 
able for its reception, Christianity enters readily into all that is human, 
striving to assimilate it to its own nature, and to inter-penetrate it with 
its own power, that on a superficial view, it appears as if Christianity 
itself were only a product resulting from the combination of the 
different spiritual elements it had drawn together; and the opinion 
has found advocates, that it could thus be explained. So may it also 
become blended for a while with the impure elements, attracted by its 
influence, and in its manifestation assume a shape which wholly 
resembles them ; —till at length, by its own intrinsic power, it begins 
a process of purification, from which it issues forth refined and ennobled, 
even in its outward form. But this circumstance, again, might seem 
to furnish some hold for the opinion, as if all those impure elements, 


1 Imperium facile his artibus retinetur, quibus initio partum est. 


TO JUDAISM AND PAGANISM. 3 


which only attached themselves to Christianity in its outward mani- 
festation, sprang from its essence; while on the contrary, the real 
operation of its essence, as the process of development went on, was 
to separate and reject them. In the contemplation of history, as of 
nature, it is always in truth a very difficult thing to avoid confounding 
accidental symptoms with more deep-seated agencies, — to distinguish 
clearly the true cause from what merely works on the surface.’ 

If this holds good, so far as it concerns the relation of Christianity 
to the development of human nature generally, it will be found to 
apply with peculiar force to that great period, which was chosen for 
the appearance of the Saviour of the world; and for the diffusion 
among mankind, from him, as the source, of those powers from above, 
which formed the commencement of that new creation, whose progres- 
sive work became thenceforth the final problem and the goal of history. 
It is, therefore, only from its historical connection with the previous 
development of that portion of mankind, among whom Christianity 
first appeared, that its effects can be rightly understood; and such a 
connected view of the subject is necessary, in order to clear the way 
of false explanations. 

This connection is hinted at by the Apostle Paul, where he says 
that Christ appeared when the fulness of the tume was come. For 
herein, certainly, it is implied, that the precise time when he appeared 
had some particular relation to his appearance ; — that the preparatory 
steps, through the previous development in the history of the nations, 
had been directed precisely to this pot, and were destined to proceed 
. just so far, in order to admit of this appearance — the goal and central 
point of all. It is true, this appearance stands in an altogether peculiar 
relation to the religion of the Hebrews, which was designed to prepare 
the way for it in an altogether peculiar sense. It is connected with 
this religion by the common element of a divine revelation, — the 
super-natural and supra-rational element ; by the common interest of 
Theism and the Theocracy ; as all revealed religion, the entire devel- 
opment of Theism and the Theocracy, points from the beginning 
towards one end; which beimg reached, every thing must be re- 
cognized as belonging to one organic whole, —a whole wherein all 
the principal momenta served to announce beforehand, and to prepare 
the way for, the end towards which they were tending as their last 
fulfilment and consummation. It is in this reference, Christ says of 
his relation to this religion, what he could not say after the same 
manner, of his relation to any other;—that he was not come to 
destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil; although it remains 
none the less true, that Christ stands in the relation of one, who came 
not to destroy but to fulfil, to all the truth at bottom in all religions, to 
the purely human element wherever it may be found. But still we 
must not confine ourselves here to the connection of the appearance 
of Christianity with Judaism alone. Judaism itself, as the revealed 
religion of Theism, can be understood in its true significance, only as 


1} We might apply here what the great kindred subject: ᾿Αρχὴ τί διαφέρει καὶ πόσον 
historian Polybius says on another, though διέστηκεν αἰτίας καὶ προφάσεως. III. VI., 6. 


4 RELIGIOUS CONDITION 


contrasted with the Nature-religion of Paganism. Whilst on the one 
hand, the seed of divine truth out of which Christianity sprang, was 
communicated to reason by divine revelation; so on the other hand, 
reason unfolding itself from beneath, must seek, especially among 
that great historical people, the Greeks, how far it could singly, and by 
its own power, advance in the knowledge of divine things. ‘To this, the 
Apostle Paul alludes, when he says, “‘ God hath determined for all 
nations the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, 
— how long they should continue, and how far they should extend their 
sway, — that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after 
him and find him.” And so, too, when he says of the times immediately 
preceding the revelation of the gospel, that the world, by its own wis- 
dom, sought to know God in his wisdom, but could not knowhim. As it 
had been intrusted to the Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven- 
derived element of the Theistic religion, so it was ordained that 
among the Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves 
in beautiful harmony, to a complete and perfect whole; and then 
Christianity, taking up the opposition between the divine and the 
human, was to unite both im one, and show how it was necessary that 
both should co-operate to prepare for the appearance of itself and for 
the unfolding of what it contams. Origen had no hesitation in admit- 
ting, what Celsus the great antagonist of Christianity maintained, when 
he ascribed to the Greeks a peculiar adaptation of talents and fitness 
of position, which qualified them for applying human culture to the 
development and elaboration of those elements of divine knowledge 
they had received from other quarters, namely from the East. 

Besides, among Pagans, the transient flashes of a deeply-seated con- 
sciousness of God, — the sporadic revelations of Him-in whom we live 
and move and have our being, and who has not left, himself without wit- 
ness among any people,—are too clear to be mistaken; the testimonia 
anime naturaliter christianze, as it is expressed by an ancient father, 
which pointed to Christianity. And while it was necessary that the 
influence of Judaism should penetrate into the heathen world, in order to 
prepare the way and open a point of communication for Christianity, so 
was it needful also, that the stern and repulsive stiffness of Judaism 
should be softened and expanded by the elements of Hellenic culture, 
in order to become recipient for what was new in the presentations of 
the Gospel.| The three great historical nations had to contribute, each 
im its own peculiar way, to prepare the soil for the planting of Chris- 
tianity, —the Jews on the side of the religious element; the Greeks on 
the side of science and art; the Romans, as masters of the world, on 
the side of the political element. When the fulness of the time was 
arrived, and Christ appeared, —when the goal of history had thus 
been reached,— then it was, that through him, and by the power of 
the spirit that proceeded from him, — the might of Christianity, — all 
the threads, hitherto separated, of human development, were to be 
brought together and interwoven in one web. 


1 Ὅτι κρῖναι βεβαιώσασϑαι καὶ ἀσκῆσαι escing in this opinion, says it serves pre- 
πρὸς ἀρετὴν τὰ ὑπο βαρβάρων εὑρεϑέντα cisely for the vindication of Christianity. 
ἀμείνονές εἰσιν "EAAnvec. Origen, acqui- ὁ. Cels. I. 2. 


OF THE PAGAN WORLD. 5 


Now, how it was, that the different courses of development under 
revealed, and in natural religion, — under Judaism on the one hand, 
and Greek or Roman institutions on the other, — co-operated to prepare 
the way for Christianity, it is our present purpose more particularly to | 
consider ; and we will first cast a glance at the religious state of the 
pagan world among the Greeks and Romans. 


State of the Pagan World among the Greeks and Romans. 


If, in the ancient world, a dark fatality seemed to reveal atself in the 
rise and fall of nations, an irresistible cycle to which all human great- 
ness was forced to submit, in this impression we may recognize the 
consciousness of a necessary law of development at that stage of the 
world. All national greatness depends on the tone of public feeling 
and manners; and this again on the power of religion in the life of the 
people. But the popular religions of antiquity answered only for a 
certain stage of. culture. When the nations, im the course of their 
progress, had passed beyond this, the necessary consequence was a 
dissevering of the spirit from the religious traditions. In the case of 
the more quiet and equable development of the Oriental mind, — so 
tenacious of the old, — the opposition between the mythic religion of 
the people, and the secret, theosophic doctrines of a priestly cast, who 
gave direction to the popular conscience, might exist for centuries 
without change. But among the more excitable nations of the West, 
intellectual culture, as soon as it attamed to a certain degree of 
independence,. must necessarily fall into collision with the mythic 
religion, handed down from the infancy of the people. The more 
widely diffused cultivation became, the more extensive grew this schism. 
Religion was deprived of its power, and the defection from this led 
at the same time to the depravation of morals. Thus the culture 
which had no religious and moral ground οἵ support, capable of with- 
standing every shock, and indestructible under all changes, — as soon 
as it was rent from its connection with the inner life that alone gives 
the vigor of health to all human concerns, — could only degenerate into 
false civilization and corruption. There was as yet no salt, to preserve 
the life of humanity from decomposing, or to restore it back agam 
when passing to decomposition. 

As it was the Grecian mind, —freed in its development from the 
influence of tradition, — to which philosophy and every independent 
science under its form, owe their existence; so too it was among the 
Greeks, that the mighty schism first presented itself, between the 
human mind striving after its freedom, and the popular religion. As 
early as the fifth and fourth conturies before Christ, the arbitrary and 
heartless dialectic of the Sophists was directed against the might of 
holy tradition and morals. Plato already represents Socrates discours- 
ing against this rage for enlightenment, which he characterises as a 
“hoorish wisdom,’’ ! that put itself to the thankless task of tracing back 


1 ᾿Αγροΐκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, is what natural and trivial. Pheedrus, p. 285, Plat. 
he says of one of those enlighteners who ed. Bipont, Vol. X. 
were for explaining every thing into the 
* 


6 _RELIGION OF THE PAGAN WORLD. 


all mythical tales to some natural fact, neglecting meanwhile, what is 
most important and nearest to man, the knowledge of himself. And 
in the times immediately succeeding, appeared a certain Euemerus, 
from the school of Cyrene, who fancied that he had compassed the long- 
sought object, and resolved the whole doctrine concerning the gods, 
into a history of nature. 

Among the Romans, religion was more closely interwoven than in 
the other ancient states, with politics. One gave life to the other. 
Here, more than elsewhere, the whole civil and domestic life was based 
on religious customs, which, by their connection with modesty of man- 
ners, presented a striking contrast with the more esthetic than moral 
element of the Grecian mythology, —a system which did not shrink 
from even entering into union with immorality.! The great historian 
Polybius has given a picture of Roman life, as it was a century and a 
half before Christ, while it yet retained its ancient simplicity. Judging 
by those maxims of the understanding, which, as a statesman, he was 
in the habit of applying to the affairs of the world, he believed that 
the trait of character, for which the Roman people had been commonly 
reproached, — the excessive superstition inwrought with their public and 
private life, — was, in truth, the firmest pillar of the Roman state.2 Con- 
templating religion in this outward way, he saw in it only a means, 
employed by the wisdom of law-givers, for traming and leading the 
multitude. It was his opinion, that were it even possible to form a 
state of wise men, such a procedure would, perhaps, be found un- 
necessary. But as a counterpoise to the power, which unruly passions 
and desires exercised over the excitable multitude, thefe was need of 
such means, in order to hold them in check by the dread of the invisi- 
ble, and by terrifying fictions.? From this power of religious faith, he 
accounted for the integrity and trustworthiness of the Roman magis- 
trates, with whom an oath was a pledge of fidelity, to be relied on with 
far more confidence than any number of other securities in the Grecian 
states. But while he praised the ancients, who, not without good rea- 
sons, had introduced among the multitude these opinions concerning the 
gods and the things of the lower world, he felt constrained to censure 
those of his own contemporaries, who were most unreasonably and in- 
considerately seeking to destroy these convictions. * 

It would necessarily be the case, at the point occupied by the an- 
cient world, that in proportion as scientific culture came to be more 
generally diffused among the people, this opposition noticed by Polybius 
between the subjective conviction of individuals and the public state- 
religion, would become more strongly marked. There were no means 
of creating a fellowship of religious interest on truthful grounds, 


1A difference between the Roman and ῥωμαίων πράγματα, λέγω δὲ THY δεισιδαι- 
Grecian religions, particularly noticed by μονίαν. L. VI. c. 56. 


Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writer 8 Αείπεται, τοῖς ἀδῆλοις φόβοις καὶ TH 
of the Augustan age. See the well-known τοιαύτῃ τραγῳδιᾳ τὰ TAHSIN συνέχειν. 
and remarkable passage in Archxol. Ro- 4 Διόπερ οἱ παλαιοὶ δοκοῦσι μοι τὰς περὲ 


man. 1. II. ο. 18. ϑεῶν ἐννοίας καὶ τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν év δου δια- 

2 Καὶ μοι δοκεῖ τὸ παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις λήψεις οὐκ εἰκῇ καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν εἰς τὰ πλήϑη 

ἀνϑρώποις ὀνειδιζόμενον, τοῦτο συνέχειν τὰ παρεισαγαγεῖν" πολὺ δὲ er οἱ viv εἰκῇ 
καὶ ἀλόγως ἐκβάλλειν αὐτά. 


& 
RELIGION AMONG THE COMMON PEOPLE. 7 


between the cultivated class and the people. The wiser sort endeavor- 
ed to sustain the popular religion ; either because, like Polybius, they 
merely recognized in it a necessary means to political ends; or 
because, like philosophers of more depth, they regarded it as not 
barely the work of human caprice, but as belonging to a higher neces- 
sity ; as resting on a basis of truth, which could be brought near the 
consciousness of the multitude only under this human form; as the 
fragments of a tradition, transmitting the knowledge of divine things 
possessed in the earliest times, wherein all that was true and that 
claimed to be acknowledged as such also by the wise, ought to be dis- 
tinguished from the imperfect form. With Polybius agrees Strabo the 
geographer, who wrote in the age of Augustus Cesar. “The multi 
tude of women, he observes, and the entire mass of the common people 
cannot be led to piety by the doctrines of philosophy ; for this purpose 
superstition also is necessary, which must call in the aid of myths and 
tales of wonder.’ Having adduced some examples from the Grecian 
mythology, he adds, “‘ such things the founders of states employed as 
bug-bears to awe childish people.” These myths, as it seemed to him, 
were required not only for children, but no less for the ignorant and 
uneducated, who are no better than children; and so too for those 
whose education is imperfect, for in their case too, reason has not as yet 
acquired strength enough to throw off the habits they have brought 
with them from the years of childhood.? 

In the latter times of the Roman republic, when the ancient simpli- 
city of manners was fast disappearing before the advance of culture, 
this opposition, which had for a long time existed among the Greeks, 
between the religion of thinking men and the state-religion, or the 
popular faith, began to prevail more generally in proportion to the 
influence of the Grecian philosophy. Thus the learned Roman 
antiquarian, Varro, who lived about the time of our Saviour’s birth, 
distinguished three kinds of theology ; the poetic or mythical, the civil, 
and the natural; the last being the one which belongs to the whole 
world, and in which the wise are agreed. The theologia civilis, in its 
relation to truth, seemed to him to le half way between mythology 
and philosophical religion.? Seneca said in his tract ‘ against super- 
stition,” “the whole of that vulgar crowd of gods, which for ages 
past a Protean superstition has been accumulating, we shall worship in 


1So Aristotle; who says, “It has been 
handed down, in a mythical form, from the 
earliest times to posterity, that there are 
gods, and that the divine (the Deity) com- 
passes entire nature. All besides this, has 
‘been added, after the mythical style, for the 
purpose of persuading the multitude, and 
for the interest of the laws and the advan- 
tage of the state. Thus men have given 
to the gods human forms, and have even 
represented them under the figure of other 
beings, in the train of which fictions fol- 
lowed many more of the like sort. But if 
we separate from all this the original prin- 
ciple, and consider it alone, namely, that 
the first essences are gods, we shall find, 


that this has been divinely said; and since 
it is probable that philosophy and the arts 
have been several times, —so far as that is 
possible,—found and lost, such doctrines 
may have been preserved to our times, as the 
remains of ancient wisdom.” Metaphys. x. 8. 

2 In Strabo Geograph. 1. I. c. 2. 

8 His words are: Prima theologia max- 
ime accommodata est ad theatrum, secun- 
da ad mundum, tertia ad urbem. Ea, que 
scribunt poets, minus esse, quam ut popu- 
li sequi debeant, que autem philosophi, 
plus quam ut ea vulgum scrutari expediat. 
Ea que facilius intra parietes in schola, 
quam extra in foro ferre possunt aures. 
Augustin. de civitate Dei. 1. VI. c. 5, et seq. 


8 RELIGION AMONG THE EDUCATED. 


this sense, viz. that we ever remember the worship we pay them is due 
rather to good manners, than to their own worth. Alksuch rites the 
sage will observe, because they are commanded by the laws, not because 
they are pleasing to the gods.”” So Cotta, whom Cicero introduces as 
the Academician, in the third book of his work, ‘‘ De natura Deorum,” 
knows how to distinguish, in his own person, the two different positions 
of the pontifex and the philosopher. But not every one had the wis- 
dom, which could hold these two positions distinctly apart, and keep 
them from destroying, where they had nothing better to substitute in 
place of what they destroyed. The inner disunion was at length 
no longer to be concealed even from those who were no philosophers. 
When with the increase of luxury, a superficial cultivation came to be 
more widely spread among the Romans, and the ancient simplicity of 
manners gradually disappeared; when the old civic virtue, and the old 
constitution and freedom sank away, and were succeeded by every species 
of moral depravation, and by servitude ; then was the tie also broken, 
whereby the old religion of the state had been thus far preserved in 
the life of the people. Those among the philosophical systems of the 
Greeks, which most completely harmonized with a worldly, thoughtless 
spirit, destitute of all susceptibility for the godlike; those which made 
pleasure man’s highest end, or which led to doubt of all objective 
truth, — Hpicureanism, as represented, for example, by a Lucretius, and 
scepticism, — found currency on all sides; and although the systems 
themselves were seldom studied, yet the great mass of halfeducated 
men, became familiar with their results. Individuals appeared, who, 
‘like Lucian, pointed the shafts of their wit against the existing religions, 
and the superstitions of the people. In the religious systems of the 
- several nations that had been brought in contact with one another by the 
Roman empire, as well as in the doctrines of the philosophical schools, 
men saw nothing but the strife of opinions, without any criterion of 
truth. Pilate’s question, “‘ what is truth?’’ conveying a sneer at all 
enthusiasm. about such a matter, represented the prevailing tone of 
mind of many a noble Roman. 

They, who without any deep sense of religious need, were yet un- 
able to make up their minds to a total denial of religion, endeavored to 
content themselves with that dead abstraction, which is usually left 
behind, as something to retire to from the living forms of religion, 
when these are on the pomt of expirmg,—a certain species of 
Deism, —a way of thinking that does not indeed absolutely deny the 
existence of a Deity, but yet places him at the utmost possible dis- 
tance, in the back-ground of his works. An idle deity is all that is 
wanted; not one everywhere active— whose agency pervades the 
whole life of things. He who to satisfy his religious wants requires 
anything beyond this meagre abstraction, he who would know anything 
more respecting man’s relation to a higher world appears already, to 
men of this way of thinking, a fanatic or a fool. The imquiries that 
suggest themselves under the feeling of a more profound religious 
need, are to such minds unintelligible; for they are strangers to the 
feeling itself. In the notions entertained by the many, concerning the 


OPINIONS OF VARRO AND STRABO. 9 


anger of the gods, and the punishments of the lower world, they see 
nothing but superstition, without recognizing in them a fundamental 
truth, namely, the undeniable need, which leads men into various de- 
lusions, only when misunderstood. But, by minds of this stamp, the 
whole is ridiculed alike, as mere dreams and fancies of limited man, 
who transfers all his own passions over to his gods. As a representa- 
tive of this class, we may take that satirical castigator of mamers in 
the age of the Antonines, Lucian, who characterizes himself as the 
hater of lies, cheats and charlatanry.! And Justin Martyr observes 
of the philosophers in his time, “‘ that the greater part of them bestow 
no thought on the questions, whether there is one God, or whether 
there are many gods, whether there is a providence, or no providence ; 
as if knowledge of these matters were of no importance to our well- 
being. ‘“* They rather seek,” says he, “‘ to convince us also, that the 
divinity extends his care to the great whole, and to the several kinds, 
but not to me and to you, not to men as individuals. Hence it is 
useless to pray to him; for everything occurs according to the un- 
changeable laws of an endless cycle.’ 

From the wreck of religion, many sought to rescue the faith in one 
divine primal essence, which they found it difficult, however, to dis- 
tinguish from the world; and the simple spiritual worship of this, 
appeared to them the original truth, lying at the foundation of the 
whole fabric of superstition in the popular religions. It was Varro’s 
opinion, that the only thing true in religion was the idea of a rational 
soul of the world, by which all things are moved and governed.? He 
traces the origin of superstition and unbelief to the introduction of 
idols, which he contends were unknown to the earliest religion of the 
Romans.* ‘If images had not been introduced,” says he, “‘ the gods 
would have been worshipped in a more chaste and simple manner;’’5 
and he appeals, furthermore, to the example of the Jews. So Strabo 
informs us what he himself considered to be the original truth in reli- 
gion, where he describes Moses as a religious reformer, who established 
the simple spiritual worship of a Supreme Being, in opposition to the idol 
and image worship of all other nations; ‘and this one Supreme 
Essence,” says he, ‘‘is what embraces us all, water and land, — what 
we call the heavens, the world, the nature of things. This Highest 
Being should be worshipped without any visible image, in sacred 
groves. In such retreats, the devout should lay themselves down to 
sleep, and expect signs from God in dreams.”” But this simple nature- 
worship, Strabo supposes, became afterwards, as well among the Jews 
as everywhere else, corrupted by superstition and thirst for power. δ 
‘We should mention here, also, that eclectic philosopher of the Cynic 


1 Μισαλαζών εἰμι καὶ μισογόης καὶ μισο- 
ψευδὴς καὶ μισότυφος καὶ μισῶ πᾶν τὸ τοιου- 
τῶδες εἶδος τῶν μιαρῶν ἀνθρώπων: πάνυ δὲ 
πολλοί εἰσιν. Which, to be sure, he could 
say, with perfect justice, of his own time. 
See the dialogue entitled ἀλεεύς. 

2 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. at the beginning f. 
218, Ed. Colon. 1686, 


8 Anima motu ac ratione mundum gub- 
ernans. 

1 Qui primi simulacra deorum populis 
posuerunt, eos civitatibus suis et metum 
demsisse et errorem addidisse. 

5 Castius Dii observarentur; see Augus- 
tin. de civ. Dei, 1. V. ¢. 31. 

6 Strabo 1. XVI. ο. 2, 


10 VIEWS OF THE ELDER PLINY. 

tribe, Demonax of the isle of Cyprus, who, at the beginning of the 
second century, resided in Athens, where he lived near to the age of 
a hundred years, universally respected for his simple life, full of kind- 
ness and charity to all. He was the representative of a sober, 
practical bent of mind, striving after nothing beyond the purely human, 
which, while it discarded whatever savored of superstition and fanati- 
cism, checked all inquiry also about super-terrestrial things. He made 
no offerings, because the gods needed none. He had no desire to be 
initiated into the mysteries, for he thought, ‘if they were bad, they 
ought to be divulged, to keep men away from them, and if they were 
good, they should be communicated to all, from love to mankind.” 
When a show of gladiators was about to be exhibited in Athens, he 
presented himself before the assembled people, and told them they 
should pass no such decree, until they had first removed away the altar 
of pity (eleos). That equanimity which renders man independent of 
outward things and truly free, which makes him fear nothing and hope 
for nothing, he considered the loftiest attainment. When asked 
whether he thought the soul to be immortal, his answer was, “‘ Yes, 
but in the sense in which all things are immortal.’’! 

The elder Pliny, while absorbed in the contemplation of nature, is 
lost in admiration of an immeasurable creative spirit, beyond all 
human comprehension, manifesting himself im his works. But his 
admiration of this exalted spirit of the universe, serves only to awaken, 
in tenfold strength, the depressing sense of the narrowness and vanity 
of man’s existence. He saw nothing to fill up the chasm betwixt 
feeble man and that unknown, all-transcending spirit. Polytheism ap- 
peared to him an invention of human weakness. Since men were 
incapable of grasping and retaining the whole conception of perfect 
being, they separated it into many parts. They formed for themselves 
divers ideals as objects of worship; each making himself a god, suited 
to his own peculiar wants. ‘All religion is the offspring of necessity, 
weakness and fear. What God is,—if in truth he be anything 
distinct from the world,—it is beyond the compass of man’s under- 
standing to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from 
human weakness and human pride, to imagine that such an infinite 
spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men.? It is diffi- 
cult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without 
religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. 


1 See the account of his life, by Lucian. 
This remarkable bent of Demonax, so ex- 
clusively practical, moral and rationalistic, 
so decided in its renunciation of all higher 
knowledge, so ready to spurn, as fanaticism, 
all speculative or religious interest about 
any other world besides or above the pres- 
ent, is illustrated by several other of his 
sentences, preserved in the collection of 
Johannes Stobaeus. Thus, when asked if 
the world was animated, or of a spherical 
shape, he replied, “ You busy yourselves 
impertinently about the nature of the world, 
but of the disorder in your own nature you 


do not think.” The play on the words is 
not translatable into English. ‘Yyei¢ περὶ 
μὲν τοῦ κόσμου πολυπραγμονεῖτε, περί δὲ 
τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀκοσμίας οὐ φροντίζετε. Stobaei 
ἘΙορ 1: II. c. I. 11, ed. Heeren, P. II. p. 10. 
Two other sentences ‘are contained in the 
Anthology of Stobaeus on the γνῶϑιε ceav- 
τόν and on ὑπεροψία, and in Orelli’s Col- 
lection of the Gnomographi graeci. 

2 Plin. hist. nat. 1. IL. ἃ 4, et seq.; 1. VII. 
c.1. Irridendum vero, agere curam rerum 
humanarum illud, quidquid est summum. 
Anne tam tristi atque multiplici ministerio 
non pollui credamus dubitemusve ? 


RETURN TO THE OLD RELIGION. 11 


The vanity of man, and his insatiable longmg after existence, have 
led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradic- 
tions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures 
have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full 
of desires and wants, that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. 
His nature is a lie, — uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest 
pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed 
on man, is the power to take his own life.” Sadness, mixed with a 
cold resignation, is the prevailing tone that runs through Pliny’s re- 
markable work. It was in the same temper, he proceeded to encounter 
the flames of Vesuvius, for the purpose of exploring their effects. 

But as the history of this and of every age witnesses, there is a 
religious need clinging to man’s nature, and not to be denied; a need 
of recognizing something above nature, and of fellowship with the 
same, — which only asserts itself with the more force, the longer it is re- 
pressed. The predominance of that worldly bent of mind, which will 
acknowledge nothing above nature, does but call forth, in the end, a 
stronger reaction of the longing after the supernatural; the domin- 
ion of an all-denying unbelief excites a more mtense desire to be able 
to believe. And the experience itself, which follows in the train of un- 
belief, contributes to brmg about this result. The times in which 
unbelief has prevailed, are, as history teaches, uniformly times of 
earthly calamity ; for the moral depravation which accompanies unbe- 
lief, necessarily destroys, also, the foundation of all earthly prosperity. 
Thus the time of the diffusion of unbelief in the Roman state, was 
also the time which saw the destruction of civil liberty, and the time 
of public suffering, under the rule of merciless despots. And the out- 
ward distress awakened a sense of the inward; men were led to regard 
their estrangement from the gods and from heaven, as a principal cause 
of the public decay and misery. Many felt themselves constrained to 
compare these times of public misfortune with the flourishing period of 
the Roman republic, and believed this melancholy change ought to 
be ascribed particularly to the decline of the religio Romana, once so 
scrupulously observed. In the gods, now cast off or neglected, they saw 
the authors and protectors of the Roman empire. They observed the 
mutual strife of the philosophical systems, which, promising truth, did 
but multiply uncertainty and doubt. All this excited in them the 
longing after some external authority, which might serve as a stay for 
religious conviction; and they resorted back to the religion of their 
more fortunate ancestors, who, under the influence of that religion, 
found themselves so happy in the freedom from all doubt. That old 
religion appeared to them, like the days of the past, in a transfigured 
light. Such was the tone of feeling which set in to oppose, first the 
prevailing infidelity, afterwards, Christianity. 

Thus the pagan Ceecilius, in the apologetic dialogue of Minucius 
Felix, first describes the strife and uncertainty in the systems of hu- 
man philosophy ; shows what small reliance can be placed on human 
things generally ; and points to the doubts ina providence, which sug- 
gest themselves when we observe the misfortunes of the virtuous, and 


12 PAUSANIAS ON UNBELIEF. 


the prosperity of the wicked. He then goes on to say, “‘ How much 
nobler and better is it, then, to receive just what our fathers have 
taught us, as a sufficient guide to truth? ‘To worship the gods which we 
have been instructed by our fathers to reverence, even before we could 
have any true knowledge of them? ΤῸ allow ourselves, im regard to 
the divinities, no license of private judgment,— but to believe our 
ancestors, who, in the infancy of mankind, near the birth of the world, 
were even considered worthy of having the gods for their friends or 
for their kings ?”’ 

The need of some union with heaven, from which men felt they 
were estranged, the dissatisfaction with a cold, melancholy present, 
procured a more ready belief for those accounts, in the mythical 
legends, of a golden age, wherem gods and men lived in intimate fel- 
lowship together. Ardent spirits looked back to those times, with a 
sort of earnest craving, —a craving after the past, that pointed to the 
future. ‘Thus Pausanias' endeavors to defend old mythical traditions 
against the infidelity of his contemporaries ; accounting for the latter, 
partly from the fact, that the true had been rendered suspicious by 
beig mixed in with the false, and in part from the fact, that men had 
grown accustomed to apply a standard, suiting the present times only, 
to that more glorious period of wonders. Of those former days he 
says, ‘‘ The men who lived then, were, on account of their uprightness 
and piety, admitted as guests and even table companions of the gods; 
for their good actions, the gods openly bestowed honors on them, and 
for their bad, openly manifested displeasure. It was then, also, that 
men themselves became gods, and continue to enjoy this honor.” But 
of his own time, he says, “‘ At the present day, when wickedness has 
reached its highest pitch, and extended itself through all the country 
and in every town, such an incident no longer occurs, as that of a man 
becoming a god, except merely in name, and through flattery to power 
(the apotheosis of the emperors; ) and the anger of the gods awaits 
transgressors at a remote period, and after they are gone from this 
world.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who, a few ‘years before the 
birth of Christ, wrote on the old Roman history, relates the story of a 
vestal virgin, whose innocence, after she had been falsely accused, was 
miraculously brought to light. Upon this, he remarks, “ The followers 
of atheistic philosophies, — if philosophies they may be called, which 
scoff at all appearances of the gods, that are said to have occurred 
among the Greeks or Barbarians, — would make themselves quite merry 
with these accounts, attributing them to human exaggeration ; as if no 
one of the gods ever concerned himself about a man, whoever he might 
be ; but he who is not disposed to deny altogether the care of the gods 
for men, but believes they regard the good with complacency and the bad 
with displeasure, will look upon these appearances as not incredible.” 2 

The artificial faith in an old religion that had outlived itself, must, 
on this very account, become fanatical, be united with passion, in place 
of natural conviction. Hence, the violence by which the contmually 


1 Τῇ his Description of Greece. See Ar- 2 Antiq. Roman. II. 68. 
cadica, or l. VIL. ο. LU. § 2. 


PLUTARCH ON INFIDELITY. 13 


waning course of Paganism was sought to be maintained against the 
onward advance of Christianity. Although the Romans, accustomed 
to hold firm to their old traditional forms, and national peculiarities, 
were singularly averse to foreign modes of worship, yet this funda 
mental trait in the old Roman character had, with many, already become 
obliterated. The ancient religion of Rome had lost its power over 
their minds, and they were inclined, therefore, to seek a prop for their 
religious faith in foreign modes of worship. Ceremonies that wore 
an air of enigma and mystery; strange-sounding magical formulas in 
some barbarous tongue; whereby, as Plutarch remarks, the national 
dignity of deyoutness was put to the blush,’ found readiest admittance. 
Men were looking, as usual, for some peculiar supernatural power in 
that which they did not understand, and which was incapable of being 
understood. Ἵ Ὶ 
Hence, the artificial faith was pressed more closely to assume the 
shape of superstition. Unbelief, against which an undeniable need of 
man’s nature asserted its force, called forth superstition, — since 
these two distempered conditions of the spiritual life are but opposite 
symptoms of the same fundamental evil, and one of them, therefore, 
passes easily over to the other. It is the worldly tone of the inner hfe, 
which either suppresses religious feelmg entirely, and then turns to 
unbelief ; or, mixing itself up with that feeling, gives to 1t an interpre- 
tation of its own, and thus turns to superstition. The desperation of 
unbelief surrenders the troubled conscience a prey to superstition ; and 
the irrationality of superstition makes religion suspected by the thought- 
ful mind. Such an opposition we find presenting itself, whenever we 
contemplate this period, under various forms. A man who was not in 
the habit, like Lucian, of ridiculing the absurd extravagances of su- 
perstition, but who was made sad in contemplating such cases of the denial 
or misapprehension of the Godlike, — the wise and devout Plutarch, — 
in a beautiful work of his, where he describes this opposition, as it ex- 
isted in his own time,’ presents us a picture from the life, of such 
caricatures of religion. ‘ Hvery little evil is magnified to the super- 
stitious man, by the scarmg spectres of his anxiety.° He looks on 
himself as a man whom the gods hate and pursue with their anger. A 
far worse lot is before him ; he dares employ no means for averting or 
curing the evil, lest he be found fighting against the gods. The phy- 
sicilan, the consoling friend, are driven away. Leave me,—says the 
wretched man, — me, the impious, the accursed, hated of the gods, to 
suffer my punishment. He sits out of doors, wrapped in sackcloth or 
in filthy rags; ever and anon he rolls himself, naked, in the dirt, con- 
fessing aloud this and that sin,’”—and the nature of these sins is 
truly characteristic !—‘‘he has eaten or drunk something wrong,t — 
he has gone some way or other, which was not allowed him by the 
divinity. The festivals in honor of the gods give no pleasure to the 


1 ᾽Ατόποις ὀνόμασι καὶ ῥήμασι βαρβαρι- 2 The tract Περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ ἀϑεάό- 
κοῖς καταισχύνειν καὶ παρανομεῖν τὸ ϑεῖον τητος. 
καὶ πάτριον ἀξίωμα τῆς εὐσεβείας. De su- 3 Cap. 7. 
perst. c. 33. * Comp. Coloss. 2, 16. 


VOL. I. 2 


14 SUPERSTITION AND INFIDELITY. 


superstitious,’ but fill him rather with fear and affright. He proves the 
saying of Pythagoras false in his own case,— that we are happiest when 
we approach the gods, — for it is just then he is most wretched. Temples 
and altars are places of refuge for the persecuted ; but where all others 
find deliverance from their fears, there the superstitious man fears and 
trembles most. Asleep? or awake, he is haunted alike by the spectres 
of his anxiety. Awake, he makes no use of his reason; and asleep, 
he finds no deliverance from what disturbs him. His reason always 
slumbers; his fears are always awake. Nowhere can he find an 
escape from his imaginary terrors.” ‘The contradictions involved in 
superstition are thus described: ‘‘ These men fear the gods, and fly to 
them for succor. They flatter them, and insult them. They pray to 
them, and complain of them.’’? The offensive phrases and gesticula- 
tions, the forms of self-abasement, — so repulsive to the antique feeling 
of freedom, —into which the slavish spirit of superstition fell, were 
peculiarly revolting to the Greek and Roman sense of propriety. 

In the work above cited, Plutarch thus judges respecting the mu- 
tual relation of superstition and unbelief:* ‘‘ The infidel has no belief 
in the gods ; the superstitious man would fain disbelieve, but believes 
against his will, for he fears to do otherwise. Yet as Tantalus wearies 
himself to escape the stone that hangs over him, so the superstitious 
man would gladly rid himself of the fear which is no trifling burden to 
him; and he is inclined to praise the unbeliever’s state of mind, as 
freedom. But now the unbeliever has nothing of superstition m him ; 
while, on the other hand, the superstitious man is an unbeliever by in- 
clination, but only too weak to think of the gods as he would be glad 
to do.5 The unbeliever contributes nothing at all towards producing 
superstition; but the superstitious have, from the beginning, given 
existence to unbelief, and furnish it, when it exists already, an appa- 
rent ground of justification.”’ ° 

Manifestly, Plutarch has taken here but a very partial view of the 
religious phenomena of his times, — a natural mistake for one living in 
the midst of those phenomena, and who is biased in his judgment by 
immediate impressions. It seems evident, from what has been already 
said, that the same cause which produces superstition, les also at the 
root of unbelief; and that unbelief, therefore, may easily change into 
superstition, as well as superstition into unbelief. Indeed, it was 
precisely the latter, which, in this period of history, had called forth 
the former. Plutarch, moreover, has looked at these opposite tenden- 
cies, in a way too general and abstract; he did not observe and take 
into his account, those manifold gradations and transitions, which he 
might have discerned in his own times, in the mutual relation of unbe- 
lief and superstition to each other. If there was a superstition, at 


1 Cap. 9. 2 Cap. 3. into unbelief ;— the different turn which is 
ὃ Cap. 5. 4 Cap. 11. taken in the natural course of their devel- 
δ In like manner, Plutarch says, in anoth- opment by the ἀσϑενέσι καὶ ἀκάκοις on the 
er place, that by the prevailing false notions one hand, and the δεινοτέροις καὶ ϑρασυτέ- 
of the gods, the weaker and more simple ροίς, on the other. De Iside et Osiride, ο. 71. 
natures were led into a superstition without 6 Cap. 12. 
bounds; the more acute and bolder spirits, 


GREEK PHILOSOPHIES. 15 


that time, leagued with immorality, having its root in unbelief, —but an 
unbelief restrained by fear, —yet we find, too, in the case of some who 
were really striving after moral worth, various modifications of super- 
stition, grounded at bottom in the need, — though not understood, and 
even misunderstood, — of believing; the need of atonement, from 
the deep-felt disunion in their nature. It was only necessary that, to 
such need, the satisfaction, unconsciously sought, should be furnished, 
in order to lead it from superstition to faith. This was the point of 
religious development, through which many were brought to embrace 
Christianity, as the remedy for their evil. 

And while Plutarch, in the work above cited, biased, as he mani- 
festly was, by the impression received from the revolting exhibitions of 
superstition, was really inclined to prefer unbelief to superstition; yet 
where he has occasion to attack an unbelief that denies every thing, he 
owns there is one kind of superstition which he would prefer to unbe- 
lief. He says, for example, of Epicureanism, which boasted of having 
delivered men from the shadowy fears of superstition, ‘‘ It 15. better to 
have a feeling of reverence mixed with fear, together with faith i the 
gods, than for the purpose of avoiding that feeling, to leave one’s self 
neither hope nor joy, neither confidence in prosperity, nor recourse to 
a divine being in adversity.” ? 

That profound sense of disunion, of disruption, which gave birth to 
manifold kinds of superstition, revealed itself in those forms of mental 
disease, which so widely prevailed, where the sufferers believed them- 
selves to consist of two or more hostile natures, — to be possessed or 
persecuted by evil spirits. It was through this ground-tone of the 
spiritual life, that the system of Dualism, which came from the Kast, 
found means of introducing itself; and hence its extraordinary influ- 
ence in this age. 

If we now glance at those philosophical tendencies among the Greeks, 
which, in this period, found most general acceptance with men of earn- 
est minds, two systems of philosophy will offer themselves particularly 
to our notice, the Stoic and the Platonie. 

To begin with the Stove: the old Roman character felt itself pecu- 
liarly attracted by the moral heroism flowing from the principles of this 
philosophy. ‘To the noble pride of the Roman, who would not survive 
his country’s liberty, and in the self-sufficing consciousness of his dispo- 
sition, bade defiance to the corruption of the times, the doctrines of 
the stoic school were peculiarly welcome. In the freedom and inde- 
pendence of the sage, placing himself above the power of fate, by his 
self-feeling of an unconquerable mind, he found a compensation for the 
loss of civil liberty. Between a disposition like Cato’s and Stoicism, 
there existed a natural relationship. The wise man felt conscious of 
an entire equality, in moral loftiness, with Jupiter himself; and of 


1 Βέλτιον γὰρ, ἐνυπάρχειν τι καὶ συγκε- ἀγαϑῶν παρόντων, μῆτε τινὰ δυστυχοῦσιν 
κρᾶσϑαι τῇ περὶ ϑεῶν δόξῃ κοινὸν αἰδοῦς ἀποστροφὴν πρὸς τὸ ϑεῖον ἀπολείπεσϑαι. In 
καὶ φύβου πάϑος, ἢ που τοῦτο φεύγοντας the tract: Non posse suaviter vivi secun- 
μῆτ’ ἐλπίδα, unre χάραν ἑαυτοῖς, μήτε ϑάρσος dum Epicurum, c. 20. 


16 STOICISM. 
standing below him in no respect. He was master of his own life, 
and might take it, whenever he found he could live no longer in a man- 
ner worthy of himself. On this principle, many noble Romans acted ; 
not only when they wished to withdraw themselves from the ignominy 
of despotism, but also when disease cramped their powers and rendered 
existence no longer supportable.? Thus many a strong soul found, in 
this philosophy, the expression for that which he carried in his own 
bosom; and to many it imparted a moral enthusiasm, which enabled 
them to rise superior to the degeneracy of their contemporaries. But 
there were many who did nothing more than make an idle parade. of 
the lofty maxims of the ancient philosophers, with whose statues or busts 
they embellished their halls, while their lives, abandoned to every vice, 
presented the strongest contrast with these examples.3 

In respect to the relation of Stoicism to the religious interest, its 
aim was to bring the popular religion, allegorically explained, into 
union with a thoroughly pantheistic view of the world.4 The Jupiter 
of Stoicism was not a being who governs all things with paternal love, 
and for whom each individual has a distinct end to fulfil. He was not 
one who can reconcile the good of the whole with the good of the indi- 
vidual; but he was a being who devours his own children; the All- 
Spirit from which all mdividual existence has flowed, and mto which, 
after certain periods, it is again resolved. ‘The gods themselves were 
subject to the universal law of this eternal cycle, to which every indi- 
vidual existence must finally be sacrificed. The law, or word of Zeus, 
providence, fate,® all signify i this system the same thing ; — that 
unchangeable law of the universe, of an immanent necessity of reason, 
which all must obey. vil itself is necessary, according to this law, to 
exhibit the harmony of the world, since without it there could be no 
good.’? The wise man calmly looks on the game, and surrenders with 
cheerfulness his individual existence to the claims of the whole,—to which 
every individual, as a part, ought to be subservient. ‘The wise man 
has precisely the same divine life with Zeus, from whom his own has 


1See the words of Chrysippus: “Ὥσπερ 
τῷ Ait προσῆκει σεμνύνεσθαι ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τε 
καὶ τῳ βίῳ καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν καὶ εἰ δεῖ οὕτως 
εἰπεῖν, ὑψαυχεῖν καὶ κομᾷν καὶ μεγαληγο- 
peiv, ἀξίως βιοῦντι μεγαληγορίας" οὕτω τοῖς 
ἀγαϑοῖς πᾶσι ταῦτα προσήκει, Kat’ οὐδὲν 
προεχομένοις ὑπὸ Διός. Plutarch. de Sto- 
ieorum repugnantiis, ¢. 13. 

2 For examples, cons. Pliny’s Letters, I. 
12, 22: Ill. 7.. VI. 94. The old man of 
sixty-seven, lying under an incurable dis- 
ease, dismissed his physician, who was for 
compelling him to take nourishment against 
his will, with the word κέκρικα. Whereupon 
Pliny remarks, — Que vox, quantum ad- 
mirationis in animo meo, tantum desiderii 
reliquit. The following words of Pliny 
serve to give distinct form and expression 
to the principle of the age, that left the de- 
cision of life and death to the autonomy of 
reason. Deliberare et causas mortis expen- 
dere utque suaserit ratio, vita mortisque 


consilium suscipere vel ponere, ingentis est 
anim. 

3 Qui Curios simulant Bacchanalia vivunt, 
Indocti primum : quanquam plena omnia gypso 
Chrysippi invenies. —Juyenal. Satira 11. 

4 Lucian quotes, in the way of banter, 
the motto of the stoic pantheism: ‘Q¢ καὶ 
ὁ ϑεὸς οὐκ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ διά πάν- 
των πεφοίτηκεν, οἷον ξυλων, καὶ λίϑων καὶ 
ζώων, ἄχρι καὶ τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων. Hermo- 
tim. § 81. 

5 As Chrysippus says in his work, ep? 
xpovoiac,— Tov Δία αὔξεσϑαι, μέχρις ἄν 
εἰς αὐτὸν ἅπαντα καταναλώσῃ. Plutarch. 
de Stoicorum repugnantiis, 6. 39. 

6 Διός λόγος, Tpovoia, εἱμαρμένη. 

7 Thus Chrysippus says, Γίνεται καὶ αὐτῆ 
(ἡ κακία) πως κατὰ τὸν τῆς φύσεως λόγον 
καὶ ἵν᾽ οὕτως εἴπω, οὐκ ἀχρήστως γίνεται 
πρὸς τὰ ὅλα, οὔτε γὰρ 7 ἀγαϑὰ ἣν. Plu- 
tarch, de Stoicor. repugnantiis, c. 35. 


STOICISM. 17 


flowed. Calmly submissive, he restores it back, when the fated hour 
arrives, to its original source. | 

A cold resignation, wholly at variance with man’s natural feel- 
ings, and altogether different from the childlike submission of the 
Christian, which leaves every purely human feeling inviolate, sub- 
mission, not to an iron necessity, that decrees annihilation, but to eternal 
love, which restores back what has been offered to it, transfigured and 
glorified. The emperor Marcus Aurelius says of this Stoic principle, 
“The man of disciplined mind reverently bids Nature, who bestows all 
things and resumes them again to herself, ‘Give what thou wilt, and 
take what thou wilt.’”’ He says this, not in a haughty spirit and in 
defiance of Nature, but in the spirit of cheerful obedience to her.) His 
Stoicism, moreover, was tempered and refined by a certain childlike 
devoutness, a certain gentleness, and unpretending simplicity of char- 
acter. But with what grounds of comfort, does he strive to still the 
craving, implanted in man’s nature, after an imperishable personal 
existence ? We will hear what he says himself. ‘Two things, we 
should consider ; first, that from all eternity, things are repeated over 
after the same manner, and that it matters not whether one beholds the 
same thing again in one hundred or two hundred years, or in infinite 
time ; next, that he who lives longest, and he who dies soonest, lose 
just alike, for each loses only that which he has, the present moment.” 
Ci. 14.) “Ever keep in mind, that whatever happens and shall 
happen, has already been, —it is merely the same show repeated!” 
(10, 27.) “An action terminating at the allotted moment, suffers no 
evil, in that it has terminated; and he that did it, suffers no evil, in 
that he has done acting. So, also, the whole, consisting of the aggre- 
gate sum of actions, which is life, suffers no evil, when it terminates at 
the allotted time, in that it has terminated ; and he, who, at the allotted 
time, has brought up the whole chain to the end, has lost nothing.” 
(12, 23.) He asks, (12, 5,) ‘‘ How happens it, that the gods, who 
have ordered all things well and with love to men, seem to overlook 
this one thing alone, that many very good men, who, by pious works 
and offerings, have stood on terms of intimate communion with the 
deity, having once died, return no more to existence, but perish entire- 
ly?” He answers thus, ‘‘Although this is so, yet be assured, that if 
it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have so ordered it. 
For had it been right, it would also have been possible; and had it 
been in harmony with nature, then nature would have allowed it. 
es it is not so, if it is not so, should satisfy us that it ought not to 

e so.” 

As Stoicism, by repressing a want inseparable from the essence of 
man’s nature, tended, on the one hand, to awaken the longing after a 
revelation, capable of satisfying this want; so, on the other hand, by 
unfolding in man the consciousness of his relationship to the divine, — 
the truth lying at the bottom of pantheism,? — by the idea — although 


1 Monolog. 10, 14. of such a consciousness in the verse of 

2 Thus, for instance, Paul, in his dis- Aratus; and much of a similar import. is 

course at Athens, appeals to that testimony to be found in the hymn of Cleanthes, and 
* 


18 PLATONISM. 

pantheistically apprehended — of one original divine Being, and of the 
spirituality of his worship, as confined to no particular place, which 
idea it opposed to the polytheistic religion of the people,!— it pre- 
pared the way for Christianity. 

Yet a far greater, more deep reaching and more universal influence 
on the religious life of man’s spirit than it was ever in the power of 
Stoicism to exert, was destined to proceed from the Platonic philoso- 
phy. It dates its beginning from that man, who appears to us as the 
forerunner of a higher development of humanity, as the greatest man 
of the ancient world, —one in whom the spirit of that world, gomg beyond 
itself, strove after a more glorious future, — from Socrates, whose whole 
appearance seems invested ina mystery and riddle, corresponding to his 
prophetic character. As it was his great calling, when the first strong 
reaction of reason, become altogether worldly, was turned against religious 
and moral belief, to witness, in the struggle with this worldly tendency 
and heartless dialectic caprice, which suppressed all higher interests; to 
witness of the reality of that in which alone the spirit can find its true life, 
and to awaken in men wholly immersed in earthly things, that aspiration 
after the godlike, which might lead them to Christ ; so through his great 
disciple, Plato , — who, ἢ in his philosophy, produced, with a truly original 
and creative mind, the image of Socrates, although not in the whole 
loftiness and simplicity of the man himself, — the influence of Socrates 
has been often experienced, after the same manner, in those great 
crises of man’s history, destined by the dissolution of the old, to 
prepare the way for a new creation; and as one who lived in a crisis 
of this sort, has said,” the Platonic Socrates came hike a John the Bap- 
tist before the revelation of Christ. This was preéminently true, so 
far as it relates to the first appearance of Christ, the great epoch in 
the history of the world. 

The Platonic philosophy did not merely lead men, like the Stoic, to 
the conscious sense of a divine indwelling life, and of an immanent 
reason in the world, answering to the idea of the Stoic Zeus ; but it led - 
men to regard the divine as ‘supra-mundane, as an unchangeable ex- 
istence, transcending that which merely becomes; a supreme Spirit, 
exalted above the world, if not as an unconditionally free Creator, yet 
as the architect of the universe. It awakened, also, the consciousness 
of the supernatural and divine, which in man is the efflux from this 
supreme Spirit, and of a kindred nature ; so that man is thus enabled 
to rise and have fellowship with it, and cognition of it. It did not, like 
the Stoic philosophy, followed out to its legitimate consequences, repre- 


in other outpourings of the Stoic muse. 
Compare the well-known passage in Seneca, 
Non sunt ad ccelum elevandz manus nec 
exorandus editus, ut nos ad aures simu- 
lacri, quasi magis exaudiri possimus, ad- 
mittat, prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus 
est. Ita dico sacer intra nos spiritus sedet. 
Ep. 41 ad Lucil. 

1 Compare the passage from Seneca and 
the words of Zeno: “ We should build no 
temple to the gods; for a temple is of lit- 


tle worth, and nothing holy, —a work of 
architects and common laborers is not worth 
much.” Ἱερὰ ϑεῶν μὴ olkodopety: ἱερὸν 
γὰρ μὴ πολλοῦ ἄξιον καὶ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔστιν" 
οἰκοδόμων δ᾽ ἔργον καὶ βαναύσων οὐδέν ἐστι 
πολλοῦ ἄξιον. Hence Plutarch reproaches 
the Stoics with self-contradiction, i in parti- 
cipating in the religious rites of the temple. 
Plut. de Stoicorum repugnantiis, c. 6. 

2 Marsiglio Ficino. ; 


PLATONISM. 19 
sent the divine in man, as a self-subsistent element, an efflux from the 
divine source, which, as long as the form of personal appearance lasted, 
could maintain an existence by itself; so that Zeus appeared to the 
wise man simply as the ideal of wisdom he was to strive after ; — but 
it contemplated the divine in man as a ray which conducted back to 
the primal light itself; merely as something to receive —a capacity — 
which, separated from communion with the original source, from which 
alone it can receive, is powerless. 

Compared with the principle of ethical self-sufficiency — with that 
elevation of the feeling of self, peculiar to the ancient world, and 
which appears to have reached its highest point in Stoicism— the Pla- 
tonic’ system, in perfect harmony with the connection of ideas above 
expressed, was distinguished by a striving towards what is most 
‘ directly opposed to that principle, namely, towards the Christian idea 
of humility. The word razewos which, at the point of view generally 
taken by the ancient world, was employed, for the most part, in a bad 
sense, as indicating a slavish self-debasement,' is to be met with in 
Plato and the Platonists, as the designation of a pious, virtuous 
temper.” 

This philosophy would have us recognize in man’s personality, not a 
mere transitory appearance, but something destined to higher unfold- 
ings. The life of the individual it regarded, not as an aimless sport in 
the periodical changes of the universe, but as a stage of purifying dis- 
cipline and preparation for a higher state of existence. It did not 
require the suppression of any purely human want, but taught that the 
satisfaction of it was to be sought after and waited for. It pomted toa 
higher stage of being, where the soul, disencumbered of its dross, would 
attain to the unclouded vision of truth. 

It was in no sense, certainly, the general drift and purpose of Plato, 
to set up an abstract religion of reason, in opposition to the existing 
forms of worship; but he took his stand rather im opposition to that 
exclusive enlightenment of the understanding, which merely analyzes 
and destroys, and which was peculiar to the Sophists. His religious 
speculations rested on a basis altogether historical. He connected him- 
self with the actual phenomena of the religious life, and with the tradi- 
tions lying before him; as we see in his remarks on the doctrine of the 
gods and on divination. He sought to embody in his speculations the 
truth which lay at the bottom here, and to separate it from all admix- 
-ture of superstition. And, in like manner, this general drift of a posi- 
tive philosophy that sought to understand history,’ passed over, from 
the original Platonism, to the derivative Platonism of this age; and in 


1 Even in Aristotle we find the ταπεινὸν 
united with the ἀνδραποδῶδες. 
dem. III. 3. 

2 To denote the disposition of submis- 
siveness “to the divine law of order in the 
universe, the word ταπεινὸν is used in con- 
nection with κεκοσμημένον, and opposed to 
the impious spirit of self-exaltation, De 
legibus, IV. vol. VIII. ed. Bipont. p. 185; 
and Plutarch (de sera numinis vindicta, c. 


Ethic. Eu-. 


III.) says of the humiliation of the wicked 
brought about by punishment: 7 κακία 
μόλις ἄν γένοιτο σύννους καὶ ταπεινὴ Kal 
κατάφοβος πρὸς τὸν ϑεόν. 

3 To avail myself of an expression, which 
Schelling, in the new shaping of his philos- 
ophy, has made classical, — positive philos- 
ophy, as opposed to the mere logical science 
of reason, negative philosophy. 


20 PLATONISM. 


this latter form, to speak generally, in spite of all the foreign additions, 
the tendency of the original Platonism may be clearly traced. It 
still continues to be its aim, under every new modification, to explore 
in all directions the marks of a connection between the visible and invis- 
ible worlds, between the divine and the human in history, and to 
discover, in the great variety of religious traditions! and modes of wor- 
ship, different forms of one revelation of the divine. 

In opposition to unbelief which appealed to the strife between 
different religions as evidence against the truth of any, an apologetic 
tendency, which flowed from Platonism, pointed out the higher unity 
lying at the root of this manifoldness ; and the coincidence of~ideas, in 
the different forms of revelation, was made available here, as evidence 
for the truth. Thus the effort to arrive at an understanding of history, 
to come at some comprehensive view, reconciling the oppositions of 
historical development, gave birth to a peculiar religious and philosophi- 
cal eclecticism — as such phenomena are usually found marking the 
conclusion of any great series of historical evolutions. Arrived at 
the limits of such a series, we feel constrained to look over once more 
the whole, which now lies unfolded as one im all its parts; just as the 
traveller, near the end of his journey, gladly pauses to survey the road 
he has left behind him. " 

By distinguishing form from essence, the spiritual from the sensual, 
the idea from the symbol which served for its representation, it was 
deemed possible to find the just medium between the extremes of 
superstition and unbelief, and to arrive ata right understanding of 
the different forms of religion. The devout and profoundly meditative 
Plutarch, who wrote near the close of the first century, may be 
considered the representative of this direction of mind to religious 
speculation, which was now fully developed. In regard to the relation 
of different religions to one another, he thus expresses himself:? “ As 
sun and moon, sky, earth and sea, are common to all, while they have 
different names among different nations; so, likewise, though there is 
but one system of the world which is supreme, and one governing 
providence, whose ministering powers are set over all men, yet there 
have been given to these, by the laws of different nations, different 
names and modes of worship; and the holy symbols which these nations 
used, were, in some cases, more obscure, in others, clearer; but in all 
cases, alike failed of being perfectly safe guides in the contemplation 
of the divine. For some, wholly mistaking their import, fell into 
superstition; while others, in avoiding the quagmire of superstition, 
plunged unawares into the opposite gulf of mfidelity.” The reverential 
regard for a higher necessity in the religious institutions of mankind, 
the recognition of a province elevated above human, caprice, is shown 
by Plutarch, in the following remark, where he confronts the stoics 
with the phrase from an Orphic hymn, which was often on their lips, 
as a motto of their pantheism.2 ‘As Zeus is the beginning and centre 


1 Συνάγειν ἱστορίαν, οἷον ὕλην φιλοσοφίας 2 See de Iside et Osiride. ο f 
ϑεολογίαν τέλος ἐχούσης. De defectu ora- 8 Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Δίος & ἐκ πάντα 
culorum, c. 2. τέτυκται. Ady. Stoic. 6. 81. 


NEW PLATONISM—PLUTARCH. 91 


of all,—every thing has sprung from Zeus, men should first correct 
and improve their ideas of the gods, if any thingimpure or wrong has 
found its way into them. But, if this is beyond their power, they 
should then leave every one to that mode in which he finds himself 
placed by the laws and religious traditions of his ceuntry.”’ He cites 
here, in evidence of a higher necessity, lying at the foundation of these 
institutions, the words of Sophocles, witnessing of an innate and eternal 
law in the heart of humanity: (Antig. 467.) “ The divine — religion 
—is something imperishable; but its forms are subject to decay. 
God bestows many good things on men; but nothing imperishable ; for, 
as Socrates says, even what has reference to the gods, is subject to 
death.” 1 

Plutarch is filled with sadness, in thinking of those who take part in 
the public worship only from respect to the multitude, while they look 
upon the whole thing asa mere farce. ‘They hypocritically mimic 
the forms-of prayer and adoration, out of fear of the many ;— repeat 
words that contradict their philosophical convictions; and, when they 
offer, see in the priest only the slaughtering cook.”? He rebukes 
those, who, following the fashion of Huemerus, in attempting to explam 
everything in the doctrine of the gods after a natural way, wage war 
with the religious convictions of so many nations and races of men, in 
that they are seeking to draw down the names of heaven to earth, 
and to banish nearly all the religious belief that had been implanted 
in men from their birth.2 He sees men wandering between these two 
extremes ; — either confounding the symbol with what it was designed 
to represent, and thus giving rise to superstition —as, for instance, when 
the names of the gods were transferred to their images, and thus led 
the multitude to believe that these images were the gods themselves, 
and when, in Kgypt, the animals consecrated to the gods became con- 
founded with the latter ;*—or else running into the opposite views, which 
were occasioned by these errors, and resulted in infidelity. 

If the manner in which Plutarch explams and contemplates the 
opposition between superstition and unbelief, shows, when applied to 
the phenomena of his time, an inadequate and partial view of the 
subject, this must be attributed to that fundamental view, belonging to 
the essence of the Platonic philosophy, according to which, everything 
is referred back to the intellectual element,— to knowledge in religion,— 
and the deeper practical ground of religious conviction, and of the 
religious life, — their connection with the moral bent of the affections, — 
is overlooked. Hence, he considers the main source of both superstition 
and unbelief to be intellectual error—zin the former of a positive, in 
the latter of a negative kind ; only, in the case of superstition, there is, 
moreover, a movement of feeling, which arises out of those erroneous 
notions of the gods, whence they become only objects of fear. But he 


1 Πολλὰ καλὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ διδόντος avd pa- 8 De Iside et Osiride, ο. 23. 


ποις, ἀϑώνατον δὲ μηδέν: ὥστε ϑνῆσκειν καὶ - *L.c.c. 7]. 
τὰ ϑεῶν, ϑεοὺς δὲ οὐ κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα. 5 Ἢ μὲν ἀϑεότης λόγος ἐστὶ διεψευσμένος" 
De defectu oraculorum, c. 9. ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονία πώϑος ἔκλόγου φευδοῦς 


2 See Plutarch’s tract: Non posse suavi- ἐγγεγενημένον. c. 2. 
ter vivi secundum Epicurum, c. 22. 


22 NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH. 

does not seem to have found that a xaos lies at the ground of many 
shapes of unbelief, as well as of superstition; and both disorders of 
the spiritual life have their proper seat in the direction of the moral 
affections, in the disposition ; that the παϑὸος is, therefore, usually the 
original, the intellectual error the derivative and symptomatic cause, 
of the evil. Thus Plutarch ascribes it merely to a false notion of the 
gods, that they are represented by the superstitious as angry, and 
threatening punishment; but he is not prepared to understand such a 
stage of religious development well enough to perceive, that there is a 
bottom truth, by virtue of which the gods can be represented only in 
this relation to the religious consciousness of one who feels ~himself 
estranged from God. Hence he erred also, in supposing that nothing 
more was necessary for the recovery of the superstitious man, than to 
lead him, simply by the intellectual operation, to the knowledge of the 
gods, and of the fact that good only, and nothing that is evil, proceeds 
from them ;— not perceiving, that the representation of the gods, 
above alluded to, might itself be nothing else than a reflex of the 
superstitious man’s own state of mind, and therefore to be got rid of 
only by an immediate operation on the nature of the man himself. 
This error, again, stood in some connection with another circumstance ; 
namely, that although he defended, against the stoics, the Platonic 
doctrine of punishments,’ as a necessary means of reformation, and of 
purifying and deterrmg men from evil, and wrote a treatise expressly 
to vindicate the divine justice in punishing the wicked,’ yet to that 
conception of God’s holiness and to that apprehension of sin, grounded 
in and intimately connected with it, which belong to the Theism of 
the Old Testament, he was too much a stranger. Hence, the Old 
Testament idea of God, as the Holy one, considered from his own 
Platonic position, must be unintelligible to him; and he might easily 
seem to himself to miss in Judaism the right notion of God’s good- 
ness.? 

It was the purpose, then, of this apologetic and reforming philosophy 
of religion, to. counteract unbelief, as well as superstition, by setting 
forth the ideal matter contained in the old religions. From this 
position and with this object in view, Plutarch says, in his exhortatory 
discourse to a priestess of Isis:4+ “ As it is not his long beard and 
mantle that makes the philosopher, so is it neither linen robe nor shorn 
head that makes the priest of Isis. But the true priest of Isis is he 
who first receives the rites and customs pertaining to these gods from 
the laws, and then examines into their grounds, and philosophizes on 


1 Against Chrysippus, for instance, who 
puts this doctrine on a level with the stories 
with which old women frighten the children ; 
Tov περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ ϑεοῦ κολάσεων λόγον, ὡς 
οὐδὲν διαφέροντα τῆς Ἀκκοῦς καὶ τῆς Αλφι- 
τοῦς, δὶ ὧν τὰ παιδάρια τοῦ κακοσχολεῖν αἱ 
γυναῖκες ᾿ἀνείργουσιν. De Stoicorum re- 
pugnantiis, c. 15. 

2 His work on the Delay of Divine Pun- 
ishments. 

8 De Stoicorum repugnantiis, c. 38, where 


he refers to the example of the Jews, to 
prove that the conception of the gods as 
χρηστοί was by no means to he found every 
where. And here we may remark, that we 
would not deny the Jews themselves were 
partly in fault for the diffusion of sueh rep- 
resentations of their religion. 

4 Ὁ τὰ δεικνύμενα καὶ δρώμενα περὶ τοὺς 
ϑεοὺς τούτους, ὅταν νόμῳ παραλάβῃ, λόγῳ 
ζητῶν καὶ φιλοσοφῶν περὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς 
ἀληϑείας. ¢. 8. 


NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH. 23 
the truth they contain.”? With some profoundness of meaning, Plutarch 
compares the old myths,— considered as representations of ideas, 
arising from a refraction of the divine light in a foreign substance, a 
re-appearance of it, broken by the intervention of some heterogeneous 
medium, — to the rainbow in relation to the sun’s light.! 

We find here the first beginnings of an attempt to reconcile the 
natural and supernatural in religion; to reconcile the position of the 
rationalist with that of the supranaturalist, the scientific interest with 
the religious ; — tendencies and ideas, which, outstepping already the 
position maintained by the old Nature-religion, came forward to 
meet the Theism of revelation; and it was by the latter, first, that any 
such reconciliation could be brought about, and a true understanding 
of the religious development of humanity made possible. 

Plutarch distinguishes two different stages or positions of knowl- 
edge; that which goes immediately to the divine causality, and that 
which dwells on the natural causes, serving as instruments to the 
former. ‘‘The ancients,’ he says, ‘directed their attention simply 
to the divine in phenomena, as God is the beginning and centre of all, 
and from him all things proceed; and they overlooked natural causes. 
The moderns turned themselves wholly away from that divine ground 
of things, and supposed every thing could be explained from natural 
causes. Both these views are, however, partial and defective ; and 
the right understanding of the matter requires that both should be 
combined.” In attempting to show how a natural phenomenon may 
be a sign of the future, he says, “ Divination and Physics may both 
be right; one serving to point out the causes which have brought 
about the phenomenon; the other, the higher end it is intended to 
subserve.”?? ‘They who suppose the significancy of signs is made 
naught by the discovery of natural causes, forget that their argument 
against the signs of the gods would also apply to those imvented by 
human art; since in the latter case too, one thing is made by human 
contrivance to serve as the sign of something else; as for example, 
lights to serve as beacons, sun-dials to indicate time, and the like.” 

This distinction of the natural from the divine, in the codperation 
of both, was employed, in a noticeable manner, by Plutarch, for the 
purpose of so defending the divinity of the oracles, as to avoid, at the 
same time, superstitious representations. While some were of the opin- 
ion, that the god himself dwelt in the prophetess at the Delphic shrine, 
employed her as his blind instrument, speaking through her mouth and 
suggesting every word she uttered; by others, these representations 
were seized upon for the purpose of turning the whole into jest, and 

1 Καϑάπερ οἱ μαϑηματικοὶ τὴν ἶριν ἔμφα- 


παραλείπουσιν. De defectu oraculorum, c. 


ow εἶναι Tov ἡλίου λέγουσι ποικιλλομένην 
τῇ πρὸς τὸ νέφος ἀναχωρήσει τῆς ὄψεως, 
οὕτως ὁ μῦϑος λόγου τινὸς ἔμφασις ἐστιν 
ἀνακλῶντος ἐπ’ ἄλλα τὴν διάνοιαν. De 
Iside et Osiride, c. 20. 

2 “Ὅϑεν ἀμφοτέροις ὁ λόγος ἐνδεης τοῦ 
προσήκοντός ἐστι, τοῖς μὲν τὸ δ οὗ καὶ ὑφ᾽ 
οὗ, τοῖς δὲ τὸ ἐξ ὧν καὶ δ ὧν ἀγνοοῦσιν ἢ 


47. 

ὃ ’Exddve δ᾽ οὐδὲν καὶ τὸν φυσικὸν ἐπι- 
τυγχάνειν καὶ τὸν μάντιν, τοῦ μὲν τὴν 
αἰτίαν, τοῦ δὲ τὸ τέλος καλῶς ἐκλαμβάνον- 
toc: ὑπέκειτο yap τῷ μὲν ἐκ τίνων γέγονε 
καὶ πῶς πέφυκε, ϑεωρῆσαι, τῷ δὲ πρὸς τί 
γέγονε καὶ πῶς πέφυκε ϑεωρῆσαι. Pericles, 
c 7. 


24 NEW PLATONISM— PLUTARCH. 

making the doctrine of such a divine influence on the human soul, 
and every idea of inspiration, ridiculous.1_ They laughed at the bad 
verses of the Pythoness, and inquired why it was, that the oracles, once 
given in poetry, should now be uttered in the form of prose. But Plu- 
tarch sought to unite the recognition of the divine causality with that of 
the human individuality which served it as an organ; and by distinguish- 
ing in the oracles the divine and the human, to find in this case, also, the 
just medium between superstition and unbelief. ‘‘ We are not to 
believe,” says he, ‘that the god made the verses; but, after he has 
communicated the moving impulse, each of the prophetesses is moved 
in a way that corresponds to her own peculiar nature.2 For let us 
suppose the oracles were not to be spoken, but recorded in writing, we 
should not, I imagine, ascribe to the god the strokes of the letters, and 
find fault with him because the writing was not so beautiful as that of 
the imperial edicts. Not the language, nor the tone, nor the expres- 
sion, nor the measure of the verse, proceeds from the god; — all this 
comes from the woman. He simply communicates the intuitions, and 
kindles up a light in the soul with regard to the future.”? ‘ Ag the 
body uses many organs, and the soul uses both the body and its parts 
as organs, so the soul has now become the organ of the god. But the 
adaptation of an organ consists in its answering, with its own natural 
activity, the purpose of him that employs it as a means to represent 
the work of his ideas. ‘This, however, 1t cannot represent pure and 
unadulterated, as the work exists in its author; but much foreign matter 
becomes necessarily mixed up with it.”* ‘If it is impossible,” he 
says afterwards, “to force lifeless things, which remam constant to 
themselves, so as to be used in a way that contradicts their natural 
character — so that a lyre, for instance, can be played as a flute, or a 
trumpet as a harp; if the artistic use of each particular instrument 
consists precisely in this, that it be used conformably with its 
peculiar character — then it is really impossible to say how a being, 
possessed of a soul endowed with free will and re&son, could be used 
otherwise than according to the character, power or nature which dwelt 
in him before.”’ So, according to this view, the difference of the 
several individualities of character, and of the several modes of culture, 
will continue to appear in the manner in which the mspirig agency of 
the divine causality exhibits itself through each. The peculiar appear- 
ances in such states of enthusiasm, (2rOovoreouds) he explains as arising 
from the conflict of the two tendencies, —the movement imparted from 
without, and that belonging to the proper nature of the individual ; 
just as when to a body falling by the law of gravitation to the earth, 
a curvilinear motion is communicated at the same time. 


1 The sarcasm in Lucian’s dialogue, Ζεὺς 
ἐλεγχόμενος, may serve as an example. 
“What the poets say, when possessed by 
the Muses, is true. But when forsaken by 
the goddesses, and left to sing for themselves, 
they are out, and contradict what they had 
said before; and one must excuse them if 
they perceive not the truth as men, when 


the agency has vanished which hitherto 
dwelt in them, and by which they invented.” 

2 Ἐκείνου τὴν ἀχὴν τῆς κινήσεως ἐνδι- 
δόντος, ὡς ἑκάστη πέφυκε κινεῖσϑαι τῶν 
προφητίδων. De Pythie oraculis, ο. 7 

8 Ἐκεῖνος μόνας τὰς φαντασίας παρίστησι 
καὶ φῶς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ποιεῖ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον. 

4 De Pythiz oraculis, c. 21. 


VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE DEITIES. 25 


By this speculative mode of apprehending the popular religion, 
men would be led, moreover, to reduce Polytheism to some higher 
unity, lying at its root. The recognition of an original unity bemg a 
thing absolutely necessary for reason, Polytheism either proceeded 
out of that unity, or must be reduced back to it; it continually felt 
itself impelled to derive the multitude of gods from one original 
essence. Now, by the speculative mode of apprehension, the conscious- 
ness of this unity could not fail to be developed and rendered still 
more distinct, and the relation of the manifold to unity clearly pre- 
sented. Thus Plato had already sought to bring back Polytheism to 
some such higher unity, had derived all existence “‘ from the Creator 
and Father of the Universe, who is hard to find, and whom, when 
found, it is impossible to make known to all.” ! So now, too, this new 
philosophy of religion rose to the idea of one simple original essence, 
exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the only true Being ; 
unchangeable, eternal ;* from whom all existence, and first of all, at 
the summit of existence, the world of gods, nearest related to himself, 
in its manifold gradations, has emanated. In these gods, that unfolded 
perfection, which im the Supreme essence was more included and 
hidden, becomes known ; they exhibit in different forms, the image of 
that Supreme essence, to which uo one can rise, except by the loftiest 
flight of contemplation, after it has rid itself from all that pertains to 
sense —from all manifoldness. They are the mediators between man, 
scattered and dissipated by manifoldness, and the Supreme Unity. A 
distinction was next made of the purely spiritual, invisible deities, and 
those in nearer contact with the world of sense, by whom the life radi- 
ating from the Supreme essence is diffused down to the world of sense, 
and the divine ideas, so far as that is possible, actualized in it — the 
manifest gods ;* the gods in the process of becoming; the θεοὶ γενητοί 
in contradistinction from the ὧν ; the spirits that, according to Plato, 
animate the worlds. Thus it was contrived to hold fast the position of 
the old Nature-religion, which lived and moved in the intuition of na- 
ture, and to bring it into union with the recognition of a supreme 
original essence, and of an invisible spiritual world, to which man’s 
spirit strove to rise from the sensuous things that had hitherto chained 
it. Accordingly, two different stages in religion now presented them- 
selves ; that of the multitude, with minds dissipated and scattered in 
the manifold, who can have intercourse only with those mediatorial 
deities approaching nearest to them; and that of the spiritual men, 
living in contemplation, who rise above all that is sensuous, and soar 
upwards to the supreme original essence. Hence, again, arose two 
different stages, or positions, in respect to the divine worship; the 
purely spiritual position, which corresponds to the relation with the 
original essence, exalted above all contact with the sensible world; and 
that of sensuous worship, which is adapted to the relation with those 
gods who are connected more nearly with the world of sense. From 


1 In Timaus. Plutarch. de εἰ apud Delphos, c. 20. 
2 Eic ὧν ἑνὶ τῷ viv τὸ ἀεὶ πεπλήρωκε 3 Θεοὲ φανεροί as contradistinguished 
kal μόνον ἐστι τὸ κατὰ τοῦτον ὄντως dv. from the ἀφανεῖς. 


VOL. I. 


26 NEW PLATONISM. 


this pomt of view, it is said, in the work on “ Offerings,” cited under 
the name of Apollonius of Tyana: “‘ We shall render the most appro- 
priate worship to the deity, when to that God whom we called the first, 
who is one, and separated from all, after whom we must recognize the 
others, — when to him we present no offerings whatever ; kindle to him 
no fire, dedicate to him no sensible thing ; for he needs nothing, even 
of what could be given him by natures more exalted than ours. There 
is no plant the earth produces, no animal the air nourishes, no thing 
that in relation to him would not be impure. In relation to him, we 
must use only the higher Word,—that, I mean, which is not expressed 
by the mouth, —the silent, inner word of the spirit.” Even prayer, ex- 
pressed in words, he would say, is beneath the dignity of that origmal 
essence, so exalted above all that is of sense ;“‘and from the most glori- 
ous of all beings, we must seek for blessmgs by that which is most 
glorious in ourselves. But this is the spirit, which needs no organ.””} 
This highest position of spiritual worship m reference to the Supreme 
essence, was set up as a rival of Christianity, and as a means of dis- 
pensing with it. 

We must not, however, transfer over to this Supreme essence of the 
new Platonic philosophy of religion, the Christian conception of God, 
as Creator and Governor of the world. The fundamental position of 
the ancient world — deification of nature in life, separation of the divme 
and human in science — appears, also, in this final shaping of phil- 
osophic thought — with which that position ended —agam prominent 
and distinct. It belonged, no doubt, to the lofty dignity of that Su- 
preme essence, that, wrapt in its transcendent perfection, it could enter 
into no contact with the sensible world; whence also it followed, that 
the only worship worthy of it, is the contemplation of the spirit raised 
above all that is sensible ; and this is, therefore, set over against prac- 
tical life, as a subordinate position. ‘This conception of spiritual wor- 
ship is, accordingly, quite as distinct from the Christian, as the 
conception of the Supreme essence itself is. At the extreme point 
and summit of its speculation, this philosophy of religion proceeded 
still further in refining on the conception of the Supreme essence. In 
Plato is to be distinguished what he says concerning the idea of the 
absolute — the good in itself, exalted above all being ?—and what he 
says of the Supreme Spirit, the Father of the Universe.? But the new 
Platonists substituted that idea of the absolute, in place of the Supreme 
essence itself—as the first simple, which precedes all existence; of 
which nothing determinate can be predicated ; to which no conscious- 
ness, no self-contemplation can be ascribed; inasmuch as this would 
immediately imply a duality, a distinction of subject and object. This 
highest of all can be known only by the intellectual intuition of the 
spirit, transcending itself, declaring itself free from its own limits.‘ 


1 In Eusebius Preparat. evangel. 1. IV. 2 In the Republic. ; 
¢c. 13, and Porphyry de abstinentia carnis, 1. 8 In the Timsus and Philebus. 
II. § 34, who cites these words of Apolloni- * As Plotinus says: Τῆς γνώσεως διὰ 
us of Tyana, and busies himself with ex- νοῦ τῶν ἄλλων γιγνομένης καὶ TH νῷ νοῦν 
plaining and applying them. γιγνώσκειν δυναμένων, ὑπερβεβηκὸς τοῦτο 


DEFENSE OF IMAGE WORSHIP. oT 


With this barely logical direction, whereby it was possible to arrive at 
the conception of such an absolute, the ὄν, there united itself a cer- 
tain mysticism, which, by a certain transcendent state of feeling, could 
communicate to this abstraction a reality for the soul. Such an ab- 
sorption of the spirit in that super-existence, (τὸ ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας.) 
even to entire union with it, or such a revelation of the same to the 
spirit raised above itself, was considered as the highest end to be 
reached by the spiritual life. Porphyry relates that this was experi- 
enced by him once, in his sixty-eighth year; and by his teacher, Plo- 
tinus, four times. 

By virtue of the gradations in the evolution of the chain of exist- 
ence, from that transcendent original ground down to the world of 
sense, and by virtue of a symbolic interpretation connected with this 
doctrine, it was made possible to appropriate everything that belonged 
to the existing cu/tus, spiritualized after this manner. Thus, 6. g. the 
rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, who wrote in the time of Trajan, makes 
Phidias speak in defense of images of the gods, in the followmg lan- 
guage: ‘It cannot be said, that it would be better for men simply to 
lift their eyes to the heavenly bodies, and that there were no images 
at all. All these, the man of reason worships, and believes that he 
beholds from afar the blessed gods. But love to the gods makes every 
one wish to be able to honor them near at hand, so that he may ap- 
proach and touch them, offer to them with implicit faith, and crown 
them.” Thus, he says, ‘it lies in the essence of human nature, to en- 
deavor to make present before our senses the absent objects of our 
love. Hence the Barbarians, who had no art, were obliged to transfer 
their worship to other, certainly far less appropriate objects ; — to 
mountains, trees and stones.” * Similar arguments are employed by 
Porphyry, in justification of image-worship.? ‘* By images addressed 
to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers — by the visible 
they typified the invisible for those that learned to read in these figures, 
as in books, a writing that treated of the gods. Weare not to wonder, 
if the ignorant consider the images only as wood or stone; for just so, 
they who are ignorant of writing, see nothing in monuments but stone, 
nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a tissue of papyrus.” 

We see that this spiritualizing apprehension of the old polytheistic 
religion had gone on to form itself— independent of the influence of 
Christianity, as a mean of conciliation between superstition and unbe- 
lief—out of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, so far as this extended 
its influence into the religious consciousness. For when Plutarch wrote, 
in whom we find this direction of mind already fully developed, Chris- 


τὴν τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν, τίνι ἂν ἁλίσκοιτο ἢ ἐπι- 
βολῇ ἀϑρόᾳ. Anecdota greca ed. Villoi- 
son. Venet.1781. ‘T. Il. p. 237. 

1 Thus Porphyry relates of him in the 
account of his life: "Edavy ἐκεῖνος ὁ ϑεὸς 
ὁ μῆτε μορφὴν μῆτε τινα ἰδέαν ἔχων, ὑπὲρ 
δὲ νοῦν, καὶ πᾶν τὸ νοητὸν ἱδρυμένος" “ᾧῷ δὴ 
καὶ ἐγὼ ἅπαξ λέγω πλησιάσαι καὶ ἑνωθῆναι, 
and of Plotinus he says, it was his highest 


aim ἑνωθῆναι καὶ πελάσαι τῷ ἐπὶ πᾶσι Seq, 
and four times, during his abode with Por- 
phyry, he had attained to this, ἐνεργείᾳ app7- 
τῳ καὶ ov δυνάμει. 

2 See Dio Chrysostom’s remarkable dis- 
course on the knowledge of the gods. Orat. 
XII. ed. Reiske. 11. Vol. I. p. 405, et seq. 

3 In Eusebius Preparat. evangel. 1. III, 
C.. t+ 


28 NEW PLATONISM. 


tiamity, certamly, had as yet produced no influence on the spiritual 
atmosphere at large. But a new zeal in behalf of the old religion, in 
which men were striving, with all their might, to keep the breath of life, 
was to be awakened by this philosophy of religion, now that the ancient 
rites were threatened with destruction by Christianity, from a new 
positive religious interest; and so there arose, out of those already 
existing ideas, a new polemical and apologetic direction, having for 
its end to preserve erect the rotten fabric of Paganism. Yet artifi- 
cial and violent expedients cannot help any cause long; and by this 
effort, often too artificial, the untenable character of the religion men 
were laboring to uphold, was badly concealed. These philosophical 
refiners of religion were themselves preparing for after times, by this 
means, many a weapon against the popular religion, of which the 
Christians well knew how to avail themselves. Already Plutarch em- 
ployed the doctrine concerning demons, as intermediate beings between 
gods and men, for the purpose of defending the traditions of the popu- 
lar religion, and rescuing the dignity of the gods — transferring from 
the latter many things to these middle beings, who, he maintained, had 
been confounded with the others.!. According to Plutarch’s doctrine, 
these demons, half related to the gods, half to men, serve as the 
means of intercourse between both.? But he supposed that also among 
these demons, there was a graduated subordination, according as the 
divine or the sensuous element? predominated in them. Where the 
latter was the case, it gave rise to malicious demons, with violent de- 
sires and passions; and to conciliate these, and avert their destructive 
influences, was the design of many of the noisy and rude forms of 
cultus. Such were the ones which had given occasion to human sacri- 
fices. With this idea, Porphyry fell in, representing these demons as 
impure beings, related to matter, from which these Platonists derived 
all evil. These take delight in bloody offerings, by which their sensu- 
ous desires are gratified; they prompt to all evil impulses; they seek 
to draw men from the worship of the gods by pretending to be such 
themselves, and to give spread to unworthy opinions concerning the 
gods, and concerning the Supreme God himself. Their delusive arts 
have been successful from of old. Hence those unworthy and inde- 
cent notions and stories of the gods, which are diffused among the 
multitude, and have received countenance even from poets and philoso- 
phers.t It is easy to see, how well such explanations would serve the 
purpose of the Christians, in their attacks on the popular religion ; 
and we can perceive, how the same representations, passing from one 
side to the other, and modified in different forms, might be seized 
upon, sometimes for the defense, sometimes for the assault of 
Paganism. ov 

It was impossible, however, that religious knowledge and religious 


1 Plutarch. de defectu oraculorum c. 12 τες, ὥσπερ ὑπηρέταις Kal γραμματεῦσι. 
et seq. 8 The παϑητικόν and ἀλόγον. 

2 What seemed incompatible with the 4 In Eusebius Preparat. evangel. 1. IV. 
exalted dignity of the gods, was transferred ς, 21, 22. 
to them, ταῦτα λειτουργοῖς ϑεῶν ἀνατιϑέν- 


ITS ARISTOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 29 
life should make progress among the people by these explanations, to 
them so unintelligible. The people remained fixed to the externals of 
their worship ; they clung firmly to that old superstition which it was 
attempted to reanimate, without troubling themselves about these more 
spiritual views. Hence Dionysius of Halicarnassus could say,! “ that 
but few take any part in this philosophical view of religion. But the 
many, who are destitute of philosophical culture, are accustomed to 
understand those mythical stories in the worst possible way; and one 
of two things is the case: either the gods are despised for taking an 
interest in such pitiable affairs, or else men abandon themselves to the 
worst abuses, because they find the same among the gods.” 

Again, inseparable from that stage of progress at which the ancient 
world stood, there was, together with a lingering zeal—not freed 
however from the shackles of egoism—for civil liberty, a certain 
aristocratic spirit. This, as we have seen already, made itself felt in 
religion. The higher religious position, which necessarily supposed 
philosophical culture, could not be transferred to the multitude; they 
seemed as if excluded from the higher life, capable of religion only in 
the form of superstition. The great body of tradesmen and mechanics 
were considered as unsusceptible of the higher life, which alone 
answered to man’s true dignity,7—-as abandoned to common life.3 
Platonism itself was entangled in this aristocratic spirit of Antiquity, 
and opposed the stage of science, whence alone it was possible to soar 
to pure truth in religion, to that of opmion (δόξα) among the multi- 
tude (οἱ πολλοί.) where the true must ever be mixed up with the false. 
And, in like manner, it was remote also from the aim of this new 
philosophy of religion, to elevate the people to any higher stage of 
religious development ;—for which, indeed, it was destitute of the 
means. Plotinus distinguishes two different stages, that of the noble- 
minded (the σπουδαῖοί) and that of the gross multitude (the πολλοί.) 
None but the former attain to the Highest ; the others remain behind, 
conversant with the merely human (the opposite to the Divine.) And 
at this stage of common life, again, are to be distinguished, those who, 
in some sort, take an interest and part in virtue, and the wretched 
mass, as the day-laborers, —the better class of whom, however, must 
busy themselves with providing for the daily wants of life ; the rest aban- 
don themselves to all that is vile.* It was not till the word that went 
forth from the carpenter’s shop had been published abroad by fisher- 
men and tent-makers, that these aristocratic notions of the ancient 
world could be overthrown. 

As it is usually found to happen with particular intellectual tenden- 
cies at epochs of transition, that while aiming to hold fast the old, they 


have been already forced to pass 


1 Archeol. 1. II. c. 20, near the end. 

2 Βίος Bavavooc. 

8 Οὐ γὰρ oiov?’ ἐπιτηδεῦσαι τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς 
ζῶντα βίον βάναυσον ἢ ϑητικόν. Αὐἱδίοίο- 
les Polit. 1. III. ς. 5. 

4 Ὥς διττὸς ὁ ἐνθώδε βίος, ὁ μὲν τοῖς 
σπουδαίοις, ὁ δὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς τῶν ἀνϑρώ- 


beyond it, and so must themselves 


πων" τοῖς μὲν σπουδαίοις πρὸς TO ἀκρότατον 
καὶ τὸ ἄνω, τοῖς δὲ ἀνθρωπικωτέροις, διττὸς 
αὖ Ov, ὁ μὲν μεμνημένος ἀρετῆς μετίσχει 
> ~ Ν ~ ¥ 7 

ἀγαϑοῦ τινος, ὁ δὲ φαῦλος ὄχλος οἷον χειρο- 
τέχνες τῶν πρὸς ἀνάγκην τοῖς ἐπιεικεστέ- 


potc. Ennead. 11.1. X. c. 9. 


30 NEW PLATONISM. 


lead over to the new, which they would hinder in its development; so 
it happened with this philosophy of religion, in its relation to the posi- 
tion of the old world on the one hand, and to Christianity on the other. 
While the new Platonism was for holding and defending the former of 
these, it yet contributed itself to excite deeper religious wants, which 
sought satisfaction in something better; to set afloat religious ideas, 
m which there dwelt a power unknown to those who expressed them, 
and which must serve to prepare for Christianity a way of mtroducing 
itself into the culture of the times. There was called forth, by the 
influence of this particular direction of mind on religious life, a longing 
which tended to a different end. But by this undefined longing, ac- 
companied with no clear conciousness of its import, ardent spirits 
were also exposed to many dangerous delusions, before they could find 
the satisfying object. This state of feelmg drew out fanatics, and 
procured for them a hearing. 

There were roving about at that time in the Roman empire, which 
united together the East and the West, numbers who boasted of divine 
revelations and supernatural powers, men in whom, as usually happens 
in such times of religious ferment, the se/f-deception of fanaticism was 
mixed with more or less of intenteonal fraud. For an example, we 
may mention that Alexander of Abonoteichus, in Pontus, whose life 
Lucian has written in his usual satiric manner, and who, all the way 
from Pontus to Rome, found believers in his pretended arts of magician 
and soothsayer, and was reverenced and consulted as a prophet, even 
by men of the first standing. Doubtless, to the better class belonged 
Apollonius of Tyana, famous in the age of the apostles. It is impos- 
sible, however, to form any certain judgment of his character, so 
imperfect are our means of information. ‘Those who, like Philostratus, 
(at the close of the second century,) attempted, with their marvellous 
stories, to represent him as a hero of the old popular religion, have 
done most to injure his reputation with posterity. He travelled about, 
seeking to reanimate religious faith; but. by giving nourishment to a 
prurient curiosity about matters that should remain hidden from man, 
he also promoted fanaticism. He spoke against a superstition, which, 
in leading men to suppose that offermgs and sacrifices could purchase 
impunity for crime, served as a prop for superstition: he explained 
that, without a good moral disposition, no kind of outward worship can 
be pleasing to the gods. He spoke against the cruel gladiatorial shows ; 
for when the Athenians, who were celebrating such games, invited him 
to their public assembly, he replied, that he could not tread on a spot 
stained by the shedding of so much human blood, and wondered the 
gods did not forsake their Acropolis. When the person who presided 
over the Hleusinian mysteries declined to allow the privilege of initiation 
to Apollonius of Tyana, it is difficult to tell whether the Hierophant 
meant honestly, and regarded Apollonius as a magician, who dealt in 
unlawful arts, or whether he was not, rather, jealous of the great influ- 
ence, unfavorable to the priesthood, which Apollonius exercised over 
the people; for this is said to have been so great, that already many 
thought it a greater privilege to have the society of Apollonius than to 


APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 81 
be initiated into the mysteries. The words with which he is said to 
have concluded all his prayers, and in which he summed up every par- 
ticular request, are characteristic of the man: “ give me, ye gods, 
what I deserve.””! These words do not imply directly a spirit of self- 
exaltation ; he intended simply to express by them the conviction, that 
prayer can avail nothing, unless m connection with a virtuous life ; 
that the good man only can expect blessings from the gods. At the 
same time, he is said to have remarked himself, that if he belonged to 
the good, God would give him more than he asked, therefore more than 
he desired. Still we cannot fail to perceive, in this language, a posi- 
tion in the judgment of one’s self, quite opposed to that of Christianity. 

If a letter consoling a father for the death of his son, which has 
been ascribed to Apollonius, is genuine, it gives an insight into his 
pantheistic tendency. At all events, we may recognize here, as we 
may in so many other appearances of this age, the pantheistic element, 
into which, as the unity lying at its root, the dissolving system of 
Polytheism was now passing.” In this letter, the doctrine is advanced, 
that birth and death are such only in appearance ; that which separ- 
ates itself from the one substance, the one divine essence, and is caught 
up by matter, seems to be born; that which delivers itself again from 
the bonds of matter, and reunites with the one divine essence, seems 
to die. There is an interchange between becoming visible and invisi- 
ble.? In all, there is, properly speaking, but the One essence, which 
alone does and suffers, by becoming all things to all; the eternal God, 
to whom men do wrong, when they deprive him of what should be 
attributed to him, by transferrmg it upon other names and persons. 4 
** How can we grieve for one, when by change of form, not of essence, 
instead of a man he becomes ἃ god?”® So Plotinus, when dying, is 
said to have remarked, that he should endeavor to convey back the 
divine in man to the divine in the universe.® 

On every side was evinced the need of a revelation from heaven, 
such as would give inquirmg minds that assurance of peace which 
they were unable to find in the jarring systems of the old philosophy, 
and in the artificial life of the reawakened old religion. That zealous 
champion of the latter, Porphyry, alludes himself to the deep-felt 
necessity ; which he proposed to supply, leaning on the authority of 
divine responses, by his Collection of Ancient Oracles. On this point 
he says,’ “ The utility of such a collection will best be understood by 
those who have felt the painful craving after truth, and have some- 


1 Aoinré μοι τὰ ὀφειλόμενα. Philostrat. μένη τὸ idiov, ἀδικουμένη Te. 


1. IV. f. 200, ed. Morell. Paris, 1608,---ο. 40. 
f. 181, ed. Olear. 

2 Ep. 58 among those published by Olea- 
rius in the Works of Philostratus. 

8 Θάνατος οὐδεὶς οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμφάσει, 
καϑάπερ οὐδὲ γένεσις οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμ- 
pacer’ τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐξ οὐσίας τραπὲν εἰς φύσιν 
ἔδοξε γένεσις. τὸ δὲ ἐκ φύσεως εἰς οὐσίαν 
κατὰ ταῦτα ϑάνατος. 

4 Τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν, 7 δὴ μόνη ποιεῖται 
καὶ πάσχει, πᾶσι γινομένη πάντα, ϑεὸς 
ἀΐδιος, ὀνόμασι δὲ καὶ προσώποις ἀφαιρου- 


_ ὃ Τρόπου μεταβάσει καὶ οὐχὶ φύσεως. 

6 Πειρᾶσϑαι τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν ϑεῖον ἀνάγειν 
πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ ϑεῖον. Porphyr. vit. 
Plotin. ¢. 2. 

7 Περὲ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας in Euseb. 
Preparat. 1. 1V.c. 7, near the end: Ἣν δ᾽ 
ἔχει ὠφέλειαν ἡ συναγωγὴ μάλιστα εἴσονται 
ὅσοι περὶ τὴν ἀλήϑειαν ὠδίναντες ηὔξαντό 
ποτε τῆς ἐκ ϑεῶν ἐπιφανείας τυχόντες ἀνά- 
παυσιν λαβεῖν, τῆς ἀπορείας διὰ τὴν τῶν 
λεγόντων ἀξιόπιστον διδασκαλίαν. 


32 NEW PLATONISM. 


times wished it might be their lot to witness some appearance of the 
gods, so as to be relieved from their doubts by information not to be 
disputed.” 

The life of such a person, from his youth up, harrassed with doubts, 
unsettled by the strife of opposite opinions, ardently longing after the 
truth, and conducted at length, through this protracted period of un- 
satisfied craving to Christianity, is delineated by the author of a sort 
of romance, (partly philosophical and in part religious,) who belonged 
to the second or third century. This work is called The Clementines, 
and though a fiction, is clearly a fiction drawn from real life; and we 
may safely avail ourselves of it, as presenting a true and characteris- 
tic sketch, which might doubtless apply to many an inquiring spirit 
belonging to those times. 

Clemens, a noble Roman, who lived about the time of the first diffu- 
sion of the gospel, gives the following account of himself. ‘I was, 
from my early youth, exercised with doubts, which had found entrance 
into my soul, 1 hardly know how. Will my existence terminate with 
death ; and will no one hereafter be mindful of me, when infinite time 
sinks all human things in forgetfulness? It will be as well as if I 
had not been born! When was the world created, and what existed 
before the world was? If it has existed always, it will continue to 
exist always. If it had a beginning, it will likewise have an end. 
And after the end of the world, what will there be then? if not per- 
haps the silence of death! or, it may be, somethg of which no 
conception at present can be formed. Incessantly haunted,” he goes 
on to say, “‘ by such thoughts as these, which came, I know not whence, 
I was sorely troubled, so that I grew pale and emaciated — and, what 
was most terrible, whenever I strove to banish away this anxiety as 
foolish, I only experienced the renewal of my suffermgs in an aggravated 
degree ; which occasioned me great distress. I was not aware that I 
had in these thoughts a friendly companion, guiding me on towards 
eternal life, as I afterwards learned by experience, and thanked the 
great Disposer of all for granting me such guidance, since it was by 
these thoughts, so distressing at first, that I was impelled to seek till 
I found that which I needed. And when I had attained to this, then 
I pitied, as miserable men, those whom in my former ignorance I was 
in danger of considering most happy. As such thoughts, then, dwelt 
in me from my childhood, I resorted to the schools of the philosophers, 
hoping to find some certain foundation, on which I could repose; and 
I saw nothing but building up and tearmg down of theories — nothing 
but endless dispute and contradiction: sometimes, for example, the 
demonstration triumphed of the soul’s immortality, then again that of 
its mortality. When the former prevailed, I rejoiced ; when the latter, I 
was depressed. Thus was I driven to and fro by the different repre- 
sentations ; and forced to conclude, that things appear not as they are 
in themselves, but as they happen to be presented on this or that side. 
I was made dizzier than ever, and from the bottom of my heart, sighed 
for deliverance.’ As he could come to no fixed and certain conviction 
by means of reason, Clemens now resolved to seek relief im another 


ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 33 


way —to visit Egypt, the land of mysteries and apparitions, and hunt 
up a magician, who could summon a spirit for him from the other 
world. The appearance of such a spirit would give him intuitive 
evidence of the soul’s immortality. No arguments would afterwards 
be able to shake his belief in what had been thus made certain to him 
by the evidence of his senses. But the advice of a sensible philoso- 
pher dissuaded him from this project, and from seeking the truth by 
forbidden arts, to which he could not resort and ever hope again to. 
obtain peace of conscience. In this state of mind, full of doubts, un- 
settled, inquiring, distressed and agitated, he came in contact with the 
gospel, preached in demonstration of the Spirit and of power—and his 
case may illustrate that of many others. 

If, now, we take a general survey of the religious state of the pagan 
world, as it has thus been exhibited, we cannot fail to observe many and 
various oppositions to, and points of possible union with, Christianity ; 
‘oppositions capable also of becoming points of union, and poimts of 
union capable also of becoming oppositions. Opposed at one and the 
same time against Christianity, stood the powers of mfidelity and of 
superstition. The force of infidelity —the sole supremacy of the under- 
standing, denying everything above nature, the wisdom of the nl 
admirari — set itself to oppose Christianity, as it did everything else 
that called in requisition man’s religious nature. By such as had 
taken this direction, Christianity was put in the same category with all 
appearances of fanaticism and superstition; but there was also an 
infidelity, at the root of which lay that need of believing, which could 
no longer be satisfied by anything that the present state of the ancient 
world, in religion and philosophy, could afford ; just as we have seen it 
represented in the case of the above-mentioned Clemens: and such 
unbelief could be overcome by the force of divine truth in the gospel; 
the unbelief itself became here a preparatory momentum to the recep- 
tion of Christianity. On the other hand, the dominion of a superstition 
clinging to sense opposed the entrance of a religion which proclaimed 
the worship of God in spirit and in truth; and this superstition was in 
close alliance with the old religion, which had now been elevated to a 
new sway over the spirit. But that sway was something unnatural,— 
it was a last effort of expiring life: and at the root of a great propor- 
tion of the superstition lay, as we have seen, a need, seeking for its 
satisfaction, which could be found only in Christianity ;—the need 
of redemption—of a healing of the deep-felt schism within —of recon- 
ciliation with the unknown God, after whom the conscious or uncon- . 
scious need was seeking. By means of an unconscious, undefined 
craving of this sort, many no doubt fell victims to various deceptive 
arts; and it was necessary that the power exercised by such arts 
over the minds of men, should be overcome by Christianity, before it 
could pave its way to their hearts: but there also dwelt in the gospel 
a power to lay bare and expose all deceptive arts, and to penetrate 
through every delusive show, to the inmost recesses of man’s being. 

Platonism prepared the way for Christianity, by spiritualizing the 
religious modes of thinking; by bringing back polytheism to a certain 


94 NEW PLATONISM. 

unity of the consciousness of God; by awakening many ideas closely 
allied to Christianity, as, for example, the idea of a redemption, in the 
sense of deliverance from the 647 — the blind power of nature opposed 
to the divine;! of elevation to a stage of divine life removed beyond the 
influence of natural powers.? But that which is best suited to form a 
preparatory position, is capable also of being most easily turned into 
one of fierce hostility, where an interest is felt in maintaining the old 
position against the higher one which has presented itself; and in this 
Platonism, we still discern the spirit of the old world, though pregnant 
already with foreign elements. The new Platonism could not bring 
itself to acquiesce, particularly, in that humility of knowledge and that 
renunciation of self which Christianity required. It could not be 
induced to sacrifice its philosophical, aristocratic notions, to a religion 
which would make the higher life a common possession for all mankind. 
The religious eclecticism of this direction of the spirit could do no 
otherwise than resist the exclusive and sole supremacy of the religion 
that suffered no other at its side, but would subject all to itself. Yet 
this philosophy of religion found it impossible to prevent the ideas and 
wants it had awakened, from leading beyond itself, and to Christianity. 
Platonism, it is true, revived the faith im a superterrestrial nature and 
destination of the spirit; but the manner im which the doctrine of the 
‘soul’s immortality, reduced to the ideas of an eternity of the spirit, and 
of the soul’s preeéxistence, became united here with the transmigration 
of souls, failed to satisfy the nniversal religious wants of mankind. If, _ 
according to this doctrine, even those souls — which applied, however, _ 
in the end, only to such as had attained by philosophy to the intuition © 

of truth —if even those souls which, when freed from the bonds of 
their earthly existence, could rise to a life wholly above sense, wholly 
divine, must yet, after a certain time, yield again to the force of des- 
tiny, and plunge once more into the circle of an earthly life; this was 
not an expectation answering to the desires of the human spirit. And 
it may be conceived what power the proclamation of eternal life, in the 
Christian sense, must have exercised over a want thus excited, and yet 
left unsatisfied.? 

There could not fail to arise, then, out of this school itself, an oppo- 
sition of views: on the one side, were those who held this position in 
hostility to Christianity ; on the other, those to whom it proved a point 
of transition to Christianity. But then these latter, again, were 
exposed to a peculiar danger. Their earlier prejudices might react in 
. such a way as to pervert their mode of apprehending and of shapmg 


1 ΟΥ̓ attraction and repulsion, of every 


ϑρωποι βασιλεύονται ὑπὸ ϑεοῦ: τὸ yap 
description of γοητεία, the ἀγοητεύτον. i 


ἄρχον ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ κρατοῦν, ϑεῖον ἐστιν. 


6 may mention here also the idea of 
an αἰώνιος (wh, which God possesses. Plu- 
tarch. de Iside et Osiride c. 1. The idea 
of a kingdom of God, depending on the 
condition that the divine element in man 
gains the supremacy ;— in the language of 
Psammon, an Egyptian priest in the time 
of Alexander the Great: Ὅτι πάντες ἂν- 


In the Life of Alexander, c. 27, near the 
end. 

8 We have an illustration of it in Justin 
Martyr’s account of his own religious his- 
tory, at the beginning of his dialogue with 
Trypho, where he relates how he was led 
from Platonism to embrace Christianity. 


JUDAISM. 35 


Christian truth. In this way, much foreign matter, drawn from their 

previous opinions, might unconsciously be conveyed over with them to 
Christianity. 

Religious Condition of the Jewish People. 


In the midst of the nations addicted to the deification of nature in 
the form of Polytheism or of Pantheism, we see a people among whom 
the faith in one Almighty God, the absolutely free Creator and Gov- 
ernor of the world, was propagated, not as an esoteric doctrine of the 
priests, but as a common possession for all, as the central point of life 
for a whole people and state. And necessarily connected with the faith 
in a holy God, was the recognition of a holy law as the rule of life, 
was the consciousness of the opposition between holiness and sm — ἃ 
consciousness, which, at the esthetic position held by Nature-religien, 
though it occasionally flashed out im single gleams, yet could not be 
evolved with the same strength, clearness and constancy. ‘This rela- 
tion of the Hebrew people to other nations suffices of itself to defeat 
every attempt which might be made to explain the origin of the 
religion of this people in the same manner as that of other religions. 
It is a fact bearing witness of the revelation of a living God, to whom 
the religion owed its existence and its progressive development; and 
of the peculiar course of training, whereby this nation was formed to 
be the organ for preserving and propagating this revelation. A Philo 
might, with good reason, say of this people, that to them was entrusted 
the prophetic office for all mankind; for it was their destination, in 
opposition to the nations sunk in the worship of nature, to bear witness 
of the living God. ‘The revelations and leadings of the Divine hand 
vouchsafed to them, were designed for the whole human -race, over 
which, from the foundation here laid, the kingdom of God was to be 
extended. Theism and the Theocracy must be embodied in an out- 
ward shape, as pertaiming exclusively to a distinct people, in order that 
from the envelope of this national form might issue forth the kingdom 
of God, embracing all mankind. Yet as the idea of the Theocracy 
cannot, by forms and rules from without, be realized in the life of a 
single people, and generally not m the rude stock of human nature, 
unennobled and persisting in its estrangement from God, there could 
not fail to exist here a disproportion between the revealed idea and its 
outward manifestation; and in this very circumstance was grounded 
the prophecy of a future conciliation. The idea must strive, beyond 
the form of appearance, which as yet does not answer to it, towards a 
development more conformable to its essence and fulness; and it con- 
tains in itself the prophecy of such a development. If history in gen- 
eral partakes, by its own nature, more nearly of the prophetic charac- 
ter in proportion as there dwells in it a pervading reference to the 
great moments of history, to that which has significancy as bearing on 
the progress of mankind as a race; then the religion and history of this 
people must be filled, in a preéminent degree, with prophetic elements. 
The destinies of this nation were so guided as ever to call forth more 
strongly the consciousness of that breach, that inward disunion, of 


36 JUDAISM. 


which we have spoken above, and the longing after deliverance from 
it. This deliverance is one and the same with the restoration of the 
fallen Theocracy ; with which belongs also the participation of all 
“nations in the worship of the living God. The appearance of him by 
whom this was to be accomplished, of him who is the true theocratic 
King, forms therefore the central point of the prophetic element, which, 
although unfolded by particular prophecies with special clearness and 
distinctness of vision, yet here, is not merely some accessory individual 
thing added from without, but had been grounded by an inherent 
necessity in the whole organism of this religion and national history. 
The idea of the Messiah is the culminating point of this religion, to 
which all the diffused rays of the divine in it converge. 3 

While the religious belief of the Greeks and Romans suffered a vio- 
lent shock in the revolutions which these nations experienced, the 
indwelling power in the theistic faith is clearly manifested, when we 
see it preserving itself unshaken amid all the political storms that agi- 
tated the Hebrew people. Nay, the oppressions suffered under the 
dominion of foreign nations served but to render this faith more firm ; 
although the right understanding of its.import did not keep up at an 
equal pace. But as everything that develops itself in human nature 
is exposed to the corruptions lying within it, revealed religion could not 
escape the same. Even Christianity, the absolute religion of man- 
kind, could not be exempted from this necessity; only it possessed 
the power of coming forth ennobled from the conflict with these corrup- 
tions, taking advantage of them to free itself from the admixture of 
foreign elements. This pawer did not reside in Judaism; as it was 
not designed to endure for all times, as a religion in this form, but to 
give place, by the dissolution of this form, for that higher creation 
which was foretold by it. If this form, instead of making way for that 
higher development, would maintain its own existence for a still longer 
term, it must, in surviving itself, merely drag itself along, as a thing 
effete. And here too it will be seen again, that what is designed as a 
preparatory stage, when it attempts to assert its own independence, 
not understanding itself according to its spirit and idea in relation to 
the historical development, may turn round into opposition with that 
higher stage, for which it was its very purpose to prepare. 

What has just been said is to be applied to the direction of the reli- 
gious spirit which governed the great mass of the Jewish people. With 
them, the theocratic consciousness, misapprehended according to the 
notions of their fleshly minds, served but to foster a national pride, of 
which it had become the foundation. Men fastened on the letter—the 
letter, understood according to the contracted views of minds turned 
only on the world; and clung by the sensible form and envelop, with- 
out being able to perceive the spirit they revealed and the ideas they 
contained, because there was no congenial, recipient spirit to meet the 
divine truth as it was offered. The sentence was here verified, pro- 
nounced by our Lord himself, “‘ He who has, to him shall be given ; 
and he who hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he 
hath.” 


FALSE PROPHETS. 8ST 


By the consciousness of the declining condition of the Theocracy, it 
is true, that the yearning after the promised epoch of its glorious resto- 
ration, and by the feeling of distress under the yoke of foreign and 
domestic tyrants, the longing after the Deliverer, after the appearance 
of Him from whom that glorious restoration was to come, the Messiah, 
had been aroused to greater activity. But the same groveling sense 
which led to a misapprehension of the nature of the Theocracy gen- 
erally, could not fail to lead also to a misapprehension of this idea, which 
forms the central point and mark towards which the whole Theocracy 
was aiming. From that worldly sense which was attached to the idea 
of the Theocracy, and that worldly turn of the religious spirit gen- 
erally, could only result a secularizing also of the idea of the Messiah. 
As the great mass of the people were bowed down by the sense of out- 
ward much more than of inward wretchedness, disgrace and bondage, 
it was chiefly a deliverer from the former whom they expected and 
yearned after, in the Messiah. The inclination to the supernatural 
took here an altogether worldly shape ; the supernatural, as it pictured 
itself to the imagination of the worldly heart, was but a fantastic imi- 
tation of the natural magnified to the monstrous. Thus the deluded 
Jews, destitute of a sense for the spiritual apprehension of divine 
things, expected a Messiah who would employ the miraculous power, 
with which he was divinely armed, in the service of their earthly lusts; 
who would free them from civil bondage, execute a severe retribution 
on the enemies of the Theocratic people, and make them masters of the 
world in a universal empire, whose glory it was their special delight to 
set forth in the fantastic images suggested by their sensuous desires. 

There was a great want of such leaders and teachers of the people 
as could have instructed them respecting the nature of their religion 
and of the Theocracy, and undeceived them of their erroneous fancies. 
Most of their guides were blind leaders of the blind, men who only 
confirmed the people in their perverse inclinations and in the errors 
thence resulting. Great mischief had been occasioned particularly by 
a fanatical zealot, Judas of Gamala, or the Galilean, who, about the 
year 11 after the birth of Christ, took upon himself to oppose the census 
or registration decreed by Augustus Cesar. A people that had 
incurred the forfeiture of their liberty, as a just punishment for their 
sins, and would continually incur it more and more ;—such a people 
he called upon to throw off, at once, the yoke of Roman bondage. He 
stimulated those, who, in disposition, were widely removed from serving 
God as their Lord, to recognize Him as their only Lord, by suffering 
no vestige to remain of the dominion of a stranger over the people that 
belonged to God alone. While others were for awaiting the deliver- 
ance to be wrought by the power of God, through the Messiah, he, on 
the contrary, required, that they should first lay hands to the work 
themselves. God —said he — will help those only, who do their own; 
but by this he meant nothing else than the resistance of mere arbitrary 
will to a power placed by God’s appointment over a people that had 
not understood their calling, that had been unfaithful to it, and who, by 


VOL. 1: 4 


38 JUDAISM. 


virtue of their disposition, were no longer capable of freedom.! From 
this exciting cause proceeded that wild fanaticism of the Zealots, 
formed out of an impure combination of political and worldly-religious 
elements ; a combination which in all times has introduced the most 
fatal mischiefs among nations; as was illustrated, indeed, by the his- 
tory of this people down to the period of their total extinetion as a 
State. When John the Baptist, after his call from God to become a 
preacher of repentance, caused a divine voice to be heard in the wilder- 
ness of the degenerate people, sought to bring them to the conscious- 
ness that it was by the disposition of the heart the way must be pre- 
pared for the regeneration of the Theocracy, and directed the longing 
wishes of his contemporaries away from the earthly to the divine, yet 
notwithstanding the great effect which he produced by the command- 
ing power of his words, he found little sympathy with that which was 
the true aim and spirit of his preaching, and at last fell the victim of 
a league struck between worldly and spiritual tyranny —a martyr to 
that truth, which, with a denunciatory zeal that regarded no eonse- 
quences, he held up against all the wickedness of his age. The death 
of John foreshadowed the fate which was to terminate the earthly 
course of one greater than himself, to bear witness of, and prepare the 
way for whom, was his divine vocation. 

Incomprehensible, therefore, to men given up to such blindness, was 
what the Son of God told them of the true freedom, which he had 
been sent from heaven to bestow on those who sighed under the bon- 
dage of sm. As with their earthly sense they knew not the Father, 
so also they could not discern in Jesus, the Son; because they had no 
ear for the voice of the Father, witnessing of him, in the wants of the 
human heart. The same temper which made them disregard the 
warning prophetic words of John the Baptist, rendered them deaf also 
to the warning call of the greatest among all the prophets ; and as he 
had foretold them, they became, even to their ruin, through the influ- 
ence of the same disposition, a prey to the artful designs of every 
false prophet who knew how to flatter the wishes which such a dispo- 
sition inspired. When the temple of Jerusalem was already in flames, 
one of those false prophets could persuade crowds of the people, that 
God was about to show them the way of deliverance by a miraculous 
sign, — such a sign as they had often demanded of him who would 
have shown them the true way to true deliverance, and who did refer 
them to the true signs of God in history,—and thousands of deluded 
men fell victims to the flames or to the Roman sword. Josephus, who 
was no Christian, but who contemplated with less prejudice than others 
the fate of his nation, of which he was an eye-witness, closes his recital 
of this event with the following remarkable words: ‘‘ The unhappy peo- 
ple would suffer themselves, at that time, only to be cheated by impos- 
tors who were bold enough to lie in the name of God. But to the mani- 
fest prodigies that portended the approaching destruction they paid no 
regard; they had no faith in them: —like men wholly infatuated, and 


1 Joseph. Archeol. 1. XVIII. c. 1, de B. J. 1. 11. ο. 8, ὁ 1. 


THE PHARISEES. : 39 


as if they had neither eyes nor soul, they heeded not what God was 
announcing.” | 

Among the Jewish theologians in Palestine, we find the three 
different main directions, which are commonly observed to make their 
appearance in opposition to each other, on the decay of the forms of a 
positive religion. First, the traditional tendency, which mixes up with 
the original religion many foreign elements, aiming to combine all 
these into an artificially constituted whole; which holds tenaciously to 
form and letter, without the living spirit; and substitutes, in the place 
of the real essence of the religion, an effete orthodoxy and a dead 
ceremonial. Thus is there called forth, in the next place, the reaction 
of a reforming tendency; but a reaction which, if it has proceeded 
rather from the intelligential than from the religious element, if the 
sense of negation rather than the positive religious interest predomi- 
nates, easily swerves from the just moderation in polemics, and runs 
into the extreme of expunging, together with the foreign elements, much 
that is genuine and good. But the unsatisfied want which both these 
tendencies leave in men of more profound and warmer feelings, usually 
impels the latter to another reaction, — the reaction of a predominantly 
subjective tendency, of predominant feeling and intuition by the 
feelings, which, as opposed to the tendencies above described, is desig- 
nated by the name of mysticism. These three main directions of the 
religious spirit, which often recur under different forms, we recognize, 
in the present case, in the three classes called the Pharisees, the 
Sadducees and the Essenes. 

The Pharisees! stood at the summit of legal Judaism. They fenced 
round the Mosaic law with a multitude of so-called ““ hedges,’ whereby 
its precepts were to be guarded against every possible infringement. 
Thus it came about, that, under this pretext, many new statutes were 
added by them, particularly to the ritual portion of the law. These 
they contrived, by an arbitrary method of interpretation, —a method 
which in part tortured the letter and in part was allegorical, — to find 
in the Pentateuch ; appealing at the same time to an oral tradition, 
as furnishing both the key to right exposition, and the authority for 
their doctrines. ‘They were venerated by the people as the holy men, 
and stood at the head of the hierarchy. An asceticism, alien to the 
original Hebrew spirit, but easily capable of entermg into union with 
the legal sectarianism at its most extravagant pitch, was wrought by 
them into a system. We find among them a great deal that is similar 
to the consiliis evangelicis, and to the rules of Monachism in the later 
church. On painful ceremonial observances they often laid greater 
stress than on good morals. ‘To a rigid austerity in the avoidance of 
every even seeming transgression of ritual precepts, they united an 
easy sophistical casuistry which knew how to excuse many a violation 


1 The name is derived from “parash,” the sense, “to set apart,” parush, v9, 
w 5; either in the sense “to expound,” which indeed sounds nearer like the Greek 
whence “poresh, wid, the ἐξηγητὴς τοῦ φαρισαῖος, one separated from the profane 
νομοῦ Kar ἐξοχὴν, a title claimed by the Multitude, the γ᾽ ἌΝ ΤΊ Dy- one who would — 
Pharisees, according to Josephus; or in be regarded as holy 


40 ἃ JUDAISM. 


of the moral law. Besides those who made it their particular business 
to interpret the law and its supplemental traditions, there were among 
them those, also, who knew how to introduce into the Old Testament, 
by allegorical interpretation, a peculiar Theosophy; and this they 
propagated in their schools;—a system which, startmg from ‘the 
development of certain ideas really contained in the Old Testament in 
the germ, had grown out of the fusion of these with elements derived 
from the Zoroastrian or Parsic system of religion; and at a later 
period, after the time of Gamaliel, with such also as had been derived 
from Platonism. Thus to a ritual and legal tradition came to be added 
a speculative and theosophic one.! , ἢ 

It would be as wrong, certainly, to confound these Pharisees together 
in one class, as to pursue the same course with the later monks. We 
must distinguish among them the several gradations of honestly meant 
though misguided zeal, till it diverges to mock-holmess and hypocrisy 
thirsting for power. Although the egoistic interest of an hierarchial 
caste was the governing principle with many, yet there were some for 
whom the legal way, with all its efforts and conflicts, possessed perfect 
truth ; some who had been led, by their course of life, to pass through 
the same painful experiences of which Paul, the former Pharisee, 
bears witness in the seventh of his epistle to the Romans. But 
one thing was wanting to them; the humility with which those who 
feel the poverty of their own spirit, go forth to meet the divine grace. 

The Sadducees were for restoring the original Mosaic religion in its 
purity, and expunging every thing that had been added by Pharisaic 
traditions. But as they did not follow out the thread of historical 
progress which marked the development of the divine revelations, but 
arbitrarily cut it short, so they could not understand the original 
Theism in the Jewish religion. That direction of mind which shows 
hostility to the progressive development of the religious consciousness, 
required by what was already contained or implied in the original, 
cannot fail to misunderstand the original itself, — cannot fail to seize it 
on a single side and to mutilate it. The Sadducees were too deficient 
in the more profound sense of religion and of the religious need, to be 
able to distinguish the genuine from the spurious in the Pharisaic 
theology. 

Directly at variance as were the two systems of Phariseeism and 
Sadduceeism, still they had something in common. ‘This was the one- 
sided legal principle which they both maintained. And indeed by the 
Sadducees this principle was seized and held after a manner still more 
exclusively one-sided than by the other sect; since with them all 
religious interest was confined to this point; and since they misinter- 
preted or denied every thing else that belonged to the more fully 
developed faith of the Old Testament. Moreover, the essential charac- 
ter of the law in its spirit, as distinguished from its national and 


1 In what is here said, I have taken into Testament, has made against the manner, 
view the well-grounded objections which jin which the subject was presented by me 
Dr. Schneckenburger, in the seventh Dis- before. 
sertation of his Introduction to the New 


THE SADDUCEES. , 41 
temporal form, in its strictness and dignity, was recognized by them 
still less than by the Pharisees. While the Pharisees attributed the 
highest value to ritual and ascetic works of holiness, with the Saddu- 
cees—as, perhaps, the name they gave themselves may denote — 
uprightness in the relations of civil society passed for the whole. 
Starting from this principle, there was nothing in their view of morality 
which presented a point of contact for the feeling of religious need, 
which most readily emerges from the depth of the moral life. Add to 
this, that they ascribed divine authority, an authority binding on 
religious conviction, only to the Pentateuch.1. The observance of the 
law, understood after their own way, was for them the only thing fixed 
and certain; in respect to all other things, they were inclined to doubt 
and disputation.” 

As the belief in the spirit’s destination for an eternal existence 
beyond this-earth found no recipiency in this, their one-sided intelli- 
gential direction of mind, holdmg converse only with the worldly, 
they expressly denied the doctrines, of the resurrection and of the 
immortality of the spirit, because no such doctrmes could be proved 
from the letter of the Pentateuch alone. These doctrines they reckoned 


1 Ready as I am to acknowledge the 
weight of the arguments brought by Winer 
(in his Biblische Realworterbuch) against 
the statement here made, yet I cannot be 
induced to abandon it. Very true, it does 
not admit of being proved from the passa- 
ges of Josephus, that the Sadducees denicd 
the authority of all other books of the 
canon. It is only evident from those pas- 
sages, that they were opponents of tradi- 
tion; and were for deriving the substance 
of the legal precepts to be observed from 
the letter of the law alone, without allowing 
validity, in this regard, to any other source 
of knowledge. But neither can it by any 
means be proved from them, that they 
judged respecting the canon precisely as 
did the Pharisees. Although Josephus, (c. 
Apion. c. 8.) taking his position on the 
ground of Jewish orthodoxy, might thus 
describe the canon as of universal validity, 
yet it by no means follows, that that hete- 
rodox sect, which departed in so many oth- 
er things from what was elsewhere consid- 
ered as important for the religious interest, 
—that this sect might not also differ from 
the same in their judgment concerning the 
canon. If the Sadducees, notwithstanding 
their denial of doctrines so important to 
the general religious interest as those of 
personal immortality and of the resurrec- 
tion, could yet attain to the most consider- 
able offices of the state, how was an opin- 
ion concerning the canon, which certainly 
had no such vital connection with practi- 
cal life, to offer any obstacle to this promo- 
tion? Josephus says of them, that when 
they were called to administer public affairs, 
they did not venture to act according to 
their own principles, but were constrained 


a” 


to yield to what was required by the Phar- 
isees ; since otherwise they must fall by the 
popular rage, which would be excited against 
them. Ὁπότε γὰρ én’ ἀρχὰς παρέλϑοιεν, 
ἀκουσίως μὲν καὶ κατ’ ἀνάγκην, προςχωροῦσι 
δ᾽ οὖν οἷς ὁ φαρισαῖος λέγει, διὰ τὸ μὴ GA- 
Awe ἀνεκτοὺς γενέσϑαι τοῖς πλήϑεσιν. Ar- 
cheol. 1. XVIII. c. 1, § 4. These words 
refer immediately, without doubt, to church 
principles of administration; yet I cannot 
avoid the inference from analogy, that the 
Sadducees would have acted in precisely 
the same way, in regard to other things, not 
less important in their relation to the com- 
mon religious interest; such, for instance, as 
their denial of immortality; that is, would 
have made no public demonstration of their 
real convictions, although it must necessari- 
ly have been the case, that, with such differ- 
ence of opinions, violent contentions would 
sometimes arise in the Sanhedrim. See 
Acts, 23:9. So now, there may have been 
a distinction of an exoteric and esoteric 
position in their judgment concerning the 
canon; and while manifesting a certain 
respect for the whole canon, they may have, 
notwithstanding this, ascribed a decisive 
authority, in matters of faith, to the Pen- 
tateuch alone. Indeed, it cannot well be 
conceived, how they could reconcile the 
acknowledgement of an equal authority 
belonging to all the books of the Old Tes- 
tament, with their denial of immortality 
and of the resurrection. 

2 Josephus describes the skeptical ten- 
dency of the Sadducees in Archeol. 1. 
XVIII. c. 1, § 4: Φυλακῆς δὲ οὐδαμῶν 
τιμῶν μεταποίησις αὐτοῖς ἢ τῶν νωμον. 
Πρὸς γὰρ τοὺς διδασκάλους σοφιας ἣν μετία- 
σιν, ἀμφιλογεῖν ἀρετὴν ἀριϑμοῦσιν. 


42 JUDAISM. 
also among the foreign additions that had been made to the original 
doctrines of Moses, from which additions they were wishing to purify 
Judaism. To such a direction of mind, it is ever peculiar to declare 
all doctrines surreptitious, which do not lie, expressed in so many words, 
in the religious records still recognized as authoritative, although these 
doctrmes may be contained there in the spirit, including within itself 
the germ of a future development. But it is more difficult to conceive 
how the Sadducees found it possible to reconcile their denial of a world 
of spirits and of the existence of angels!—to which denial they were 
impelled by the same direction of mind — with their principle of 
recognizing everything as religious doctrine which could be shown to 
lie, in so many words, in the Pentateuch. It is easy to see here, how 
they were seeking for their own opinions, which had originated and 
were grounded in a state of mind wholly peculiar to themselves, a point 
of union and support in the authority which they recognized only just 
.80 far as the case admitted. Most probably, in explaining the angelic 
appearances, (the Angelophaniai,) they departed from their principle 
of literal interpretation, and considered them merely as visions by 
which God revealed himself to the Fathers. 2 

Although it cannot be proved, from the notices of Josephus, that they 
denied a special Providence, yet it is clear, that im strict conformity with 
their tendency to negation, they made God, as far as possible, an idle 
spectator of the affairs of the world, taking much less share in the 
concerns of men than the Theocratic principle required. Their direction 
of mind must have impelled them ever nearer to a Deism which 
abolished all revelation, and consequently, also, the essence of the 
Jewish religion itself, though at the outset they had simply in view 
the restoration of that religion to its primitive simplicity. The prin- 
ciple of their spiritual bent must have led them further than they 
intended themselves to go. In perfect harmony with this mode of 
thinking was also the severe, cold, heartless disposition which Josephus 
ascribes to the Sadducees. According to his account, they were for 
the most part persons of wealth, who led a life of ease, and, satisfied 
with earthly enjoyments, would open their minds to no higher aspi- 
rations. ὃ 


1 Acts, 23, 8. or merely allowing himself to conclude, 


2 As we are to infer from Origen’s words, 
if we compare them with a passage in Jus- 
tin Martyr, (Dialog. ο. Tryph. Jud. f. 358, 
ed. Colon,) where he speaks of a party 
among the Jewish theologians, that denied 
the personal existence of angels, and ex- 
plained all appearances of them as merely 
transient forms of the manifestation of a 
divine power; which God caused to go out 
from himself and then withdrew. Origen, 
in the words alluded to, ascribes to the 
Sadducees, δόξας περὶ ἀγγέλων, ὡς οὐχ 
ὑπαρχόντων, ἀλλὰ τροπολογουμένων τῶν 
περὶ αὐτῶν ἀναγεγραμένων καὶ μηδὲν ὡς 
πρὸς τὴν ἱστορίαν ἀληϑὲς ἐχόντων. It may 
admit of some question, whether Origen 
was following here some historical accounts, 


from the necessary connection of ideas in 
his own mode of thinking, that if they did 
not ascribe literal truth to the narratives of 
the angelic appearances, they must then 
have explained them allegorically. The 
comparison of his statement, however, with 
that of Justin Martyr, renders the former 
the more probable. 

3 Although Josephus was himself a Phar- 
isee, yet we have no reason to suspect what 
he says of the Sadducees, for he constantly 
shows himself impartial in his judgments ; 
he moreover frequently exposes, without re- 
serve, the bad traits of the Pharisees, and 
we haye no cause, therefore, to charge him 
here with malicious feelings, injurious to 
the truth. Certainly we cannot infer from 


THE ESSENES. 43 

It remains, that we should speak of the Essenes or Essceans, whose 
relation to the two parties just described has already been exhibited 
in a general manner. About two centuries before the birth of Christ, 
there arose,in the quiet country lying on the west side of the Dead Sea, 
a society of piously disposed men, who, in these solitudes, sought a 
refuge from reigning corruptions, from the storms and conflicts of the 
world and the strifes of parties; precisely as the monastic system 
sprung up ata later period. Thus they are described by the elder 
Pliny, who felt constrained to express a sort of respect for their inde- 
pendence and their contentment within themselves. ‘‘ On the western 
border of that lake,” says he, ‘‘ dwell the Essenes, at a sufficient dis- 
tance from the shore to avoid its pestilent effluvia — a race entirely by 
themselves, and, beyond every other in the world, deserving of won- 
der; men living in communion with nature; without wives, without 
money. Every day, their number is replenished by a new troop of set- 
tlers, since they are much visited by those whom the reverses of fortune 
have driven, tired of the world, to their modes of living. Thus hap- 
pens, what might seem incredible, that a community in which no one 18 
born, yet continues to subsist through the lapse of centuries. So fruit- 
ful for them is disgust of life in others.”! From this first seat of the 
Essenes, colonies of them had been formed in other parts of Palestine ; 
in remote and solitary districts of the country, which must have 
answered best to their original design, but also in the midst of villages 
and towns. A transplantation of this sort would naturally lead to 
many deviations from the original strictness of their principles, to many 
alterations of their discipline. Although there was one class of Esse- 
nes who, as we may gather from the accounts of Josephus, were will- 
ing to act as magistrates, yet it is evident that these, residing amidst 
civil society, could not observe all those rules which bound, with the 
force of law, such as lived secluded from human intercourse. As is 
wont to happen in similar communities, there must, in this case, have 
naturally sprung up many orders of the sect, various forms of relation 
to, and modes of connection with, the original society. Indeed, the his- 
torian Josephus expressly distinguishes four different orders, of which 
the Essenes were composed.? Many contradictory statements, which 
occur in the several accounts of this sect, admit thus of bemg most 
easily reconciled.? 


the character of the doctrines of the later 
Careans, who were temperate opponents of 
the Pharisaic traditions, what must have 
been the character of the Sadducean doc- 
trines. The general question still remains 
unsettled, whether the latter doctrines had 
any outward connection whatever with the 
former, although the heresy-hunting spirit 
of their adversaries would naturally be glad 
of the chance to confound them with these. 

1 Ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt, 
usque qua nocent. Gens sola et in toto 
orbe preeter cxteras mira, sine ulla femina, 
omni venere abdicata, sine pecunia, socia 
palmarum. In diem ex #quo convenarum 


turba renascitur, large frequentantibus, quos 
vita fessos ad mores eorum fortune fluctus 
agitat. Natur. hist. 1. V. ο. 15. 

2 Josephus cites μοίρας τέσσαρας of Es- 
senes, B. J. 1. II. c. 8, § 10, which several 
grades, it is true, would, according to his 
testimony, have reference simply to the 
length of time spent in this community ; 
but from the marks which are given, we 
may doubtless infer, that there were other 
modes of classification among them besides 
that which bore reference to the circum- 
stance just mentioned. 

8 As, for instance, while Pliny makes 
them reside only on the border of the Dead 


44 JUDAISM. 


If we may always distinguish, among mystic sects, the more practi- 
eal and the more speculatively inclined, we must reckon the Essenes 
with the former class, without overlooking in them, however, at the 
same time, a certain speculative and Theosophic element. This, their 
peculiar mystic turn, might have sprung, in the first place, indepen- 
dently of external influences, out of the deeper religious sense of the 
Old Testament, a spiritualization of the letter, proceeding from the tem- 
per of mind which gave birth to the allegoric interpretation. Such 
mysticism has made its appearance, after much the same manner, 
among people of the most diverse character, among the Hindoos, the 
Persians, and Christian nations. It would lead, certainly, to the great- 
est mistakes, if from the resemblance of such religious phenomena, 
whose relationship can be traced to their common ground of origin in 
the essence of the human mind itself, we should be ready to infer their 
outward derivation one from the other. How much that is alike may 
not be found in comparing the phenomena of Brahmaism and of 
Buddhaism with those of the sect of Beghards in the middle ages, 
where the impossibility of any such derivation is apparent to every 
body? We are ready to admit, however, that the Essenean mysticism, 
although it did not spring originally from any outward cause of excite- 
ment, yet, having once made its appearance, received into itself many 
foreign elements. But should the question now arise — whence did 
these elements come ? — we find our thoughts reverting far more natu- 
rally to old Oriental, to Parsic, Chaldaic elements — many ideas from 
that source having been propagated, since the time of the exile, among 
the Jews —than to elements of Alexandrian Platonism, according to 
the usual supposition at the present time; for it is difficult to conceive 
how the latter could already have exerted so powerful and wide- 
extended an influence in Palestine, at the period when this sect arose. 
The peculiar asceticism of the Essenes by no means warrants us to 
infer that they must have been acquainted with the “Platonic doctrine 
of the ὕλη, since that asceticism may be explained as well from the 
influence of the Oriental spirit; while this doctrine itself, without the 
addition of the Oriental spirit, would have led to no such peculiar bent. 
We should also duly weigh, that Josephus and Philo, writers to whom 
we are indebted for our most important information respecting this sect, 
have both, though the latter still more than the former, clothed the 
opinions of the Essenes in a garb peculiarly Grecian, which we may 
rightly consider as not originally belonging to them. We must there- 
fore be cautious of attributing too much importance to many things 
they advance, which have been derived simply from that source ; 
especially as, in modern times, the Essenean doctrmes have given 
occasion to very arbitrary combinations and modes of representing 
historical facts. 

Besides the diversities above mentioned, which must have been 


Sea, Josephus (de B. J. 1. II. c. 8,§ 4,) says in afragment of his defence of the Jews, 
that there were many of them dwelling in preserved by Eusebius Cesar. (Preparat. 
every town; Philo, (quod omnis probus Evangel. 1. VII. ¢. 8,) that they lived im 
liber § 12,) that they lived κωμηδὸν, τὰς many towns and villages of Judea, in pop- 
πόλεις ἐκτρεπόμενοι, and the same writer, ulous districts. 


THE ESSENES. 45 


introduced gradually among the Essenes, as they began to relax from 
their primitive eremetical severity and submit to the intercourse of civil 
life, we may notice another remarkable difference among them. In 
strict accordance with the Oriental element of their original ascetic 
turn, was the life of celibacy —a thing alien to the spirit of the 
primitive Hebraism, by which a fruitful marriage was reckoned among 
the greatest blessings and ornaments. Hence we see already among 
the Hssenes, that reaction of the original Hebrew spirit against the 
foreign ascetic element— which is analogous to something we shall 
hereafter have more frequent occasion to notice in the history of sects. 
There was a party of the Hssenes which differed from the others, in 
tolerating the institution of marriage.! 

It accorded with the character of this sect to unite the contemplative 
life with the practical; but in accommodation to the diversities already 
mentioned, the extent to which this was done must also have been 
various. he practical bent of the Hssenes would naturally imcline 
them to a life of industry. Such a life was probably intended, as in 
the case of the later monks, to answer a two-fold purpose ; to occupy 
the senses, so as to prevent any disturbance from that quarter of the 
higher activity of the mind; and to furnish themselves with the means, 
while independently providing for their own subsistence, of contribut- 
ing, at the same time, to the necessities of others. The occupations 
of peace were those about which they employed themselves; differing 
according to their different habits of life, according as they dwelt in 
communion with nature or jomed in the intercourse of civil society ; 
agriculture, the breeding of bees and of cattle, mechanical handiworks. 
They had sought to explore the powers of nature, and apply them to 
the healing of diseases. Connected with their secret doctrines, there 
was also a traditional knowledge relating to this subject. They were 
in possession of old writings which treated of such matters. Health 
of body and of soul they were in the habit of connecting together, as 
well as the cure of both. ‘Their science of nature and their art of 
medicine seem to have had a religious, Z'heosophic character. As 
they strove to explore the secret powers of nature, so were there also to 
be found among them, such as claimed for themselves, and endeavored 
to cultivate, a gift of prophecy. <A particular method of ascetic prepa- 
ration, by which one might become qualified for searching into the 
future, was taught among their secret traditions.? For this purpose 
they employed sacred writings; whether they were the Scriptures of 
the Old Testament, from the words of which they sought, by various 
interpretations, to unravel the secrets of futurity, just as the Bible was 
used for similar purposes in later periods; or whether they were those 
other writings, belonging to the sect, in which their secret doctrines 
were unfolded. All this bears the impress of the old Oriental spirit, 
certainly not of the elements of Grecian culture. 


1 See Joseph. B. J. 1. II. ὁ. 8, § 13. πρὸς ϑεραπείαν παϑῶν ῥίζαι τε ἀλεξητήριοι 
2 Joseph. B. J. 1. IL. c. 8, § 6: Σπουδά- καὶ λιϑῶν ἰδιότητες ἐνερευνῶνται. 
ζουσιν ἐκτόπως περὶ τὰ τῶν παλαιῶν συγ- ὃ Διαφόροις ἁγνείαις ἐμπαιδοτριβοῦμενων. 


γράμματα, μάλιστα τὰ πρὸς ὠφέλειαν ψυχῆς See Joseph. B. J. 1. IL. ο. 8, ὁ 12. 
καὶ σώματος ἐκλέγοντες. Ἔνϑεν αὐτοῖς 


46 JUDAISM. 

By their consciousness of the equality of the higher dignity in man’s 
nature, of the oneness of the divine image in all, to which the Old 
Testament of itself might have led them,! they rose above the narrow 
limits within which the developement of the human species was con- 
fined by the prejudices of antiquity. They considered all men as 
rational beings, destined to the enjoyment of personal freedom; they 
rejected slavery and suffered no slave to exist in their community, — in 
every kind of service mutually helpmg one another. As it was their 
idea to restore back the community founded originally by the Almighty 
in nature, and thereby to reconcile those differences which civil society 
had introduced among men, accordingly the distinctions of poverty and 
of wealth were also done away among them. ‘There was a common 
treasury, formed by throwing together the property of the individuals 
who entered into the society, and by the earnings of each one’s labor, 
out of which the necessities of all were provided for, —a community of 
goods, which, however, did not preclude the right of private property, 
and which was probably modified by the diversities already described. 

There can be no doubt that this sect, by exciting a more earnest and 
lively spirit of devotion, by arousing the sense of the godlike within 
the little circles over which their influence extended, produced those 
wholesome fruits which have always sprung out of practical mysticism, 
wherever the religious life has become stiffened into mechanical forms. 
It was owing to their inoffensive mode of life, commanding universal 
respect, that they were enabled to preserve and extend themselves 
without molestation, amidst all the strifes of party, and all the revolu- 
tions to which Palestine was subjected, down to the extinction of the 
Jewish state. 

They were particularly distinguished, in that corrupt age, among the 
Jews, on account of their industry, charitableness and hospitality ; on 
account of their fidelity, so different from the seditious spirit of the 
Jews, in rendering obedience to magistrates as thé powers ordaimed 
of God, and on account of their strict veracity. Every yea and nay 
was to possess, in their society, the validity of an oath; for every oath, 
said they, presupposes already a mutual distrust, which ought not to 
find place in a community of honest men. In one case only might an 
oath be administered among them, and that was, in confirming those 
who, after a novitiate of three years, were received among the number 
of the initiated. 

Although now, under the view just presented, we cannot fail to 
recognize in this sect a sound practical bent, yet we should doubtless 
be under a mistake, if, led by the one-sided representations of the 


1 This view naturally resulted both from 
the development of the Old Testament idea 
respecting the image of God, and from the 
recognition of the origin of mankind from 
a single pair; as, on the contrary, slavery 
found its justification in the prevailing mode 
of thinking among Pagans; their misap- 
prehension of the higher nature common 
to the species, and their assumption of an 


original difference of races, in virtue of 
which, some, by their reason, were destined 
and suited to rule over others, and these 
latter, with their bodily powers, to serve 
them as tools. Thus Aristotle, in his work 
on Politics, 1. I. ¢. 2, says: TO μὲν δυνάμε- 
vov τῇ διανοίᾳ προορᾶν ἄρχον φύσει καὶ 
δεσπόζον φύσει. Td δὲ δυνάμενον τῷ σώματι 
ταῦτα ποιεῖν ἀρχόμενον καὶ ὀύσει δοῦλον. 


THE ESSENES. 47 
Alexandrian Jew, Philo,! we imagined the Essenes might be taken as 
an example of the purest practical mystics, at an equal remove from 
all Theosophic and speculative fancies,” and from all superstition and 
slavery to ceremonies. The fact, which has already been stated, of 
their affectation of the prophetic gift, is, of itself, mconsistent with this 
view of the matter; and their whole secret lore can hardly be imagined 
to have consisted simply of ethical elements, but we are here forced to 
the supposition of a peculiar Theosophy and Pneumatology. Why else 
should they have made so great a mystery of it? This supposition 
gathers strength, when we are informed that the candidates for admis- 
sion into the sect, among other obligations, took an oath that they would 
reveal to no one the names of the angels which were to be communi- 
cated to them. It is confirmed again by the cautious secrecy with 
which they kept the ancient books of the sect. Hven Philo himself 
makes it probable, when he says that they busied themselves with a 
φιλοσοφία διὰ συμβόλων, a philosophy resting on the allegoric interpreta- 
tion of the Bible; since every mode of the allegoric interpretation of 
scripture is accompanied, side by side, with a certain speculative sys- 
tem. There is nothing to warrant us in supposing that it was the 
ideas of the Alexandrian Theology which constituted the basis of their 
scheme. ‘There seems to have been grounded in this T'’heosoplhy of 
theirs a certain veneration of the sun, which we have to explain from 
the intermingling of Parsic rather than of Platonic doctrines. It was 
a daily custom with them to turn their faces devoutly towards the 
rising of the sun, and chaunt together certain ancient hymns, handed 
down in their sect, which were addressed to that luminary, purporting 
that his beams should fall upon nothing impure.? To this may be 
added their doctrine concerning the soul’s préexistence. Descended 
from some heavenly region, it had become imprisoned im this corporeal 
world, and after having led a life worthy of its celestial origin, it would 
be liberated again, and rise to a heavenly existence befitting its nature. 
This also, which was the fundamental doctrine of their asceticism, may 
be traced just as well to old Oriental tradition as to the Alexandrian 


1 Tn his writings, above cited. Although 
Josephus, too, as we have already observed, 
has given nothing that can be called an ob- 


jective description of this sect ; notwithstand- 


ing that when a youth of sixteen, he com- 
pared the different Jewish sects together, 
in order to choose between them, and en- 
deavored, along with the rest, to make him- 
self acquainted with the sect of the Essenes, 
though he hardly went beyond the period 
of a novitiate among them, and perhaps in 
regard to their esoteric doctrines, was no 
better informed than Philo;—yet he might 
obtain a more accurate knowledge of the 
sect than the Alexandrian Jew; and his 
account, savoring as it does, with a smack 
of the Grecian taste, yet wears a more his- 
torical character than that of Philo, which 
was evidently written with the distinct pur- 
pose in view, of holding up the Essenes to 
the Greeks, as a pattern of practical wise 


men. Indeed, the latter writer was scarce- 
ly capable of looking at anything otherwise 
than in the light of his Alexandrian Pla- 
tonism. He must involuntarily find again 
his own ideas wherever any point of union 
enables him to introduce them. 

21 cannot at all agree with those who 
seize upon the words of Philo, in his book, 
quod omnis probus liber § 12, where he 
says, that of the three parts of philosophy, 
the Essenes accepted only Ethics, for the 
purpose of sketching out, after this hint, 
the main features of the Essenean system. 
It is impossible not to see, that in these 
words, the matter is set forth in an altogeth- 
er subjective point of view; and _ besides, 
what Philo here asserts is contradicted by 
the more precise and accurate testimony of 
Josephus. 

3 Joseph. de B. J. 1. 11. c. 8, § 8, et 9. 


48 JUDAISM. 
Platonism. The original birth-place of this doctrine is, in truth, the 
Kast, from which quarter it first found its way into Greece. 

If we may trust the words of Josephus,! they did indeed send gifts 
to the temple, and thus expressed their reverence for the original 
establishment; discharging in this manner the common duty of all 
Jews, as it was their principle to fulfil every obligation that bound 
them; yet they did not visit the temple themselves,? perhaps because 
they looked upon it as polluted by the vicious customs of the Jews. 
They thought that the holy rites could be performed in a worthier and 
more acceptable manner within the precincts of their own thoroughly 
pure and holy community. In like manner, also, they performed their 
sacrificial offermgs, for the presentation of which, within the pale of 
their. own society, they believed themselves best prepared by their 
ascetic lustrations. The authority of Moses standing so high with 
them, there is not the least reason for supposimg they would wholly set 
aside the sacrificial worship appoited by him, unless it were true, per- 
haps, that they looked upon the original Mosaic religion as having been 
corrupted by later additions, and among these additions reckoned also 
the sacrificial worship, as we find asserted in the Clementines; which 
however, so far as it regards the Essenes at least, admits not the 
shadow of a proof. Now it is singular, it must be admitted, how, as 
Jews, they could entertain the opinion, that they might be allowed to 
offer sacrifices away from Jerusalem. But caprice im the treatment of 
whatever belongs to the positive in religion forms, indeed, one of the 
characteristic marks of such mystic sects. And it might well accord 
with the spirit of such a sect, that in proportion as they looked upon 
the sacrificial worship, instituted by Moses, as a holy service, they 
should be so much the less disposed to take any part in its celebration, 
amidst all the wickedness in the desecrated temple at Jerusalem; and 
should maintain that only among the really sanctified, the members 
of their own sect, was the true spiritual temple, where sacrifices could 
be offered with the proper consecration.? 


1 Archeol. 1. XVIII. §. 4; Eic dé τὸ 
ἱερὸν ἀναϑήματώ Te στέλλοντες ϑυσίας οὐκ 
ἐπιτελοῦσι διαφορότητι ἁγνειῶν, ἃς νομί- 
ζοιεν, καὶ δ αὐτὸ εἰργόμενοι τοῦ κοινοῦ 
τεμενίσματος, ἐφ᾽ αὑτῶν τὰς ϑυσίας ἐπιτε- 
λοῦσι. 

2 For the word εἰργόμενοι cannot possibly 
be taken in any other sense than that of the 
middle voice. 

ὃ Even from Philo’s language in the 
tract: Quod omnis probus liber, § 12, it is 
impossible to extract that meaning which 
some have wished to find in it; viz. that the 
Essenes gave a spiritual interpretation to 
the whole sacrificial worship, and rejected 
outward sacrifices entirely. ᾿Εἰπειδὴ καὶ ἐν 
τοῖς μώλιστα ϑεραπευταὶ ϑεοῦ γεγόνασιν, 
οὐ ζῶα καταϑύοντες, ἀλλ᾽ ἱεροπρεπεῖς τὰς 
ἑαυτῶν διανοίας κατασκευάζειν ἀξιοῦντες. 
Philo is starting here from the doctrine of 
the Alexandrian theology, that the true 
worship of God is the purely spiritual, con- 


sisting in the consecration of the life of the 
spirit to God. This idea he represents as 
having been realized by the Essenes, whom 
he describes as Therapeutz, in the true 
sense of the word. Simply for the sake of 
contrast, he mentions animal sacrifices, 
which were usually held to constitute the 
main part of the service; and in so doing 
he by no means atlirms that the Essenes 
had entirely rejected the sacrificial worship. 
Not the negative but the positive is here the 
essential point. Had it been his intention . 
to say that the Essenes rejected the sacrifi- 
cial worship of Moses, he must have ex- 
pressed this in a quite different tone. In 
this connection, Philo could have said the 
same thing of himself, and of every other 
Jew, possessed, according to his opinion, of 
a truly spiritual mind. By attaining to the 
knowledge that the true sacrifice is the 
spiritual sacrifice of one’s self, one is not 
led, certainly, according to his doctrine, to 


AT ALEXANDRIA. 49 
With such mystical sects, it not unfrequently happens, that in con- 
nection with a bent of mind turned wholly inward, is found a disposi- 
tion to set value upon certain external religious rites, which seems 
quite incongruous, two opposite elements being thus brought in con- 
tact — spiritual religion and slavery to forms. So it was with the 
Essenes. In a painfully superstitious observance of the Sabbath day of 
rest, according to the letter, not the spirit, of the law, they went even 
beyond the Jews; with this difference, however: that the custom in 
their case sprung out of an honest piety, while the Pharisaic casuistry 
knew how to accommodate the interpretation of the law, so as to suit 
the interest of the passing moment. They not only carefully avoided, 
like other Jews, all contact with uncircumcised persons, but, bemg 
separated, within their own body, into four different grades, they who 
had attained to the highest, dreaded the pollution of a touch from the 
member of an inferior grade; and they had recourse to ablutions, 
whenever an accident of this sort occurred. In general, they attached 
greater importance than other Jews to purification, by bathing in cold 
water, as a means of holiness. To their ascetic notions, the oriental 
and healthful practice of anointing with oil seemed an unholy thing ; 
so that any one who had happened in any way to become thus defiled, 
felt obliged carefully to cleanse himself. They scrupulously avoided 
all food save such as had been prepared within their own sect. They 
would die rather than partake of any other. All this, then, should 
satisfy us, that while we grant a due respect to the religious spirit 
of this people, we ought not to be so far misled as to consider them 
the representatives of a simple and unalloyed practical mysticism. 
Essentially different from the form of culture which prevailed in 
Palestine, was the shape and direction taken by the Jewish mind, on 
that spot, where, through a period of three centuries, it had been un- 
folding itself under circumstances and relations wholly peculiar,— 
amidst those elements of Hellenic culture, that, transplanted into the 
old seats of an altogether different civilization, had on this foreign soil 
gained the supremacy,—in the Grecian colony of Alexandria in Egypt. 
From an intermingling of Hellenic and Jewish mind, proceeded 
forth here one of the most influential of appearances, which had an 
important bearing, particularly on the process of the development of 
Christianity in human thought. We see here, how that great historical 
event, which, more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ, 
shattered the nations of the East, should serve to prepare the way for 
such a process. ‘The world-subduing arms of Alexander, as afterwards 
the weapons of Rome, were to subserve the highest aim of man’s his- 
tory, by uniting and bringing within the influence of each other, parts 
hitherto separated, so that the minds of men might be prepared to 


set aside the outward sacrificial worship. 
In this case, therefore, there is not the least 
opposition betwixt Philo and Josephus, but 
he is speaking of an entirely different thing. 
In the passage cited from Josephus, we can- 
not, for the purpose of reconciling a contra- 


diction that does not exist, understand “ sac- 


VOL. I. 


rifice” in the second instance differently from 
that in the first, as referring to bloodless 
sacrifices, — the symbolical offerings of the 
gifts of nature. In this case, Josephus 
would have expressed the opposition after 
a different manner. 


50 THE JUDAISM 


grapple with Christianity, receive it into their thought, and work upon 
it with self-activity. Plutarch looked upon it as the great mission of 
Alexander, to transplant Grecian culture into distant countries,! and 
to conciliate and fuse into one, Greeks and barbarians. He says of 
him, not without reason, that he was sent of God for this purpose ;2 
though he did not divine, that this end itself was to be only subsidiary 
to, and the means of, a higher, —to make the united peoples of the Hast 
and West more accessible for the new creation that was to proceed 
from Christianity, and in the combination of the elements of Oriental 
and Hellenic culture, to prepare for Christianity a material in which it 
might develop itself. If we look away from that ultimate purpose, 
if we do not fix our eye upon the higher quickening spirit, destmed to 
convey into that combimation, holding within itself the germ of corrup- 
tion, the principle of a new life, we may, in such a case, indeed ask 
the question, whether that union was really a gain to either party, 
whether at least the gain was not everywhere accompanied with an 
equal loss, since the fresh life of the national spirit must in such cir- 
cumstances be constantly repressed by the forcibly obtruded mfluence 
of the foreign element. It required something higher than any ele- 
ment of human culture, to introduce into that combmation a new living 
principle of development, and to unite peculiarities the most diverse, 
without prejudice to their original essence, into a whole m which each 
part should be mutually a complement to the other. The true living 
fellowship between the Hast and the West, in which both the great 
peculiar principles that belong together for a complete exhibition of the 
type of humanity should be united, could first come only from Christ- 
lanity. But as preparatory to this step, the influence which for a 
period of three centuries went forth from Alexandria, that centre of 
the intercourse of the world, was of great importance. 

In the course of these centuries, the peculiar asperity and stiffness 
of the Jewish character must have been considerably tempered by 
intercourse with the Greeks,’ and by the transforming influence of the 
Hellenic culture, which here preponderated. The ulterior effect might 
proceed to shape itself in two different ways. Hither the religious 
element, which most strongly marked the Jewish peculiarity, might 
yield, under the overpowering influence of the foreign national spirit 
and of the foreign culture, and the Jews would suffer themselves to be 
misled, in ridicule of their old religious records, now become unintelli- 
gible to them, to assort with the Greeks among whom they dwelt, or, 
true to the religion of their fathers in the main, they might be forced 
to seek a conciliating mean betwixt this and the elements of Hellenic 
culture, which exercised an involuntary power over their minds, and 
which they were moreover induced to make their own, m subserviency 
to an apologetic interest. 


1 Τὰ βαρβαρικὰ τοῖς ἑλληνικοῖς κεράσαι, 8 Philo reckons the number of Jews re- 
καὶ τὴν ἑλλάδα σπεῖραι. See Plutarch’s I. siding in Alexandria and the countries ad- 
orat. de Alex. virtute s. fortuna, § 10. jacent, at “a hundred myriads.” Orat. in 


2 Κοινὸς ἥκειν ϑεόϑεν ἁρμοστὴς καὶ δι- Flaccum § 6. 
αλλακτὴς τῶν ὅλων νομίζων. LL. α. ο. 6. 


AT ALEXANDRIA. 51 

We doubtless find some indications that the former of these effects 
was not wholly wanting; as, for instance, when that zealous champion 
of Judaism, the Alexandrian Philo, places in contrast with Moses, who, 
while in favor at the Egyptian court, still remains faithful to his people, 
those renegades! “that trample on the laws in which they were born 
and bred, upturn those customs of their country which were lable to 
no just censure, and in their predilection for the new, become utterly 
forgetful of the old.’’ In another passage,” he rebukes those ‘‘ who are 
impatient of the religious institutions of their country ; who are ever on 
the alert for matter of censure and complaint against the laws of relli- 
gion; who thoughtlessly urge these and the hke objections in excuse of 
their ungodliness:® Do ye still make great account of your laws, as if 
they contained the rules of truth? Yet see, the holy Scriptures, as you 
term them, contain alse fables, such as you are accustomed to laugh 
at, when you hear them from others.” * 

Yet, in the main, the power of their religious faith, so deeply rooted 
in the mind of this people, was too great over them to be weakened by 
the influence of that foreign culture ; and hence the former of the ef 
fects above mentioned, was certainly the more rare, and the latter the 
more frequent case. It was this: the Jews, completely imbued with 
the elements of Hellenic culture, endeavored to find a mean betwixt 
these and the religion of their fathers, which they had no wish to re- 
nounce ; and to this end availed themselves of the system most in vogue 
with those who busied themselves with religious matters in Alexandria, 
that of the Platonic philosophy, which had already become a mighty 
power over their own intellectual life. At the same time, they were 
very far from consciously entertaining the idea or wish to sacrifice the 
authority of their ancient religion and of their sacred writings to the 
authority of a human philosophy. On the contrary, they learned, from 
a comparison of the religious knowledge existing among their own peo- 
ple with that which might be found among the Egyptians and Greeks, 
to understand more clearly the distinguished character of their ancient 
religion, the divine agency manifested m the guidance of their people, 
and the destination of that people as bearing upon the whole human 


1De vita Mosis 1.1. ἢ. 607,§ 9. Νόμους 
παραβαίνουσι, καϑοὺς ἐγεννήϑησαν καὶ é- 
τράφησαν͵ ἤϑη δὲ πάτρια, οἷς μέμψις οὐδεμία 
πρόςεστι δικαία, κινοῦσιν ἐκδιητημένοι καὶ 
διὰ τὴν τῶν παρόντων ἀποδοχὴν οὐδενὸς ἔτι 
τῶν ἀρχαίων μνήμην λαμβάνουσιν. 

2 De confus. ling. f. 820, § 5. Οἱ μὲν 
δυσχεραίνοντες TH πατρίω πολιτείᾳ, ψόγον 
καὶ κατηγορίαν ἀεὶ τῶν νόμων μελετῶντες 
τούτοις καὶ τοῖς παραπλησίοις, ὡς ἂν ἐπι- 
βάϑραις τῆς GSedTHTOG αὐτῶν οἱ δυσσεβεῖς 
χῶνται. ; 

8 He is speaking of the confusion of 
tongues at Babel. 

* Also in the passage (de nom. mutat. p. 
1053, § 8) where Philo quotes the scoffing 
language of an ἄϑεος and ἀσεβῆς, the bit- 
terness with which he speaks would seem 
to indicate that the scoffer was an infidel 


Jew. Ina pagan this scoffing would have 
struck him as no such singular thing. He 
looks upon it as a punishment of the fool- 
hardiness of this man, that he soon after 
hung himself; ἕν’ ὁ μιαρὸς καὶ δυσκάϑαρτος 
μηδὲ καϑάρῳ ϑανάτῳ τελευτήσῃ. By means 
of his allegoric interpretation, Philo wishes 
to remove that which furnished this man an 
occasion for his scoffing, that others might 
not draw upon themselves a like punish- 
ment. He describes here a whole class of 
such people, who were waging an irrecon- 
cileable war with sacred things, and search- 
ing for matter of calumny wherever the 
letter admitted of no befitting sense. Ἔνιοι 
TOV φιλαπεχϑημόνων καὶ μώμους ἀεὶ τοῖς 
ἀμώμοις mpocantew ἐϑελόντων καὶ πόλεμον 
ἀκήρυκτον πολεμούντων τοῖς ἱεροῖς. 


52 THE JUDAISM 

race ; and their conviction that this was indeed the high destination of 
the J ews, could only be strengthened and confirmed by such a compari- 
son. So says the individual whom we would choose to name as the 
representative of these Alexandrians, viz. Philo! ‘* That which is the 
portion only of a few disciples of a truly genuine philosophy, the knowl- 
edge of the Highest, has become the inheritance of the whole Jewish 
people by laws and customs.” He calls the Jews priests and prophets 
for all mankind.? He was conscious of the relation to universal history 
lying at the ground of the particular in the history of his nation — saw 
how the Theocratic people, as such, had a mission to fulfil which regarded 
entire humanity. He describes them as a priestly people, whose call- 
ing it was to invoke the blessing of God on all mankind.’ He says, 
with this reference, that the offering, presented for the whole people, 
was meant for the entire race of man.* 

The spirit of Judaism enabled him to understand, that religious truth 
should be a public thing, the common property of all. Considering 
how easily a Jew at Alexandria might be tempted, under such induce- 
ments as were held out by the traffic in religious mysteries, to set up 
another description of mysteries in competition with those of the Greeks, 
it is the more worthy of remark, how decidedly Philo took his stand 
against every such tendency, greatly distinguishing himself, in this re- 
spect, from the heathen Platonists. It well nigh seems, as if he found 
cause to warn his fellow-believers themselves against the fascmations of 
mystery, by which they also could be attracted.® ‘* All mysteries,” 
says he, ‘all parade and trickery of that sort, Moses removed from the 
holy giving of the law; since he did not wish those that were trained 
under such a form of religious policy, to be exposed, by having their 
minds dazzled with mysterious things, to neglect the truth, and to fol- 
low after that which belongs to night and darkness, disregarding what 
is worthy of the hight and of the “day. Hence no one of those that 
know Moses, and: count themselves among his disciples, should allow 
himself to be initiated into such my steries, or initiate others; for both 
the learning and the teaching of such mysteries is no trifling sin. For 
why, ye initiated, if they are beautiful and useful things, do ye shut 
yourselves up in profound darkness, and confer the benefit on two or 
three alone, when you might confer it on all, were you willing to pub- 
lish in the market-place what would be so salutary for every one, so 
that all might certainly participate of a better and happier life?” He 
points to the fact, that in the great and glorious works of nature, there 
is no mystery, all is open. He bears witness of the mere empty mech- 
anism, into which the mysteries had then degenerated ; men — he says 
—of the worst character, and crowds of abandoned women, were ini- 
tiated for money. 


1 De caritate f. 699, ὁ 2: “Ὅπερ ἐκ φιλοσο- 
diac τῆς δοκιμωτώτης περιγίνεται τοῖς ὁμι- 
ληταῖς αὐτῆς, τοῦτο καὶ διὰ νόμων καὶ ἐϑῶν 
Ἰουδαίοις, ἐπιστήμη τοῦ ἀνωτάτου καὶ πρες- 
βυτάτου πάντων, τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς γενητοῖς 
ϑεοῖς πλάνον ἀπωσαμένοις. 

2 De Abrah. f. 364, § 19. 


8 De vita Mosis I. f. 625, § 27. "Evdvove, 


ὅπερ ἔμελλεν ἐξ ἁπάντων τῶν ἄλλων ἱερᾶσ- 
Sa, τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἀνθϑρῶπων 
ἁπάντων ἀεὶ ποιησόμενον εὐχάς. 

4 De victimis f. 238, at the end, § 3. 

5De victimas offerentib. f. 856, § 12: 
Μηδεὶς μῆτε τελείσϑω τῶν Mwicéwe φοιτη- 
τῶν καὶ γνωρίμων μῆτε τελείτω. 


AT ALEXANDRIA. 53 

These religious philosophers among the Alexandrian Jews, of whom 
we speak, can be rightly understood and judged of, only by taking into 
view their entire position, —the fundamental principle of their system, 
which had been formed out of contradictory elements, —as well as their 
relation to the two opposite parties, between which they were endeavor- 
ing to gain a reconciling mean. On the one hand, they held firmly to 
the religion of their fathers. They were devoted to it with true rev- 
erence and love, and looked upon the records of it as a work of the 
Divine Spirit. Every thing in these records, and particularly in the 
Pentateuch, passed with them as, in one and the same sense, divine. 
From these, in their opinion, were to be drawn all stores of wisdom. 
On the other hand, their minds were preoccupied by a philosophical 
culture at variance with these convictions. They were themselves un- 
conscious of the conflicting elements that filled their minds, and must 
have felt constrained to seek after some artificial method of combining 
them into a harmonious whole. Thus would they be imvoluntarily 
driven to imply in the old records of religion, which for them possessed 
the highest authority, a sense foreign to these records themselves, sup- 
posing all the while, that they were thus really exaltmg their dignity 
as the source of all wisdom. 

As to the parties between which they moved, and which they had 
particularly in mind in their interpretation of the sacred writings, they 
were two; standing related to the two several tendencies, in connection 
with which, also, the philosophy of religion according to Platonism, as 
already set forth by us, had gone on to shape itself among the Pagans ; 
—a skeptical, and a superstitious tendency. On the one side were 
philosophically educated Greeks, who used what they knew of the Old 
Testament Scriptures according to their different turns of thinking; 
either with trifling spirit, to ridicule it, or with more earnestness of 
intention, steppmg forth as defenders of the interests of true piety, 
to charge it with unworthy representations of God.!_ And there were 
Jews themselves, who, under the influence of foreign culture, had broke 
loose from the religion of their fathers, and joined themselves with these 
opponents. On the other side, were those no less arrogant than narrow- 
minded Pharisaical scribes, who would apprehend the things of God 
with fleshly sense, sought the highest wisdom in little verbal refinements, 
and by their grossly literal interpretations were led away into the most 


1 Thus Philo, in his second book de plan- 
tatione Noae, § 17, defends the Old Testa- 
ment against those who found something 
blasphemous in the expression where God 
is called an inheritance (κλῆρος) of men, as, 
for instance, with reference to the Levites. 
Kai viv εἰσί τινες τῶν ἐπιμορφαζόντων 
εὐσέβειαν, ol τὸ πρόχειρον τοῦ λόγου παρα- 
συκοφαντοῦσι, φάσκοντες οὔϑ᾽ ὅσιον οὔτ᾽ 
ἀσφαλὲς λέγειν ἀνϑρώπου ϑεὸν κλῆρον. 
We might suppose that this attack on the 
Old Testament proceeded from Jews, who, 
by the preponderant influence of their Greek 
education, had become alienated from the 


5* 


religion of their fathers, and inclined to a 
certain species of Deism that avoided an- 
thropopathism. But the manner in which 
Philo expresses himself seems more accor- 
dant with the supposition that he had pagans 
in view; for if he were speaking of apostate 
Jews, his language would doubtless have 
been more excited and bitter, as it usually 
is in such cases. The allusion is to such 
pagan accusers of the Old Testament, as it 
seems to me, in a passage to be found only 
in the Armenian translation of quest. in 
Genes. 1. III. § 8, ed Lips. opp. Philon. T. 
VIL. p. 5. } 


54 THE JUDAISM 

absurd and extravagant opinions! men who, from their fundamental 
principle of adhering to the letter, and their low, sensual views, came to 
form the rudest notions of God and divine things, —of God’s shape, of his 
anger, of his arbitrary will, — and by such notions contributed most to 
bring Judaism into contempt with the educated Greeks.? 

Now the object of those Jewish philosophers in religion, like that of 
the heathen Platonists, was, by making the distinction between spirit 
and letter, idea and symbol, in the old records of religion, to strike out 
for themselves a direct middle course betwixt the above mentioned 
extremes. There was this truth lying at the basis of their endeavors, 
that in those exhibitions of truth which belong to the religious province, 
matter and form are not so related to each other as m other writings; 
that here, where the form is something that cannot fully answer to the 
immeasurable greatness of the matter, the mind must read between the 
lines with its thoughts directed towards the divme, im order to a cog- 
nizance of the divine matter in its earthly vessel. This principle had, 
moreover, a special title to be employed im its application to the Old 
Testament, imasmuch as within the latter dwells a spirit enveloped 
under a form still more lmited and more limiting than elsewhere, 
struggling towards a future revelation and development, whereby it 
was destined to be freed from this confinement. But as the conscious- 
ness of this spirit—first revealed by Christianity was to them 
wanting, they might the more naturally, on this very account, allow 
themselves to be guided by a foreign spirit, in interpreting the religion 
of their fathers. It was a foreign principle, borrowed from the Platonic 
philosophy, from which they started in pursuit of the key to the spiritual 
understanding of the Old Testament. Instead of referring its contents 
to the end of practical religion, they were hunting everywhere after 
universal ideas, only hid under an allegorical cover, — such ideas as 
had been formed in their own minds from intercourse with the Platonic 
philosophy. To excite the receptive mind to explore these ideas, they 
represented as the highest aim of those writings. 

One extreme opposed itself to the other. Over against that slavery 
to the letter which characterized a narrow, sensual Rabbinism, stood a 
tendency to evaporate everything into wniversals. The necessary 
means of arriving at a knowledge of the spirit contained under the cover 
of the letter were despised. The overleaping those mediating momenta 
of logical, grammatical and historical interpretation, met its own penalty, 
in the manifold delusions which ensued. Wholly a stranger to the 
history, the manners and the language of the ancient people, and 
despising the rules of grammatical and logical interpretation, a Philo 
found many difficulties in the Greek version of the so called Seventy 
Interpreters, in which he was accustomed to read the Old Testament, 


1 Philo, (de somniis 1. I. f. 580, § 17,) de- 
scribes them thus: Τοὺς τῆς ῥητῆς mpay- 
ματείας σοφιστὰς καὶ λίαν Tag ὀφρῦς ἀνε- 
σπακότας. 

2'Thus Philo, (de plantat. Noae 1. II. f. 
219, § 8,) directs his discourse against those 
who took every thing in a literal sense in 


the account of Paradise. He says of them: 
Πολλὴ καὶ δυσϑεράπευτος ἢ ei era. He 
says, those sensual notions of God led to 
the destruction of practical religion; ἐπ’ 
εὐσεβείας καὶ ὁσίοτητος καϑαιρέσει ἐκϑεσ- 
μότατα ὄντα εὑρέματα. 


AT ALEXANDRIA. 55 
—a version of the O. T. which was not only current at Alexandria, but 
of the highest authority, on account of the story of its miraculous origin. 
They were difficulties, however, which he might have easily solved by 
means of the helps above mentioned. He frequently overlooked here 
the simplest sense, which first offered itself, and instead of this, sought 
amore profound one, which was merely what had been put into the 
words by himself! But in addition to this, that mistaken reverence 
for the sacred writings, that exaggerated view of the influence of the 
Holy Spirit, whereby the inspired writers were considered merely as 
passive organs, contributed no small share in compelling men who 
regarded every thing as in one and the same sense divine, and wholly 
overlooked the medium of connection between the divine and the human, 
to find at the position in which they had thus placed themselves, much 
that was dificult and revolting — much that they must labor to remove 
by an arbitrary spiritualization. Thus the one-sided supernaturalistic 
element of the Jewish position led directly to the opposite extreme of 
an arbitrary rationalism,”—-an error which might have been avoided 
by that method of conciliatory mediation between the supernatural and 
the natural which was presented in our statement of the views of 
Plutarch. 

Yet these Alexandrian Jews were well aware of the difference be- 
tween the mythical religion of other nations and the historical religion 
of their own people. ‘They did consider, it is true, the historical and 
literal sense as a veil for those universal ideas, the communication of 
which to the human mind was the highest aim of God’s revelations; 
but still they insisted also, in the main, on the objective reality and 
truth of the history and of the letter, and ascribed to both their impor- 
tance as a means of religious and moral training for such as could not 
soar to those heights of contemplation. Far was it from their thoughts, 
to deny the reality of the supernatural in the history of their nation, 
and to allow it only an ideal significancy. ‘* He who will not believe the 
miraculous as miraculous,” says Philo, in defending the Old ‘Testament 
history, ‘‘ proves by this, that he knows not God, and that he has never 
sought after Him; for otherwise he would have understood, by looking 
at that truly great and awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, 
that these miracles (referring to the guidance of God’s people) are but 
child’s play for the divine power.? But the truly miraculous has be- 
come despised through familiarity. The unusual, on the contrary, 
although in itself insignificant, yet through our love of novelty, transports 
us with amazement.’ 


2“ Hiner rationalistisch-idealistischen Will- 


1 We have a remarkable example in the 
work Quis rerum divinar. heres, f. 492, § 
16, where, in the phrase ἐξήγαγεν αὐτὸν ἔξω, 
he looks for some deeper meaning, in the 
apparently unnecessary repetition of the 
word ἔξω ; and again, in the case where the 
repetition of the noun, according to the 
Hebrew usage, leads him to conceive of a 
two-fold subject, and furnishes him an oc- 
casion of introducing his idea of the Lo- 


gos. 


kuhr.” 

3 De vité Mosis 1. II. § 88: Ez dé τις τού- 
τοις ἀπιστεῖ, ϑεὸν οὔτ᾽ οἷδεν οὔτ᾽ ἐξήτησε 
πώποτε. Ἔγνω γάρ ἂν εὐϑέως, ὅτι τὰ πα- 
ράδοξα δὴ ταῦτα καὶ παράλογα ϑεοῦ παιδία 
εἰσὶν, ἀπιδὼν εἰς τὰ τῷ ὄντι μεγάλα καὶ 
σπουδῆς ἄξια, γένεσιν οὐρανοῦ. κ. τ. A. 

1 Ταῦτα μὲν πρὸς ἀλήϑειαν ὄντα ϑαυμᾶ- 
σια, καταπεφρόνηται τῷ συνῆϑει. Ta δὲ 
μὴ ἐν ἔϑει καὶ ἂν μικρὰ h καταπληττόμεϑα 
τῷ φιλοκαίνῳ. 


56 THE JUDAISM 


Still they found individual passages, the literal understanding of 
which presented insurmountable difficulties, — difficulties, it might be, 
for any rational apprehension whatever, or for their own minds, at the 
particular position assumed by their philosophy of religion. Such 
especially were those passages, in interpreting which, the Rabbins, 
who explained every thing according to the letter, fell, no doubt, into 
absurd and fantastic representations ; as, for instance, in the account of 
Paradise. Now here, it was beyond the power of the Alexandrians, 
from their own position, to find a means of conciliation between the 
divine and human, answering to the necessities of reason ; as, for example, 
in distinguishing between a fact lying at the bottom, and the purely 
symbolical character of a form of tradition. They were forced to push 
the opposition to the altogether literal mode of apprehension so far as to 
deny the reality of the literal and historical facts throughout, recog-— 
nizing only some ideal truth, some universal thought, that presented 
itself to them out of the train of speculations created by a fusion of the 
Platonic philosophy with religious ideas of Judaism. But it was far 
from the intention of a Philo, in maintaining such views, to derogate 
from the authority of the sacred writings. On the contrary, as he 
referred every thing they contained to the inspiration of the Divine 
Spirit, so he recognized the wisdom of that Spirit in permitting the 
writers actuated by Him, to represent many things in such a form, as, 
literally understood, could give no tenable sense whatever; to the end 
that those who would otherwise be tempted to rest satisfied with the 
bare letter, and search no farther, might be excited to explore that 
ideal sense lying at the bottom ;? to conduct to this, being, in truth, 
the highest aim of the divine revelations. Hence such stones of stumb- 
ling must be scattered here and there, as means of excitement for the 
spiritually blind.® 

Thus there came to be a two-fold position in respect to religion and 
the understanding of its records ;—~a faith clinging fo the letter and to 
the history, and a contemplation soaring to the ideas veiled under the 
historical and the literal facts. The first was, as we see, in the main, 
common to both positions. Yet many individuals separated already 
into opposite parties, at the point where the higher spiritual apprehen- 
sion did not admit of being jomed with an adherence to the reality of 
the literal and historical facts, but these latter must be wholly given up. 
This, however, was not the only difference between the two positions. 
The difference lying at the root, and which developed itself out of this 
root, could not fail to exert a more wide-reaching influence on the whole 
mode of apprehending religion. From this source sprang such opposite 
views as follow. By those who adhered invariably to the principle of a 
barely literal interpretation, whatever had been said after an anthropo- 
pathic manner, in condescension to the sensuous many, concerning 


1 After pointing out the difficulty of un- 2 Μόνον οὐκ ἐναργῶς προτρέπων ἀφίστασ- 
derstanding in a literal sense, the account αι τοῦ ῥητοῦ. Quod deterior potiori insid. 
of.the creation of the woman, in Genesis, ὁ 6. nae ὃ 
Philo concludes thus ; Τὸ ῥητὸν ἐπὶ τούτου ὃ Τὰ σκάνδαλα τῆς γραφῆς, ἀφορμαὶ τοῖς 
μυϑῶδές ἐστι. Legis. alleg. 1. 11. § 7. τυφλοῖς τὴν διανοίαν. 


AT ALEXANDRIA. oT 
God, concerning the wrath of God, concerning His vindictive justice, 
_was taken literally. This apprehension of religion after human analo- 
gies is, for men at such a stage of culture, a necessity, and subserves 
their interest, so far as it deters them from sin by the fear of punishment. 
But those who occupy the higher spiritual position, recognize in all this 
only a pedagogical element, and purify the idea of God from all admix- 
ture of the human.! Τὺ was an opposition, then, between the appre- 
hension of God as man, and the apprehension of God not as man.2 By 
this separation of everything pertaining to man, the idea of God was 
evaporated toa somewhat wholly without attributes, wholly transcend- 
ental; and the Being, (ὄν,) goodness in itself, the Absolute of 
Platonism, was substituted for the Jehovah of the Old Testament. By 
soaring upward, beyond all creaturely existence, the mind, disenfran- 
chising itself from sense, attains to the intellectual intuition of this 
Absolute Bemg, concerning whom it can pronounce only that he is, 
waiving all other determinations, as not answering to the exalted nature 
of the Supreme Essence.? In accordance with this opposition of views, 
is the distinction which Philo makes between those who are in the proper 
sense sons of God, having elevated themselves, by means of contempla- 
tion, to the highest Being, or attained to the knowledge of him in his 
emmediate self-manifestation,t and those who have come to the knowl- 
edge of God only as he declares® himself in his works, in creation, in 
the revelation, still enveloped in the letter, of Holy Writ ; those who 
attach themselves only to the Logos; consider this as the Supreme God 
himself ; — rather sons of the Logos than of the true Being (év.) The 
former, moreover, need no other motives to a moral life, than love to the 
Supreme Being for his own sake ;— the principle of disinterested love 
of God. The others, who find themselves at that lower position, where 
God is known only after the analogy of man, must be trained to virtue 
by the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. Philo himself 
remarks, that answering to the two principles in religion according to 
which God is represented in the one case as man, and in the other, not 


1 This two-fold position is implied, in the Aovor τὸ ὃν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκβιβάσαντες αὐτὸ πάσης 


book Quod Deus immutab. § 11, where the 
writer distinguishes that which answers to 
the truth in itself, and that which had been 
merely so expressed, Τοῦ νουϑετῆσαι χάριν 
τοὺς ἑτέρως μὴ δυναμένους σωφρονίζεσϑαι, 
ὅσα παιδείας καὶ νουϑεσίας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχὶ τῷ 
πεφυκέναι τοιοῦτον εἶναι, λέλεκται. 

2 This opposition between a positive ap- 
prehension of God as man, and a nega- 
tive apprehension of God, to the exclusion 
of all human attributes» and every thing 
anthropopathic, occurs often in Philo’s writ- 
ings. The comparison of Numb. 23: 19, 
and Deut. 1: 31, may be said to be classi- 
cal with him, on this subject. “Ev μὲν, ὅτι 
οὐχ ὡς ἄνϑρωπος ὁ Sede, Erepov δὲ, ὅτι ὡς 
ἄνϑρωπος. Quod Deus immutab. ὁ 11. 
Comp. also the Armenian translation of the 
tract, Quest. in Genes. 1. I. ὁ 55, 

ὃ Οὐδεμᾷ τῶν γεγονότων ἰδέᾳ παραβάλ- 


ποιότητος ψιλὴν ἄνευ χαρακτῆρος τὴν ὕπαρ- 
Ew καταλαμβάνεσϑαι, τὴν κατὰ τὸ εἶναι 
φαντασίαν μόνην ἐνεδέξαντο, μὴ μορφώ- 
σαντες αὐτό. Quod Deus immutab. § 11. 

4 To this knowledge of God in his self- 
manifestation, Philo refers in the following 
passage: Μὴ ἐμφανισϑείης μοι δὶ οὐρανοῦ ἢ 
γῆς ἢ ὕδατος ἢ ἀέρος ἤ τινος ἁπλῶς τῶν ἐν 
γενέσει, μηδὲ κατοπτρισαίμην ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ 
τὴν σὴν ἰδέαν ἢ ἐν σοὶ τῷ ϑεῷ, etc. Vid. Leg. 
allegor. 1. III. § 38. And where he says, 
that as light can be seen only by means of 
light, so God, only by his own self-mani- 
festation. Συνόλως τὸ φῶς ἄρ᾽ οὐ φωτὶ BAé- 
πεται; τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον καὶ ὁ ϑεὸς 
ἑαυτοῦ φέγγος Ov δὶ αὐτοῦ μόνου ϑεωρεῖται. 
De prem. et poen, § 7. 

5 The opposition between ὄν and λόγος, 
εἷναι and λέγεσϑαι. 


58 THE JUDAISM 

as man, are the two principles of fear and of love in religion.1_ Those 
that have attained to the last mentioned stage are to him the men of pure 
entellect or pure spirit, who have freed themselves from the dominion 
of sense. 

Thus, to the sensuous anthropo-morphism and anthropopathism, which 
characterized the grosser mode of apprehension among the Alexandrian 
Jews, Philo opposed a one-sided spiritualism, whereby the idea of God 
was emptied of all determmate contents, — the veal side of the Old 
Testament Theism, the objective truth, and reality at bottom in the 
Old Testament notions of God’s holiness, of his wrath, and of his 
vindictive justice, were totally misapprehended, — whereby-all such 
ideas of God were explained away,—a spiritualism far better suited 
to the Brahminic or the Buddhist system, than to the proper religion of 
the Old Testament. We have here, then, already, the appearance of 
a mystical Rationalism, placed in connection with the Jewish Supra- 
naturalism ;—a prototype of tendencies, which at still later periods, 
more frequently recur, where the simplicity of revealed religion be- 
comes overcharged with human inventions. The same individual, who, 
as we have seen, protested so strongly against the Grecian mysteries, 
introduced into Judaism that aristocratic distinction of the ancient 
world, between an esoteric and an ezoteric religion; and with it, after 
the example of Platonism, the justification of falsehood, as a necessary 
means for training the uninitiated many. 2 

Now it is indeed true, that this mystic Ratonalsm, pushed to its 
extreme consequences, leads to the principle that positive religion 15 to 
be regarded simply as a means for trainmg the many ; a means which 
the wise can afford to dispense with, and which for them has no longer 
any significancy. And this mode of thinking, moreover, was actually 
carried, by many of the Alexandrian Jews, to an extreme where it 
must have finally resulted in the denial of the supra-naturalist principle 
itself. These Jews left off the observance of the éeremonial law, thus 
drawing upon themselves the charge of heresy from the more religious 
class, and may, doubtless, have brought the entire Alexandrian theology 
into bad repute.? ‘¢'The observance of the outward forms of worship,” 
said they, ‘belongs to the many. We, who know that the whole is 
but a symbolical veil of spiritual truth, have enough in the idea, and 
need not concern ourselves with external forms.’’ But with the habit 
of thinking peculiar to Philo and his class, and which has been ex- 


1 Tlap’ 6 μοι δοκεῖ τοῖς προειρημένοις dvot 
κεφαλαίοις τῷ τε “ ὡς ἄνϑρωπος καὶ TO οὐχ’ 
ὡς ἄνϑρωπος ὁ ϑεός" ἕτερα δύο συνυφῆναι 
ἀκόλουϑα καὶ συγγενῆ, φόβον τε καὶ ἀγά- 
anv: τοῖς ϑεοπρεπῶς αὐτὸ δὶ αὐτὸ μόνον τὸ 
ὃν τιμῶσι τὸ ἀγαπᾷν οἰκειότατον, φοβεῖσϑαι 
δὲ ἑτέροις. Quod Deus immutab. § 14. 

2 Vid. Quod Deus immutab. § 14, and de 
Cherubim, ὁ 5, in both which passages the 
well-known words of Plato in the Repub- 
lic, relating to falsehoods that may be jus- 
tified in certain cases, where they can be 
used for the benefit of simple persons or the 


sick. Vid. 1. II. p. 257, 1. II. p. 266, Vol. 
VI. Ed. Bipont. These remarks of Plato, 
which were grounded, indeed, in the whole 
aristocratic spirit of the ancient world, ex- 
erted, through various intermediate chan- 
nels, a great influence on the moral sense 
of men in the first centuries after Christ, 
and even modified a part of Christian edu- 
cation. 

8 Philo de migrat, Abraami, ὁ 16: Εἰσί 
τινες, of τοὺς ῥητοὺς νόμους σύμβολα von- 
τῶν πραγμάτων ὑπολαμβάνοντες, τὰ μὲν 
ἠκρίβωσαν, τῶν δὲ ῥαθύμως ὠλιγώρησαν. 


AT ALEXANDRIA. 59 
plained above, such an extreme, to which his own avowed principles 
led, did not fall in. He says of those more decided and consistent 
Idealists, “‘as if they lived for themselves alone in a desert, or as if 
they were souls without bodies, and knew not anything of human society, 
they despise the faith of the many, and are willing to inquire only after 
pure truth, as it is in itself; when the word of God should have taught 
them to strive after a good name with the people, and to violate none 
of the reigning customs, which divine men, who were superior to us, 
have founded. As we must take care of the body, because it is the 
soul’s mansion, so are we bound to be solicitous for the observance of 
the letter of the law. When we observe this, that also will become 
clearer, of which the letter is a symbol; and we shall escape thereby 
the censures and upbraidings of the multitude.” 1 

In Egypt, the native land, in after times, of the anchorite and 
monastic life, this contemplative bent of the religious mind, which we 
have described thus far, led to results somewhat analogous to that later 
phenomenon. With a view of devoting themselves wholly to the con- 
templation of divine things, many withdrew from the world and retired 
into solitude. Philo was one of these ;— but he was forced to learn, 
from his own experience, that the man carries his mward enemy into 
solitude with him,—that he cannot flee from himself and the world 
within his own breast. He gives us, himself, the result of his expe- 
rience.2 * Often I left kindred, friends, and country, and retired into 
the wilderness, that I might raise my thoughts to worthy contempla- 
tions: but I accomplished nothing so ; — my thoughts, either scattered 
abroad, or, wounded by some impure impression, fell into the opposite 
current. But sometimes I find myself alone with my soul, in the midst 
of thousands, when God dispels the tumult from my breast; and so 
He teaches me that it is not change of place that brings evil or good; 
but all depends on that God who steers the ship of the soul in the 
direction he pleases.” Already among the Alexandrian Jews arose 
the opposition between a contemplative and a practical direction of the 
religious life, of which Philo testifies, — the opposition between efforts 
directed solely towards the human, and those directed solely to the 
divine ?— the Therapeutic life, devoted entirely to God, and the moral 
life, devoted entirely to exhibitions of love for man. Already was the 
same spectacle witnessed, which, at later periods, became a common 
occurrence in the large cities. The opposition of the worldly to the 
contemplative ascetic propensity became the occasion of divisions in 
the domestic circle. Philo observes that he knew many a father, given 
to luxurious living, to be abashed by the abstemious, philosophic life of 
a son, and for that reason to retire from all intercourse with him.* 


1 De migrat. Abraami, f. 402. 

2 Leg. allegor. 1. II. § 21. 

8 As Philo describes it. Of the latter 
tendency he says: "ἄκρατον ἐμφορησώμενοι 
Tov εὐσεβείας πόϑον πολλὰ χαίρειν φρά- 
σαντες ταῖς ἄλλαις πραγματείαις ὅλον ἀνέ- 
ϑεσαν τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ϑεραπείᾳ ϑεοῦ. Οἱ 
δὲ οὐδὲν ἔξω τῶν πρὸς ἀνϑρώπους δικαίων 
ὑποτοπήσαντες εἷναι μόνην τὴν πρὸς ἀνϑρώ- 
πους ὁμιλίαν ἠσπάσαντο, τῶν τε ἀγαϑῶν 


τὴν χρῆσιν ἐξ ἴσου πᾶσι παρέχοντες διὰ 
κοινωνίας ἵμερον καὶ τὰ δεινὰ κατὰ δύναμιν 
ἐπικουφίζειν ἀξιοῦντες. The φιλόϑεοι and 
the φιλάνϑρωποι. De decalogo, § 22. 

4 Ἤδη δὲ καὶ πατέρας οἷδα διὰ τὸ ἄβρο- 
δίαιτον, αὐστηρὸν καὶ φιλόσοφον βίον παι- 
δῶν ἐκτραπομένους καὶ δὶ αἰδῶ τὸν ἀγρὸν 
πρὸ τῆς πόλεως οἰκεῖν ἑλομένους. De pro- 
fugis, § 1. 


60 THE THERAPEUTA. 


As Philo was anxious to find a just middle course between that class 
who were entangled in the letter, and the Spiritualists in religion, so 
again, he sought after some method of conciliation between the two 
last mentioned tendencies, the practical and the contemplative, the 
anthropological and the theological. He held a combination of them 
both to be the more perfect way, and looked upon each, by itself and 
separated from the other, as but half the whole! The discipline of 
the practical life seemed to him the first step of purification and prepa- 
ration necessary for entering the entirely contemplative life. Already 
he felt himself called upon to protest against the exaggerated estimate 
put on the ascetic life. ‘‘ When you see one,” says he, “‘ who never 
takes his food or his drink at the proper time, or who disdains the bath 
and the unction, or who neglects the clothing of his body, or torments 
himself with a hard couch and night watchings, deceiving himself with 
this show of abstemiousness, inform him of the true way to continence, 
for the course he has chosen is labor to no purpose. By hunger, and 
the other kinds of self-torture, he is destroymg both body and soul.” 2 
He speaks of people who, without being ripe for such a step, rushed 
suddenly on a strictly Therapeutic life, the renunciations of which they 
were too weak to endure, and hence were soon forced to abandon it.® 
And he must rebuke also the secret wickedness covered up under the 
outside show of a rigid asceticism.* “‘ Truth,” says he, “ may rightly 
complain of those who, without any previous trial of themselves, leave 
the occupations and trades of social life, and say they have renounced 
its honors and its pleasures. They wear contempt for the world as an 
outside show, but do not really contemn it. That slovenly, austere 
look, that abstemious and miserable life, they use as baits; as if they 
were friends to strict morals and the government of self. But closer 
observers, who penetrate within, and are not to be led wrong by out- 
ward appearances, cannot be imposed upon thus.”’ Philo would have 
those persons only who had been tried in the active duties of social 
life, pass over to the contemplative ; as the Levites were permitted to 
rest from the active service of the temple only after having passed 
their fiftieth year. Human virtue should go first, — the divine follow 
after.® 

This ascetic, contemplative propensity, which we observed in the 
bud among the Alexandrian Jews, gave birth to a spiritual society, 
composed of men and unmarried women, which sprung up in the 
neighborhood of Alexandria; a society, whose name simply, — the 
T herapeutee,° — denotes the striving after a life abstracted from worldly 
things and consecrated to the contemplation of God. Their principal 
seat was in a quiet and pleasant district on the border of lake Moers, 


1 Ἡμιτελεῖς τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὁλόκληροι of wap’ ἀρεσκείαν καὶ τὸν συνεχῆ Kal ἀκᾶματον πό- 
ἀμφοτέροις εὐδοκιμοῦντες. De decalogo, § voy ἢ" Pgs De profugis, § 7. 
> . ὁ. ὃ 6. 
2 The tract Quod déterior potiori insid. 5 Τνωρίσϑητε οὖν πρότερον τῇ κατ᾽ ἀνϑρώ- 
ἱ πους ἀρετῇ, ἵνα καὶ τῇ πρὸς ϑεὸν συσταϑῆτε. 
8 Such as went ἐπ’ αὐλὰς τῆς ϑεραπείας De profugis, f. 555, § 6. 
and ϑᾶττον ἢ mpoceAVeiv ἀπεπήδεσαν, τὴν 6 Θεραπευταὶ καὶ ϑεραπευτρίδες. 
᾿αὐστηρὰν δίαιταν αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἄῦπνον 


THE THERAPEUT. 61 


not far from Alexandria. Here they lived, like the later anchorites, 
shut up singly in their cells,! their only employment being prayer and 
the contemplation of divine things. The basis of their contemplation 
was an allegoric interpretation of scripture, and they had old theosophie 
writings, which served to guide them in their more profound investi- 
gations of scripture, according to the principles of the Alexandrian 
Hermeneutics. Bread and water constituted their only diet, and they 
practised frequent fasting. They ate nothing until evening, for through 
contempt of the body they were ashamed, so long as sun-light was 
visible, to take sensible nourishment, to acknowledge this dependence 
on the world of sense. Many of them fasted for three or even six 
days in succession. Every sabbath they came together, and as the 
number seven was particularly sacred with them, they held a still more 
solemn convocation once in every seven weeks. They celebrated, on 
this occasion, a simple love-feast, consisting of bread seasoned with salt 
and hyssop; mystic discourses were delivered, hymns which had been 
handed down from old tradition were sung, and amidst choral music, 
dances of mystic import were kept up late into the night. The pas- 
sage of their fathers through the Red Sea, on their departure from 
Egypt, is supposed to have been symbolically represented by the 
exhibition of these choirs and dances. As they were used to give to 
all historical facts a higher sense, bearing upon the life of the spirit, it 
is not improbable that they had something of the like nature in view in 
this celebration. Perhaps they considered the departure from Egypt 
as a symbol of the deliverance of the spirit from the bondage of sense, 
of its elevation from sensible things to the divine.” 

Many features of relationship between the sect of the Therapeute 
and that of the Essenes, might seem to render probable the derivation 
of the one from the other; and this is the prevailing opinion in modern 
times. It might be fancied also that the same signification was to be 
recognized in the names of both these communities; for if we follow 
the derivation which Philo himself favors in a passage of the book 
concerning the Therapeutic mode of life, —and the name of this sect, 
according to one sense of the radical Greek word, signifies a physician, 
and the Essenes* so denominated themselves, as physicians of the soul 
and of the body, — it would be evident that the one is but a translation 
of the other. But this explanation of the name of the Therapeutz 
can hardly be considered the right one. On the contrary, it suits 
much better with the peculiar spiritual bent of the Therapeutz, and 
with the theological language of the Alexandrians, if we suppose they 
applied this name to themselves, as the genuine spiritual worshippers 
of God, the Contemplatists.t The features of resemblance between 


1 Σεμνεῖα, μοναστήρια. mas offerentib. f. 854. ἱκέται καὶ ϑερα- 
2 See Philo de sacrif. Abel et Caini,§ 17: πευταὶ τοῦ ὄντως ὄντος. De monarchia, f. 
Διάβασις ἐπὶ ϑεὸν τοῦ γεννητοῦ καὶ φϑαρ- 816. ἀνδρὸς ἱκέτου καὶ φιλοϑέου ϑεὸν μόνον 
τοῦ τὸ πώσχα εἴρηται. ϑεραπεύειν ἀξιοῦντος. De decalogo, f. 760. 
8 After the Chaldee ὍΝ, physician. οἱ πολλὰ χαίρειν φρώσαντες ταῖς ἄλλαις 
# Philo often uses the following expres- πραγματείαις, ὅλον ἀνέϑεσαν τὸν οἰκεῖον 
sions as synonymous: — γένος Separev- βίον ϑεραπείᾳ ϑεοῦ. L. ΠΙ. de νᾶ 
Ζ : ὃ 7 Mosis, f. 681. τὸ ϑεραπευτικὸν αὐτοῦ (τοῦ 
τικὸν, γένος ἱκετικὸν, γένος ὁρατικὸν, ὃ Seach uc ρ 
᾿ Ἰσραὴλ = ἀνὴρ ὁρῶν τὸν ϑεὸν. De victi- 200) γένος. 
VOL. I. 6 


62 JUDAISM. 
these societies, as well in the form of their association as in the circum- 
stance of their repudiating slavery, as a thing contrary to nature, are 
yet by no means such as to warrant the theory of an outward connection. 
Analogous tendencies of the Jewish mind in Palestine, and of the 
Jewish-Alexandrian mind in Egypt, might have easily produced two 
such mystic fraternities, dependently of one another, with a form 
adapted to the different countries. The Hssenes owed their origin, as 
we have seen, to the existence of a practical mysticism, which is ever 
wont to be called forth by such party oppositions as were there mani- 
fested ; and the society of the Therapeutz appears to us as a natural 
efflux of the peculiar religious tendency which had developed itself 
among the Alexandrian Jews. 

Neither the Essenes nor the Therapeute ought to be regarded as 
isolated phenomena, confined exclusively to certain countries. There 
were in this case, more general tendencies, which belonged to the signs 
of the times, at work beneath the surface ; and the influence of such 
tendencies was at that time more widely spread than in Palestine and 
Egypt. In manifold forms of appearance which the history of Jewish- 
Christian sects, in the first centuries after Christ, leads us to recog- 
nize or to presuppose, this influence is distinctly visible.? : 

Having thus given an outline of the different main directions of the 
religious and theological mind among the Jews, we would now consider 
more particularly the relation of the same to Christianity. Looking 
at the great mass of the Jewish people, we find that the predomimance 
of the worldly spirit, which would apprehend the divine under notions 
of sense, the rage for the wonderful described by St. Paul, confidence 
in the inalienable rights of their theocratic descent according to the 
flesh and in the outward show of legal righteousness, constituted the 
chief obstacles to the reception of the gospel. Whenever men, in this 
position of mind, were led, under the impulse of-momentary impres- 
sions, to embrace Christianity, it might easily happen, that because 
they saw their earthly expectations were not fulfilled, and they had 
always remained Jews in their mode of thinking, they would soon 
renounce again in the same outward way, that to which properly they 
had always remained strangers. Or if they continued to be Christians 
outwardly, they were never penetrated with the spirit of the gospel. 
Christianity itself, they apprehended only after a fleshly manner, mix- 
ing it up with all their Jewish delusions ; and the faith in one God, as 
well as in Jesus as the Messiah, they converted into an opus operatum, 
wholly without influence on the inner life. They were such men as 
Justin Martyr describes,? who deceived themselves with the notion, that 
although they were sinners, if they did but have the knowledge of 


1 The language of Philo himself intimates 
this, when he says of the Therapeutz : 
Πολλαχοῦ μὲν οὖν τῆς οἰκουμένης ἐστὶ Tov- 
το τὸ γένος. Ἔδει γὰρ ἀγαϑοῦ τελείου 
μετασχεῖν καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ τὴν Βαρβα- 
pov. De vita contemplativa, § 3. 

2 In the dialogue, c. Tryph. f. 370. The 
words of Justin Martyr directed against 


such Jews, arguing that there can be no 
forgiveness of sin without repentance: 
"AAN οὐχ ὡς ὑμεῖς ἀπατᾶτε ἑαυτοὺς καὶ 
ἄλλοι τινὲς ὅμοιοι ὑμῖν κατὰ τοῦτο, οἱ 
λέγουσιν, ὅτι Kev ἁμαρτωλοὶ ὧσι, ϑεὸν δὲ 
γινώσκωσιν, οὐ μὴ λογίσηται αὐτοῖς κύριος 
ἁμαρτίαν. 


ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 63 


God,! the Lord would not charge sin to their account ; such falsifiers 
of the gospel as the apostle Paul often rebukes ; such nominal Christ- 
jans as James writes against. But as the Pagans, on the other hand, 
could not be under the same temptation to hold a merely preparatory 
position as the end itself, as Christianity must have presented itself to 
them as in direct opposition to what they were before, hence it was the 
case, as Justin Martyr affirms, that converts, in greater numbers and of 
more genuine character, proceeded from the body of the Pagans, than 
from the great mass of the Jews.?_ Yet in every case, where the feel- 
ing of the higher necessities of man’s nature, the recipiency for the 
divine element, made its appearance, although it might be enveloped 
under some still predominating element of sense, Christianity could 
find an entrance through all such obstacles. The expectation of the 
Messiah, although clouded by a strong coloring of sense, could prepare 
the way for it to such hearts, and they would then go on to become 
continually more spiritual in their views, through the power of Christ- 
ian faith. 

As to the particular systems of Jewish theology which have passed 
under our review, it may be observed, first, of the cold, egoistic Sad- 
duceeism, which suffered no aspiration after things beyond the limits of 
an earthly existence to emerge, that it presented no point of union 
whatever for the gospel. At least, even in that case where the gospel 
found, as it did everywhere, a medium of entrance in the simply human 
element at bottom, which could not be wholly suppressed, the conver- 
sion of the Sadducees was not one for which the way had been pre- 
pared by the previous mode of thinking: and for the very reason that 
the previously existing habit of thought formed here no transition-point, 
and no medium of union between the two, it is impossible to conceive 
of any intermingling of Sadduceeism with Christianity. Where it has 
been attempted to find the traces of such a mixture, in the case of 
some deniers of the doctrine of the resurrection in the apostolic age, 
this has been done without any sufficient grounds, — as the fact may be 
traced to altogether different causes.® 

In the case of the Pharisees, spiritual pride, self-righteousness, the 
narrowness and arrogance of a dead scripture-learning, and the 
absence of what our Saviour terms poverty of spirit, were in general, 
the hindrances to faith. We must be careful, however, to distinguish 
among the Pharisees, the two classes, which have been already pointed 
out. Τὸ those who, from the legal position, were striving with a certain 
honest earnestness after righteousness, the law might, without doubt, 
serve in the end as a school master to bring them to Christ. Through 
that painful struggle described by Paul, from his own experience, in 
the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans, they might obtain 
peace in believing. But those Pharisees who came to Christianity 


1 Such vain and empty knowledge of God νοῦς, ἀληϑέστεροι of ἄπὸ τῶν ἐϑνῶν καὶ 
as that which St. John is contending against πιστότεροι. 
in his first epistle. 8 See my History of the Planting and 
2 Justin Martyr, Apolog. 1. II. f. 88. Training of the Christian Church by the 
Πλείονάς τε καὶ ἀληϑεστέρους τοὺς ἐξ ἐϑνῶν Apostles. 
τῶν ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων καὶ Σαμαρέων χριστια- 


64 ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM. 


without passing through any such crisis of the inner life, might be 
liable to the temptation of blending their previous Pharisaical mode of 
thinking with the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, — who for 
them, however, was not in any true sense, the Saviour,—and of wishing 
at the same time, to hold fast by their righteousness of works. 

In Christianity there was also present an element of mysticism. 
And on this side it might particularly attract that description of 
religious mind which was exhibited in the societies of the Essenes and 
Therapeutz. But the mystic element, carried to an undue extreme, 
which suppressed everything else that belongs to the purely human in 
our nature, might mislead men to shut themselves up within a little 
contracted circle of feeling and intuitions, and to bar themselves 
against every other influence which might strive to reach them. To 
meet Christianity with that poverty of spirit which it requires, must 
often have been the hardest task, also, for sweh men, if they must start 
from the position of their imagined spiritual perfection. And even if, 
attracted by the mystic element in Christianity, they surrendered to 
its power, yet they could not have appropriated to themselves that 
poverty of spirit, in any such measure as to be able to receive Christ- 
ianity into their hearts in its unstinted entireness. Easily might such 
persons be tempted to carry over with them their supercilious the- 
osophy and asceticism, insomuch that the divine foolishness of the 
gospel must forfeit its true character ; and this was the source whence 
sprung many sects, corrupting in their influence on Christianity, the 
germs of which we find already in the epistle of Paul to the Colossians, 
and in his pastoral letters. 

As to the Alexandrian theology, there were in it, as we have seen, 
two elements, —a mystico-rationalist element, sprung from the in- 
fluence of the Platonic philosophy on the Jewish theism; and a supra- 
naturalist element, derived from the Jewish national spirit and educa- 
tion. These were blended together, or they might‘ be said, rather, to 
subsist one beside the other, than to be united by any sort of orgamic 
interpenetration. Unless a new and higher power had come in to 
influence this process of development, one of two things must, doubt- 
less, have been the final result; either the supra-naturalist element . 
would have been overpowered and crushed by the mystzco-rationalist, 
or the latter of these by the former. And if the last had been the 
case, the Alexandrian theology might then have paved the way for a 
certain mystic religion of reason, which had used historical Judaism 
simply as a symbolical drapery. Whoever, now, is unable to perceive 
the significancy of faith in a God above nature —the significancy of 
Christianity as a religion proceeding out of supernatural facts in 
history, —to him this greatest among all the great phenomena in the 
history of the world, whereby the faith im a positive religion was once 
more introduced with such overwhelming power among men, must ap- 
pear like the stumbling upon a monstrous retrograde step, by means of 
which the race was placed ages back from the goal which it had been 
already on the very point of reaching. Considered from such a point 
of view, it could not but be regretted, that instead of a primal type of 


ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 65 
humanity — that ethereal idea of Alexandrian theology, — the Son of 
man must appear in flesh and blood ; instead of an ideal word, the 
Word that became flesh must dwell among us. Yet the scanty thoughts 
that are constantly recurring under manifold shapes in the writings of 
Philo, the representative of that tendency, witness of its poverty, 
and show that without the infusion of a new creative spirit of life, it 
must have led of itself to its own dissolution. 

Those two elements, combined together in the Alexandrian theology, 
might operate in different ways, — either to secure a point of union 
for Christianity, or to call forth an opposition to it. 

The preponderance of Grecian culture and of the idealist element 
operated in the case of these Alexandrian Jews, as doubtless, also, of 
others over whom the Grecian culture generally had acquired great 
influence, — as for instance, of a Josephus, — very much to repress 
the expectation of a personal Messiah. With this expectation van- 
ished the most important pomt of agreement and possible union 
between their system and Christianity; but with it vanished also that 
stone of stumbling, which the preaching of the cross must have proved 
to such as gave an earthly shaping to that idea of the Messiah. But 
yet we cannot suppose that the Alexandrian theology could have 
stripped away all those expectations, which were so deeply rooted in 
the religious spirit of the Jewish people, and so closely imterwoven 
with the national sympathies and the national pride itself. Even 
Philo expresses the conviction that the Mosaic law, the temple, and 
the temple service are designed for perpetuity. Regarding the 
calamities of the Jews as a righteous punishment, he cherished the 
hope, that when they should one day become converted, they would be 
gathered from all the nations among which they were scattered or in 
captivity, by some extraordinary appearance from heaven, and led 
back to Jerusalem. Their piety, inspiring reverence and awe, would 
repress the attacks of their enemies, or secure the victory on their 
side. Then would a golden age begin from Jerusalem. Every thing 
would be again restored to that primeval state from which mankind had 
become estranged by their fall from the heavenly image. All nature 
would then become once more subject to man, and no hostile power 
remain behind to annoy him.? We see here what peculiar shaping 


ship of God could cease to be connected 
with it. 
2 See Philo’s tract, de execrationib. § 9: 


1 Vid. de vita Mosis, 1. 11. § 3, concerning 
the Mosaic laws. Τὰ dé τούτου μόνου βέ- 
Baa, ἀσάλευτα μένει παγίως ἀφ᾽ ἧς ἡμέρας 


ἐγράφη μέχρι νῦν καὶ πρὸς ἔπειτα πάντα 
διαμένειν ἐλπὶς ἀυτὰ αἰῶνα ὥσπερ ἀϑάνατα, 
Ewe ἂν ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ ὁ σύμπας οὐρα- 
νός τε Καὶ κόσμος Ὦ. And concerning the 
revenues of the temple at Jerusalem, he 
says, that they will endure as long as this hu- 
man race and the world. Ἐφ’ ὅσον τὸ 
ἀνϑρώπων γένος διαμενεῖ, ἀεὶ καὶ αἱ πρόςο- 
dot τοῦ ἱεροῦ φυλαχϑήσονται συνδιαιωνίζου- 
σαι παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ. De monarch. 1. II. ὁ 
8. So far was he from thinking that the 
temple would ever be destroyed, or the wor- 


6* 


Oi πρὸ μικροῦ σποράδες ἐν Ἑλλάδι Kat 
Βαρβάρῳ, κατὰ νήσους καὶ κατὰ ἠπείρους 
ἀναστάντες ὁρμῇ μιᾷ πρὸς ἕνα συντείνουσιν 
ἀλλαχόϑεν ἄλλοι τὸν ἀποδειχϑέντα χῶρον 
ξεναγούμενοι πρός τινος ϑειοτέρας ἢ κατὰ 
φύσιν ἀνϑρωπίνην ὄψεως ἀδήλου μὲν ἑτέ- 
ροις, μόνοις δὲ τοῖς ἀνασωζομένοις ἐμφανοῦς. 
Comp. de prem. et poenis, § 19. Concern- 
ing the reconciliation of nature with re- 
formed man, where he had certain passages 
of the prophets before his mind, consult de 
prem. et poenis, § 15. 


66 ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM. 
the common Jewish notions of the Messiah’s time and the attendant 
phenomena had taken, in the spiritualizing schools of the Alexandrians. 

Thus was Christianity met in the present case also, not indeed by 
the craving after a personal Messiah, but yet by a desire for the 
universal re-establishment of the Theocracy, —for a glorious state of 
the world. It is possible that, with the doctrine concerning the oppo- 
sition between the idea and its manifestation ; with the recognition of 
a defect,! inherent in everything that appears in the world of sense ; 
with the excited aspiration after a godlike life, raised above all sensual 
alloy, might be aroused the sense of a need of redemption, — the idea of 
it, and faith in its actual realization. Thus many of the peculiar ideas 
belonging to the Alexandrian philosophy of religion, as for imstance, 
the idea of a mediating divine Word, through whom the world is con- 
nected with God; of his high-priestly office in relation to the phenom- 
enal world; of the first heavenly man; of a godlike life? might, by 
conducting to Christianity, become converted from a mere ideal 
element into a real one. Christianity might present itself to men of 
this Alexandrian school, as a Gnosis, which now for the first time 
taught a right understanding of the spirit of the Old Testament. The 
epistle ascribed to Barnabas contains examples of such points of 
transition, through which men of Alexandrian culture might be led 
over to Christianity. 

But it is possible, too, that the mystico-rationalist element in the 
system of the Alexandrian Jews, which, in its self-sufficiency, would not 
admit the want of any new revelations, as well as the Jewish, which 
held fast to the traditional religious forms as of eternal validity, might 
oppose itself to Christianity. And both these tendencies combining 
together, might lead to peculiar corruptions of it; on the one side, by 
introducing an idealistic element, resolving everything else into itself, 
and the distinction between esoteric and exoteric religious doctrine ; on 
the other, by making of it merely a spiritualized Judaism. We shall 
come across these influences again in the history of sects. 

Individual ideas of the Alexandrian theology found their way also 
into those regions where the writings and studies of these men had not 
been introduced. They were connected with a doctrine concerning 
spirits, formed out of Jewish Oriental elements. There was a longing 
to lift the veil which covers the world of spirits, to have fellowship 
with it. Men busied themselves with legends and fictions respecting 
apparitions of the highest intelligences under the envelope of a human 
body. It was such a vague forebodimg tendency of mind, impatient 


1“Tf God willed to judge the human 
race without mercy, He could only condemn 
them, since no man remains free from fault 


pic ἀληϑινῆς Cope. Legis allegor. I. ὁ 12. 
But such language might easily proceed 
from the same common source of the mind, 


from his birth to his death.” Quod Deus and it is only the most narrow understand- 
immutab. ὁ 16. The συγγενεῖς παντὶ yev- ing that can suppose, that in ag case 
νητῷ κῆρες. ---- Παντὶ γεννητῷ καὶ ἂν orov- where it occurs, it must have been derived 


δαῖον Ἦ, παρ᾽ ὅσον ἧλϑεν εἰς γένεσιν, συμφυ- 
ἐς τὸ ἁμαρτώνον. Hence the necessity of 
sin offerings. De vita Mosis, 1. III. § 17. 

2 Ζωὴ αἰώνιος ἡ πρὸς τὸ ὃν καταφυγῆ. De 
profugis, § 15. Ζωὴ ἀΐδιος. 18. Δύνα- 


from Philo, or at least from this Alexan- 
drian theology. 

8 Simon Magus, for instance, who appro- 
priated to himself ideas of this sort that 
were floating about in the East. See also 


PROSELYTES. 67 


of the limits of this earthly existence, and aspiring after communications 
from the unseen world, that preceded and accompanied the highest 
revelation. 

Among the remarkable coincidences which prepared the way for the 
appearance of Christianity, must be reckoned the dispersion of the 
Jews among Greeks and Romans. Those of them who were Phar- 
isaically disposed, took great pains to make proselytes. The wavering 
authority of the old national religions, the unsatisfied religious necessities 
of so many, came in to aid them. Reverence for that powerful being, 
the God of the Jewish people ; for the hidden sanctities of the magnifi- 
cent temple of Jerusalem, had long since found its way among pagans. 
Jewish magicians (Goetz) ventured on many deceptive tricks, in the 
employment of which they were extremely skilful, to produce surprise 
and bewilderment. Hence the inclination to Judaism, particularly in 
several of the large capital towns, had become so widely extended, 
that, as it is well known, the Roman authors, in the time of the first 
emperors, often make it a subject of complaint; and Seneca, in his 
tract concerning superstition, could say of the Jews, ‘‘ the conquered 
have given laws to the conquerors.’! The Jewish proselyte-makers, 
blind teachers of the blind, having no conception of the essential 
character of the religion themselves, could impart none to others. 
Substituting a dead particularistic monotheism in the place of poly- 
theism, they led those who chose them as guides, often merely to 
exchange one superstition for another ; and so furnished them with new 
means for hushing the accusations of their conscience ---- whence our 
Saviour’s rebuke, directed against this class of men, that they made 
their proselytes two-fold more the children of hell, than themselves. 
But here, however, we must distinguish with precision, the two classes 
of proselytes: the proselytes in the strict sense of the word, the prose- 
lytes of justice, who took upon them circumcision and the whole cere- 
monial law ; and the proselytes in the wider sense, the proselytes of the 
gate, who simply pledged themselves to the renunciation of idolatry, 
to the worship of God, to abstain from the pagan excesses, and from 
everything that seemed to stand connected with idolatry. The former 
class usually became slaves to all Jewish superstition and fanaticism, 
and allowed themselves to be led blindfold by their Jewish teachers. 
The more difficult they had found it to bow themselves to a yoke which 
must have proved so burdensome to the national habits of a Greek or 
a Roman, the observance of the Jewish ceremonial law, the less could 
they be made conscious that all this should have been to no purpose, 
that they enjoyed thereby no advantage over others, that they should 
renounce this imagined righteousness. Hence such proselytes were 
often the fiercest persecutors of Christianity, and suffered themselves 
to become tools of the Jews, in exciting the pagans against the Chris- 
tians. It is to this class, the language of Justin Martyr to the Jews 
should be applied. “The proselytes do not simply not believe, but 
the fragment of the apocryphal writing, 1 Victoribus victi leges dederunt. 


Προςευχὴ Ἰωσὴφ, in Orig. in Joann. T. 11. 2 The so called seven precepts of Noah. 
§ 25. 8 His words are as follows: (Dialog. ὁ. 


68 PROSELYTES. 


they blaspheme the name of Christ two-fold more than yourselves, — 
and they would murder and torture us, who do believe on him; for 
they strive in every respect to become like you.” Those proselytes 
of the gate, on the other hand, had adopted from the Jewish system 
the principles of theism, without becommg wholly Jews. They had 
obtained some knowledge of the sacred writings of the Jews, and had 
heard of the great Teacher and King who was to come,—the Messiah. 
In what they had read in that Greek translation of the Old Testament, 
which to a reader not a Jew was often wholly unintelligible, or in what 
they had heard from Jewish teachers, there was much that still remained 
dark to them, — they were in the condition of inquirers. By means 
of the ideas they had acquired from the Jews, concerning the unity of 
God, the divine government of the world, the divine judgment, con- 
cernmg the Messiah, they were better prepared for the gospel than 
other pagans ; — and because they believed themselves already to have 
less ; because they had, as yet, no perfected system of religion, and 
were eager for new instruction in divine things; because they had no 
sympathy with Jewish prejudices; for all these reasons, the gospel 
could find its way more easily to them than to the native Jews. From 
the beginning, their attention must have been drawn to a doctrine which 
engaged, without making them Jews, to secure for them a full partici- 
pation in the fulfilment of all those promises of which the Jews had 
told them. Hence it was to these proselytes of the gate, (the φοβούμενοι 
τὸν θεὸν, εὐσεβεῖς, of the New Testament,) that the preaching of the 
gospel was usually directed, according to the Acts of the Apostles, 
after it had been rejected by the blinded Jews; and here the seed of 
the divine word found not unfrequently a receptive soil, in souls anxious 
for salvation. ‘There were those also, without doubt, among the prose- 
lytes of the gate, who, falling short of the true earnestness in seeking 
after religious truth, were only wishing, in every case, to have a con- 
venient way which would lead to heaven without the necessity of self 
denial, and who, undecided between Judaism and paganism, in order, 
at all events, to go safe, sometimes invoked Jehovah in the synagogue, 
and sometimes the gods in the temples.1 


Tryph. f. 350,) Oi δὲ προσήλυτοι ob μόνον given a picture of this class of men, the 
ob πιστεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ διπλότερον ὑμῶν BAa- inter utrumque viventes : 
σφημοῦσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς Inter utrumque putans dubie vivendo cavere, 
εἰς ἐκεῖνον πιστεύοντας καὶ φονεύειν καὶ apa a lege dooney i nase proedia ἢ 

͵ , a ΤΡ spin ei uid in synagoga decurris ariseeos 
alKicecy βούλονται, OTE GUIS EO ΑΕ Ut tibi misericors fiat, quem denegas ultto ? 
ἐξομοιοῖσϑαι σπεύδουσ at ; Exis inde foris, iterum tu fana requiris. 
1 Commodianus, in his Instructions, has 


ΟΠ TS TORY. 


SECTION FIRST. 


RELATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 
I. PROMULGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 


1. Promulgation of Christianity generally ; Hindrances to its Spread ; 
Causes and Means of its Progress. 


IF we contemplate the essential character of Christianity in its rela- 
tion to the religious state of the world as it has just been described, 
we shall be at no loss to see what it was that tended on the one hand 
to further, and on the other to retard the progress of the christian 
faith. Our Saviour referred to the signs of the times as witnessing 
of him, — and, in like manner, this contemplation will disclose to us, 
in the movements of the intellectual world then going on, the signs 
which heralded the new and great epoch in the history of the world ; 
and it will be clear to us that, as has been intimated in the introduction, 
the same tendencies, which, singly and by themselves, presented the 
stoutest opposition to Christianity, and most effectually debarred its 
entrance, must, when combined together, only serve to hasten its 
triumph. It was a fact grounded in the relation of Christianity to the 
point of attainment which the general life of humanity had then 
reached, that the obstacles opposing themselves to the power which 
was destined to the sovereignty of the world, were converted into 
means for its advancement. We must therefore contemplate both in 
their connection with each other. 

What, in the first place, particularly served to make possible and to 
facilitate the introduction of such a religion everywhere, was its own 
peculiar character, as one raised above every kind of outward, sensible 
form, and hence capable of entermg into all the existing forms of 
human society, sce it was not its aim to found a kingdom of this 
world. How Christianity could adapt itself to all earthly relations, 
and, while it allowed men still to remain in them, yet by the new spirit 
which it gave them, the divine life which it breathed into them, how 
it was enabled to raise men above these relations, is distinctly set before 
us by a Christian, living in the early part of the second century, who 

thus describes his contemporaries:1 “‘ The Christians are not separated 


1 The author of the letter to Diognet. 


70 CONFLICT WITH UNGODLINESS. 


from other men by earthly abode, by language, or by customs. They 
dwell nowhere in cities by themselves; they do not use a different 
language, or affect a singular mode of life. They dwell in the cities 
of the Greeks, and of the Barbarians, each as his lot has been cast ; 
and while they conform to the usages of the country, in respect to 
dress, food, and other things pertaining to the outward life, they yet 
show a peculiarity of conduct wonderful and striking to all. They 
obey the existing laws, and conquer the laws by their own living.” 

But this same loftier spirit, which could merge itself in all the forms 
it found at hand, must yet, while it coalesced with all the purely human, 
come into conflict with all the wngodly nature of mankind, with what- 
ever issued from it and was connected with it. It announced itself as 
a power aiming at the renovation of the world; and the world sought 
to maintain itself in its old ungodly character. While Christ came not 
to destroy but to fulfil, so too he came not to bring peace upon the 
earth, but the sword. Hence the necessary collision with prevailing 
modes of thinking and manners. Christianity could find entrance every- 
where, precisely because it was the religion of God’s sovereignty in the 
heart, and excluded from itself every political element; but to the 
fundamental position of the old world, which Christianity was to over- 
throw, belonged religion as an institution of the State. The pagan 
religion, as such, was so closely interwoven with the entire civil and 
social life, that whatever attacked the one, must soon be brought into 
conflict also with the other.. This conflict might, in many cases at least, 
have been avoided, if the early Church, like that of later times, had 
been inclined to accommodate itself to the world, more than the holi- 
ness of Christianity allowed, and to secularize itself, in order to gain 
the world as a mass. But with the primitive Christians this was. not 
the case; they were much more inclined to a stern repulsion of every- 
thing that pertained to paganism, even of that which had but a seem- 
ing connection with it, than to any sort of lax a¢commodation; and 
assuredly it was at that period far more wholesome, and better adapted 
to preserve the purity of Christian doctrine and of the Christian life, 
to go to an extreme in the first of these ways than in the last. 

And the religion which thus opposed itself to these deep-rooted 
customs and modes of thinking, which threatened to shake to the 
foundation what had been established by ages of duration, came from 
a people despised for the most part in the cultivated world, and at first 
found readiest admission among: the lower classes of society ;—a cir- 
cumstance which sufficed of itself to make the learned aristocracy of 
Rome and Greece look down on such a religion with contempt. How 
should they hope to find more in the shops of mechanics, than in the 
schools of the philosophers! Celsus, the first writer against Christian- 
ity, jeers at the fact,! that wool-workers, cobblers, leather-dressers, the 


1In Origen, c. Cels. 1. III. f.55: Ὁρῶμεν οὐδὲν φϑέγγεσϑαι, τολμῶντας, ἐπειδὰν δὲ 
δὴ καὶ κατὰ τὰς ἰδίας οἰκίας ἐριουργους καὶ τῶν παίδων ἰδίᾳ λάβωνται καὶ γυναίκων 
σκυτοτύμους καὶ κναφεῖς τοὺς ἀπαιδευτοτά- τινῶν σὺν αὐτοῖς ἀνοήτων ϑαυμάσιά τινα 
τους τε καὶ ἀγροικοτώτους ἐναντίον μὲν τῶν διεξιόντας. 
πρεσβυτέρων καὶ φρονιμωτέρῳν δεσποτῷν 


CONFLICT WITH SUPERSTITION. 71 


most illiterate and vulgar of mankind, were zealous preachers of the 
gospel, and addressed themselves, particularly in the outset, to women 
and children.” Of a faith which, adapted to all stages of culture, 
presupposed a like want in all, the men of this stamp had not the 
remotest conception. Their standing objection against the Christians 
was, that they preached only a blind faith; they should prove what 
they advanced on philosophic grounds. And as Christianity had against 
it, on the one hand, the pride of culture, and was placed in the same 
class with all kinds of superstition; so, on the other, it found in super- 
stition itself, and in fanaticism, its fiercest enemies. It had to contend 
no less with the rudeness than with the cultivation of the world. 

Without question it is true, the old popular religions had been shaken 
by the attacks of unbelief, and robbed of their authority ; but we have 
seen also, how men had resorted back with renewed fanaticism to the 
old religion; and hence the bloody struggle in its defence. The dread- 
ful rage of the populace against the Christians is a sufficient indication 
of the tone of religious feeling which existed at that time among them; 
— the superstition called forth by the assaults of unbelief held stronger 
dominion perhaps than ever over the people, and a part of the educated 
class. Τὸ the multitudes, who at this period moved in the dim twilight 
of superstition, Plutarch thought he might apply the language of 
Heraclitus in describing the world of dreams: “ they found themselves, 
while awake in broad daylight, each an his own world,” —a world that 
excluded every ray of reason and truth. These men, who would see 
their gods with the bodily eye, and were used to carry them about 
engraved on their rings, or in miniature pictures which served as amu- 
lets, so that they might kiss and worship them at pleasure ; how often 
did they throw out to Christians the challenge, ‘“ show us your God!” ? 
And to such men came a spiritual religion, bringing with it no worship 
of sensible objects, no sacrifices, temple, images, nor altars: — bald 
and naked, as the pagans reproachfully represented it. 

There was, indeed, generally diffused, at this time, as we have already 
remarked, a spirit of inquiry, and of longing after some new communi- 
cation from heaven. In spite of the pertinacity with which men clung 
to the old superstition, there existed a susceptibility, in various ways, 
for new religious impressions. But this longing, which, having no 
distinct consciousness of its object, was directed by blind feeling, easily ~ 
exposed men also to deception, and opened the way for every species 
of fanaticism. 

Quite at the beginning of the second century, Celsus supposed he 
could account for the rapid progress of Christianity, from the credulity 
of the age; and referred to the multitude of magicians that were 
trying to deceive men by a pretended exhibition of supernatural powers, 
and who with many found ready belief, creating a great sensation for 
the moment, which however soon subsided. Yet there was a great 
difference, as Origen justly replied to Celsus, between their mode of 


1 Πίστιν ἀλογόν. 
2 As we may see from the Apologies, particularly Theophilus ad Autolycum. 


72 SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 


proceeding and that of the preachers of the gospel. Those magicians 
flattered men’s sinful inclinations, they fell in with their previous modes 
of thinking, and required the renunciation of nothing. On the other 
hand, whoever in the primitive times would be a Christian, must break 
loose from many of his hitherto favorite inclinations, and be ready to 
give up everything for his faith. Tertullian says,! that more were 
deterred from embracing Christianity by unwillingness to forfeit their 
pleasures, than by the fear of hazarding their life. And the excitement 
of mind occasioned by such wandering fanatics and magicians, disap- 
peared as suddenly as it was awakened. ‘That it was quite otherwise 
with the power working in Christianity, appeared evident-from the 
permanence of its effects, in their ever widening circle, — a testimony 
which Origen could cite from history against Celsus. 

But the influence of such people, of which the opponents of Chris- 
tianity themselves bear witness, presented a new obstacle to its progress. 
It must force its way through the ring of delusions, within which those 
people had succeeded in charm-binding the minds of men, before it 
could reach their consciences and hearts. The examples of a 
Simon Magus, an Elymas, an Alexander of Abonoteichos, show in what 
way this class of people opposed the progress of the gospel. It needed 
striking facts, addressed to the outward sense, to brmg men entangled 
in such deceptive arts, out of their bewilderment to the sober exercise 
of reason, and render them receptive of higher spiritual impressions. 

To this end served those supernatural effects, which proceeded from 
the new creative power of Christianity, and which were destined to 
accompany it, until it had entered completely into the natural process 
of human development. The Apostle Paul appeals to such effects, 
witnessing of the power of the Divine Spirit which inspired his preach- 
ing, as well-known and undeniable facts, in epistles addressed to the 
churches which had beheld them; and the narratives in the Acts 
illustrate, with particular examples, the power of those effects, in first 
arresting the attention, and in dispelling those delusive influences. The 
transition from that first period m the process of the development of 
the church, in which the supernatural, immediate and creative power 
predominated, to the second, in which the same divine principle dis- 
played its activity in the form of natural connection, was not a sudden 
event, but took place by a series of gradual and insensible changes. 
We are not warranted, nor are we in a condition, to draw so sharply 
the line of demarkation between what is supernatural and what is 
natural in the effects proceeding from the power of Christianity, when 
it has once taken possession of human nature. 

The church teachers, until after the middle of the third century, 
appeal in language that shows the consciousness of truth, and often 
before the pagans themselves, to such extraordinary phenomena, as 
conducing to the spread of the faith; and however we may be disposed to 
distinguish the facts at bottom from the point of view m which they 


1De spectaculis, c. 2. Plures denique invenias, quos magis periculum voluptatis, 
quam vit, avocet ab hac secta. 


SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 73 


are contemplated by the narrator, we must still admit the facts them- 
selves, and their effects on the minds of men. It remains, therefore, 
undeniable, that even subsequent to the Apostolic times, the spread of 
the gospel was advanced by such means. Let us present some of these 
cases in their living connection with the character and spirit of those 
times. The Christian meets with some unhappy man, plunged in 
heathenish superstition, and diseased in body and soul, who had hoped 
in vain to get relief in the temple of Esculapius,—the resort of mul- 
titudes at that time, who sought a cure for their diseases in dreams 
sent from the god of medicine. He had tried also to no purpose the 
various incantations and amulets of pagan priests and magicians. The 
Christian admonishes him not to look for help from impotent dumb idols, 
or from demoniacal powers, but to betake himself to that Almighty God 
who only can help. He hears the prayers of such as invoke His aid 
in the name of Him by whom He has redeemed the world from smn. 
The Christian employs no magic formulas, no amulets; but simply 
calling upon God through Christ, he lays his hand on the sick man’s 
head, in believing confidence in his Saviour. The sick man is healed ; 
and the cure of the body leads to that of the soul. ‘There were, — par- 
ticularly at this period of the rending asunder and breaking up of the 
old world on its way to dissolution, — multitudes of persons, laboring 
under bodily and mental diseases, who, as we have already observed, 
believed themselves under the dominion and persecution of some de- 
moniacal power. The whole might of the ungodly, the destroying 
principle must be roused to action, when the healing power of the 
divine was to enter into humanity. The revelation of heavenly peace, 
bringing back all to harmony, must be preceded by the deep-felt inward 
. disunion, which betrayed itself in such cases. There was no want, 
either among Pagans or Jews, of those who pretended to be able, by 
various methods, — perfuming with incense, embrocations, medicinal 
herbs, amulets, adjurations expressed in strange enigmatical formulas, 
—to expel those demoniacal powers. In every case, if they produced 
any effect, it was only to drive out one devil by means of another, and 
hence the true dominion of the demoniacal power must, by their means, 
have been much rather confirmed than weakened. The words which 
our Saviour himself spoke, in reference to such transactions, found 
here their appropriate application. ‘‘ He that is not with me, is against 
me.” But how much belief, at that time, these pretended exorcists 
could inspire, is shown by the prayer of thanks which the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius offers to the gods, because he had learned from a 
wise instructor, to trust in none of the tales about the incantations and 
exorcisms of magicians and wonder-workers.} 

It so happens now that one who has vainly sought relief from such 
impostors, falls in with a devout Christian. The latter recognizes here 
the power of darkness, and thinks of looking for no other cause of the 
disease. But he is confident of this, that his Saviour has overcome 


11. 6. Τὸ ἀπιστηνικὸν τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ δαιμόνων ἀποπομπῆς καὶ τῶν τοιού- 
τερατευομένων καὶ γοητῶν περὶ ἐπῳδῶν καὶ των λεγομένοις. 


VOL. I. Ἷ 


74 SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 


that power, and that in whatsoever shape it may manifest itself, it must 
yield to him. In this confidence, he prays, and witnesses of him, who 
by his suffermgs triumphed over the gates of Hell; and his prayer, 
drawing down the powers of Heaven, works deeply upon the distracted 
nature of the sick man. Peace succeeds to the conflicts that had 
raged within; and led to the faith by this experience of a change in 
his own personal condition, he is now first delivered, in the full sense, 
from the dominion of evil , — thoroughly and permanently healed by 
the enlightening and sanctifying power of the truth; so that the evil 
spirit, returning back to the house, finds it no longer swept and gar- 
nished for his reception. 

Of such effects, Justin Martyr witnesses, when, addressing himself 
to the pagans,! he says: ‘* That the kingdom of evil spirits has been 
destroyed by Jesus, you may, even at the present time, convince your- 
selves by what passes before your own eyes; for many of our people, 
of us Christians, have healed and still continue to heal, in every part 
of the world, and in your city (Rome), numbers possessed of evil 
spirits, such as could not be healed by other exorcists, simply by adjur- 
ing them im the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius 
Pilate.’’ We learn from Irenzeus, that the cure of such disorders not 
unfrequently prepared the way for the conversion of men to Christian- 
ity ; for he says, that often they who had been delivered from evil 
spirits attamed to the faith, and united with the Church. The inward 
conflicts of a soul that could find no longer the satisfaction of its 
religious wants in what the old world had to offer, may have frequently 
been the occasion of such forms of disease ; and by the Christian in- 
fluence, the disorder was overcome in its cause, and not in its:symptoms 
merely. As a particular gift, quite distinct from the healing of those 
demoniacal diseases, Irenzeus mentions other modes of restormg the 
sick, by the laying on of the hands of Christians,?—raising of the 
dead, (i. e. such as seemed to be dead) who afterwards remained living 
in the church for many years. He appeals to the variety of gifts 
which the true disciples of Christ had received from him, and which 
they employed, each after his own measure, for the benefit of other 
men. What was thus wrought by the Christians, simply from love, 
and without any expectation “of temporal reward, through prayer to 
God and invocation of the name of Christ, he contrasts with the jug: 
gling tricks resorted to as a means of livelihood. Origen recognizes 
in the miraculous powers still existing in his time, though already 
sensibly diminished, a proof of what served in the first times of the 
appearance of Christianity particularly to advance its progress.° In 
his defence of Christianity against Celsus, he cites examples from his 
own experience, where he had been himself an eye-witness of the fact, 


1 Tn his first Apology, p. 45. 4 Kal νεκροὶ ἠγέρϑησαν καὶ παρέμειναν 
2"ῶστε πολλάκις καὶ πιστεύειν αὐτοὺς σὺν ἡμῖν ἱκανοῖς ἔ ἔτεσιν. 
ἐκείνους τοὺς καϑαρισϑέντας ἀπὸ τῶν πνευ- 6 Τὰς τεραστίους δυνάμεις, ἃς κατασκευ- 
μάτων καὶ εἶναι ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ. Ady. heres, aoréov γεγονέναι ἐκ τοῦ ἴχνη αὐτῶν ἔτι 
1. IT. ο. 82, ὁ 4. Ed. Massuet. σώζεσϑαι παρὰ τοῖς κατὰ ᾿ ἠούλημα τοῦ 
8 “ARAL δὲ τοὺς κάμνοντας διὰ τῆς τῶν Δόγου βιοῦσιν. c. Cels. 1.1. ὁ 2 


χειρῶν ἐπιϑέσεως ἰῶνται. 


᾿ SUPERNATURAL INFLUENCES. 75 


how, by invocation of the name of God and of Jesus, in connection with 
the preaching of his history, many were healed of grievous diseases 
and states of insanity, which had withstood all other means of the 
healing art. It is a remarkable fact, attested by Tertullian and Origen, 
that so many were conducted to Christianity by extraordinary psycho- 
logical phenomena. ‘Tertullian relates, that the greater part came to 
the knowledge of the true God by means of visions.2 Now although 
this church father was inclined to exaggeration generally, and to lay 
too much stress on such appearances in particular ; yet what he says 
here is confirmed by the testimony of Origen. The latter asserts that 
ἐς Many have come to Christianity, as it were against their will, their 
affections being suddenly changed, by a certain Spirit, from the hatred 
of the gospel to such love of it as makes them ready to lay down their 
lives for it, —and this through the medium of visions which occurred 
to them when awake or in dreams.””® He calls God to witness, that it 
was most remote from his melination to attempt adding anything to the 
glory of Christianity by false statements ;— although he could relate 
many things seemingly incredible, which he had himself witnessed. 
Such testimonies are full of instruction, since they make us acquainted 
with the manner in which conversions, at this period, were often brought 
about. We shall, indeed, have to trace these phenomena, not so much 
to a divine miraculous agency, operating from without, as to the power 
with which Christianity moved the spiritual life of the period. From 
the manner in which the divme principle of life in Christianity, — the 
new force that had come in among mankind,—and the principle of 
paganism came into collision with each other, extraordinary phenomena 
in the world of consciousness could not fail to result, through which the 
crisis in the religious life of individuals must pass, ere it arrived at its 
end. 

Yet as each particular miracle, wrought by Christ, was but a single 
flash from the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him, and was to 
operate simply to this end, that the immediate selfmanifestation of this 
fullness might be brought nearer before the minds of men; so too are 
all succeeding miracles but single flashes, issumg forth from the imme- 
diate divine power of the gospel, and contributing to imtroduce the 
revelation of this itself into the religious consciousness. Without this 
itself, and its relation to man’s nature, and to the peculiar conditions 
of man’s nature in this particular period, all else would have been to 
no purpose; and that which the divine power in the gospel wrought 
immediately by itself in man’s nature, still allied to God though es- 
tranged from its original source, continued ever to be the main thing, 
the end for which all else was but subsidiary and preparatory. It is 
this which the Apostle Paul places above all other kinds of evidence, 


1 Τούτοις γὰρ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐωράκαμεν πολ- 8 ἸΠολλοὶ ὡσπερεὶ ἄκοντες προσεληλύϑασι 
λοὺς ἀπαλλαγέντας χαλεπῶν συμπτωμάτων χριστιανισμῷ, πνεύματός τινος τρέψαντος 
ἐκστάσεων καὶ μανιῶν καὶ ἄλλων μυρίων, αὐτῶν τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν αἰφνίδιον ἀπὸ τοῦ 
ἄπερ οὔτ᾽ ἄνϑρωποι οὔτε δαίμονες ἐϑερά- μισεῖν τὸν λόγον ἐπὶ τὸ ὑπεραποϑανεῖν 
πευσαν. c. Cels. |. III. c. 24. αὐτοῦ, καὶ φαντασιώσαντος αὐτοὺς ὕπαρ ἢ 

2 Major pene vis hominum e visionibus ὄναρ. c. (618. ]. 1. 6. 46. 

Deum discunt. De anima, c. 47. 


76 CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE. , 

above all particular miracles, and describes as the demonstration of 
the Spirit and of power.1 And as this divine power showed its efficacy 
on the inner life of the man, so it manifested itself, with an attractive 
force, in the outward appearance and actions of that life; and it was 
this, which, more than everything beside, wrought to the conversion of 
the heathen. 

To this experience Justin Martyr makes his appeal,? where, after 
citing the words of our Lord, “Let your light so shine before men, 
that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is 
in Heaven,” he adds: “‘ Our Lord would not have us recompense evil 
for evil, but requires that, by the power of patience and meekness, we 
should draw all from the shame of their evil passions. And we can 
point out many among us, who, from overbearing and tyrannical men, 
have been thus changed by a victorious power, when they have 
seen how their neighbors could bear all things, or observed the sin- 
gular patience of their defrauded fellow-travellers, or come to be 
acquainted with Christians in any of the other relations of 16.) The 
distinguished virtues of the Christians must have shone forth the more 
brightly, as contrasted with the prevailing vices; their severity of 
morals, sometimes even carried to excess, as opposed to the general 
depravation of the age; their hearty fraternal love, in contrast with 
that predominant selfishness which separated man from man, and ren- 
dered each distrustful of the other, msomuch that men could not 
comprehend the nature of Christian fellowship, nor sufficiently wonder 
at its fruits. ‘ See,’ — was the common remark, — ‘“‘ how they love one 
another.’’ ‘This seems so extraordinary to them,—says Tertullian? — 
because they are used to hate one another. See how, among the 
Christians, one is ready to die for the others ; this seems so wonderful 
to them, because they themselves are far more ready to murder one 
another.”’ Although a brotherly union of this sort excited suspicion in 
those who were used to watch everything with the jéalous eye of police 
espionage,* and several persecutions of the Christians were thereby 
occasioned ; yet on all minds not narrowed by such habits or not 
abandoned to fanaticism, a quite different impression must have been 
produced, and the question could hardly fail to arise in them, ‘‘ What 
is it, which can thus bind together the hearts of men, in other respects 
wholly strangers to one another?”’ In a time when civilization had 
degenerated to effeminacy,° in a time of servile cowardice, the life- 
renovating enthusiasm, the heroism of faith, with which the Christians 
despised tortures and death, when the question was whether they 


1 A passage, which, indeed, came to be 
misunderstood at a very early period, be- 
cause too much importance was attached 
to the outward. Thus it was Origen’s opin- 
ion that the ἀπόδειξις πνεύματος καὶ δυνά- 
μεως is so predicated of the ἀπόδειξις ---- διὰ 
τὰς προφητείας καὶ τὰς τεραστίους δυνάμεις. 
c. Cels. 1. I. § 2. 

2 Apologet. IT. f 63. 

8 Sed ejusmodi vel maxime dilectionis 
operatio notam nobis inurit penes quosdam. 


Vide, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant. Ipsi 
enim invicem oderunt. Et pro alterutro 
mori sint parati, ipsi enim ad occidendum 
alterutrum paratiores. Apologet. c. 39. 

4 This view of the matter is expressed in 
the language of the Pagan Ceecilius, in the 
Octavius of Minucius Felix, (§ 9;) Occul- 
tis se notis et insignibus noscunt et amant 
mutuo pene ante quam noverint. 

5 Ipsa urbanitate decepti, says Tertullian 
of his contemporaries. 


CHRISTIAN HEROISM. 77 


would do what was contrary to conscience, —this heroism of the Christ- 
ians did indeed strike many so forcibly as an appearance foreign to the 
age, that they were inclined to consider a character so well befitting the 
heroic days of antiquity, but not these more refined and gentle times, a 
matter of reproach. But although the ordinary Roman statesmen, 
though the followers of a set worldly prudence, though the cool Stoic 
who required everywhere philosophic demonstration, —saw in the spirit 
with which the Christians, in testimony of their faith, went to death, 
nothing but blind enthusiasm ; yet the confidence and the cheerfulness 
of these suffering, dying men, could not fail to make an impression on 
less hardened or less prejudiced minds, whereby they would be led to 
inquire more deeply into the cause, for which men could be thus 
impelled to sacrifice their all. Outward force could effect nothing 
against the inward power of divine truth; it could only operate to ren- 
der the might of this truth more gloriously manifest. Hence Tertul- 
lian concludes his ‘* Apology”? with these words, addressed to the 
persecutors of the Christians: “ All your refinements of cruelty can 
accomplish nothing; on the contrary, they serve as a lure to this sect. 
Our number increases, the more you destroy us. The blood of the 
Christians is the seed of a new harvest. Your philosophers, who exhort 
to the endurance of pain and death, make fewer disciples by their 
words, than the Christians by their deeds. That obstinacy, for which 
you reproach us, is a preceptor. For who that beholds it, is not 
impelled to inquire into the cause? And who, when he has inquired, 
does not embrace it; and when he has embraced it, does not himself 
wish to suffer for it ?? 

Add to this, that Christianity appeared when the time was now 
fulfilled, that the glory of the “ eternal city’ must depart from her: 
for so long as that power still had dominion over the minds of men, 
and swallowed up all other interests, small place was left for that 
feeling of need which led men to Christianity. But when all was now 
becoming old and withered, which had hitherto been an object of 
enthusiastic love and had given a certain buoyancy to the soul, 
Christianity appeared, and called men from the sinking old world to a 
new creation, destined for eternity. As Augustin finely expresses it, 
“ Christ appeared to the men of a decrepit, dyimg world, that, while 
all around them was fading, they might through him receive a new 
youthful life.” And the higher life which Christianity imparted, 
required no brilliant outward relations for the manifestation of its 
glory, like what had been wondered at as great in the old civic virtue. 
Into the midst of circumstances and situations the most cramping and 
depressing, this divine life could find its way, and cause its glory to 
shine forth in weak and despised vessels, and raise men above all that 
would bow them down to the earth, without their over-stepping the bounds 


1 Well enough for the ingenia duriora illa ipsa obstinatio, quam exprobratis, ma- 
robustioris antiquitatis ; but not forthe tran-  gistra est. Quis enim non contemplatione 
quillitatem pacis and the ingenia mitiora. ejus concutitur ad requirendum, quid intus 
Tertull. adv. Nat. I. c. 18. in re sit ? 

2 Semen est sanguis Christianoruam — 


78 INFLUENCE ON THE LOWER CLASSES. 


of that earthly order, in which they considered themselves placed by an 
overruling providence. The slave, in his earthly relations, remained a 
slave still, and fulfilled all the duties of his place with far greater 
fidelity and conscientiousness than before ; and yet he felt himself free 
within, showed an elevation of soul, an assurance, a power of faith and 
of resignation, which must have filled his master with amazement. 
Men in the lowest class of society, who had hitherto known nothing in 
religion but ceremonial rites and mythical stories, attained to a clear 
and confident religious conviction. The remarkable words, already 
quoted from Celsus, as well as many individual examples of these first 
Christian times, show us how often from women,! who, as wives and 
mothers, let a spiritual light shine out in the midst of pagan corruption ; 
how often from young men, boys and maidens; from slaves who put 
their masters to shame, Christianity was diffused through whole 
families. ‘‘ Every Christian mechanic,” says Tertullian, “has found 
God, and shows him to you; and then points out to you everything in 
fact you require to know of God; although Plato (in Timeeus) says, 
that it is hard to find the Creator of the universe, and impossible after 
one has found him, to make him known to all.’? In like manner, 
Athenagoras: ‘‘ With us you may find ignorant people, mechanics, old 
women, who, though unable to prove with words the saving power of 
their religion, yet by their deeds prove the saving influence of the dis- 
position it has bestowed on them ; for they do not learn words by rote, 
but they exhibit good works; when struck, they strike not again ; 
when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to them that ask them, 
and love their neighbors as themselves.” 

The gross material notions, which we find to have prevailed among 
a large portion of the early Christians, as for example, among the 
Chiliasts, have frequently been set forth as a reproach to Christianity. 
But precisely in this, is its distinguishing character manifest, — that as 
it is not a system of notions, but an announcement of facts, it could 
be brought within the range, even of a material habit of thinking, could 
lower itself down to its comprehension, mix in with it, and even in this 
material form, by the power of those facts, communicate a divine life, 
and thereby gradually ennoble the entire nature of the man, with all 
its powers and propensities, and so also spiritualize the habits of think- 
ing. And in connection with this phenomenon, we must take still 
another ; that, at the same time, the pole of humanity most opposite to 
this was seized by Christianity with overwhelming power, as is evident 
when we compare the Gnostics with those Chiliasts. So deeply 
marked, from the first, on the developing process of this religion, is 
the impress of its divinely human character, by virtue of which it 
could and must attract the opposite poles of man’s nature, entering as 
well into these as into all the other intermediate stages. And it was, 
as we shall see, precisely by means of this, its distinguishing charac- 


1 Compare the words of the pagan Cecil- et mulieribus credulis sexus sui facilitate la- 
ius in the Octavius of Minucius Felix,where bentibus plebem profans conjurationis in- 
he says, speaking of the Christians: (c. 8)  stituunt. 

Qui de ultima face collectis imperitioribus 


DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 


teristic, that the more general diffusion and triumph of Christianity 
over the old world were advanced. 


2. Propagation of Christianity in Particular Districts. 


The great highways by which the knowledge of the gospel was to be 
diffused abroad, had already been opened by the intercourse of nations. 
The easy means of inter-communication within the vast Roman empire ; 
the close relation between the Jews dispersed through all lands, and 
those at Jerusalem; the manner in which all parts of the Roman 
empire were linked in with the great capital of the world; the con- 
nection of the provinces with their metropolitan towns, and of the 
larger portions of the empire with the more considerable cities, were 
all circumstances favorable to this object. These cities, such as Alex- 
andria, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, were centres of commercial, 
political and literary correspondence ; and hence became also the prin- 
cipal seats, chosen for the propagation of the gospel, where the first 
preachers tarried longest. Commercial intercourse, which had served 
from the earliest times, not merely for the exchange of worldly goods, 
but also for transmitting the nobler treasures of the mind, could now 
be used as a means for diffusing the highest spiritual blessings. 

As a general thing, Christianity at first made progress in the cities ; 
for as it was needful, above all, to gain fixed seats for the propagation 
of the gospel, the first preachers, passing rapidly over the country, 
had to propose their message first in the cities, whence it might after- 
wards be more easily diffused through the country by native teachers. 
On the other hand, in the country, greater obstacles must necessarily 
have been encountered, owing to the entire rudeness, the blind super- 
stition, and the heathen fanaticism of the people: oftentimes also to 
the want of a knowledge in the early preachers of the old provincial 
dialects ; while in the towns, they could, for the most part, make them- 
selves sufficiently well understood in the Greek or the Latin language. 
Yet we know from Pliny’s report to the Emperor Trajan, from the 
account given by the Roman Bishop Clemens,! and from the relation 
of Justin Martyr,” that this was not the case everywhere: and that in 
many districts, country churches were formed very early ; and Origen 
says expressly,® that many considered it their duty to visit not only the 
cities, but also the country towns and villas.‘ That this was so, seems 
evident moreover from the great number of country bishops in particu- 
lar districts. | 

In the New Testament, we find accounts of the dissemination 
of Christianity in Syria, in Cilicia; probably also in the Parthian 
empire, at that time so widely extended ;* in Arabia; in Lesser Asia, 
and the countries adjacent ; in Greece, and the bordering countries as 


1 Ep. 1. Corinth. ο. 42. Υ. 13,) greets from his wife in Babylon, — 

2 Apologet. II. f. 98. whether it was the then capital of Seleucia, 

8c. Cels. 1. III. c. 9: Τινὲς ἔργον πεποί- or more probably the old fallen Babylon, — 
ηνται ἐκ περιέρχεσϑαι ob μόνον πόλεις, leads to the conjecture, that he was residing 
ἀλλὰ καὶ κώμας Kai ἐπαύλεις. in those countries. 

* For the circumstance that Peter (1 Ep. . 


80 MESOPOTAMIA. PERSIA. 

far as Illyricum; in Italy. But we are greatly deficient in further and 
credible accounts, on this subject ; the later traditions, growing out of 
the eagerness to trace each national church to an apostolic origin, 
deserve no examination. We confine ourselves to what can be safely 
credited. 

The ancient legend of the correspondence by letter between a 
prince belonging to the dynasty of the Abgares or Agbares, the Agbar 
Uchomo, (who ruled over the small state of Edessa Osrhoéne of Meso- 
potamia,) and our Saviour, to whom he is said to have applied for the 
cure of a grievous disorder, is entitled to no credit; nor that of his 
conversion by Thaddeus, one of the seventy disciples. Eusebius found 
the documents from which he drew up his narrative, in the public 
archives of Edessa; and permitted himself to be deceived by them. 
The letter ascribed to Christ is in no sense worthy of him, and bears 
throughout the marks of having been compiled from several passages 
of the gospels. It is moreover inconceivable how anything, written by 
Christ himself, could have remained down to Eusebius’ time, unknown 
to the rest of the world. Finally, the letter of Abgarus is not 
couched in such language as would have been used by an oriental 
prince. Whether in other respects, there is any truth lying at the 
bottom of the account, we cannot know. It is only certam, that Christ- 
ianity was early diffused in this country ; yet it is not till between the 
years 160 —170 we find indications that one of those princes, Abgar 
Bar Manu, was a Christian. The learned Christian Bardesanes is said 
to have stood very high with him ; and we are informed by this writer, 
that Abgar forbade the selfmutilations usually connected with the wor- 
ship of Cybele, under a severe penalty, (the loss of their hands to 
those who were guilty of it.) From this alone, it 1s by no means clear 
that he was a Christian ; but it is also on the coins of this prince, that 
the usual symbols of the Baal worship of this country are, for the first 
time, wanting; and the sign of the cross appears in their place.t. In 
the year 202, the Christians of Edessa had already a church, built, as 
it seems, after the model of the temple at Jerusalem.” 

If Peter preached the gospel in the Parthian empire,’ some seed of 
Christianity, at an early period, may have easily reached Persia also, 
which then belonged to that empire; but the frequent wars of the 
Parthians with the Romans hindered the communication between Par- 
thian and Roman Christians. The above-mentioned Bardesanes of 
Edessa, who wrote in the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, notices 
the spread of Christianity in Parthia, Media, Persia, Bactria.* After 
the restoration of the ancient Persian empire to its independence, under 


by the violence of a flood the templum ec- 
clesize Christianorum had been destroyed. 
V. Assemani Bibliotheca orientalis, T. I. p. 
391. 


1 Bayer, historia Edessena e nummis il- 
justrata, 1. III. p.173. But Bayer places 
him, no doubt incorrectly, as late as A. C. 
200. 


2Jn the chronicle of Edessa, compiled 
from ancient documents, about the middle 
of the sixth century, it is reported, in ex- 
pressions which presuppose a document 
not written by the hand of a Christian, that 


8 According to the tradition preserved in 
Origen; Euseb. III. 1, also the apostle 
Thomas. 

4 Euseb. Preeparat. Evang. 1. VI. c. 10. 


ARABIA. 81 


the Sassanides, the Persian Christians become better known to us by 
the attempts of the Persian Mani, in the last half of the second century, 
‘to form a new code of religious doctrines by the fusion of old Oriental 
systems of religion with Christianity. 

In Arabia, the great number of Jews residing in that country might 
afford a medium of access for the preaching of the gospel; but the 
same circumstance would also present a powerful hinderance ; and the 
latter, no doubt, was much more the case than the former. It is clear, 
from his own words, that the Apostle Paul, soon after his conversion, 
retired from Damascus to Arabia. But to what purpose he applied his 
residence in this country, and what he accomplished there, remaims 
uncertain.! If the country called India, in a tradition of which we 
shall presently speak, is to be taken as meaning a part of Arabia, then 
the Apostle Bartholomew preached the gospel to the Jews in Arabia, 
and took with him, for this purpose, a gospel written in the Hebrew 
(Aramaic) language,—probably that compilation of our Lord’s dis- 
courses by Matthew, which lies at the basis of our present gospel 
according to St. Matthew.” Allowing this to be so, then in the last half 
of the second century, the learned Alexandrian catechist, Pantzenus, was 
teacher of a portion of this people. In the early part of the third 
century, the great Alexandrian church father, Origen, labored im the 
same field. Yet we must doubtless suppose here, only that part of 
Arabia is meant, which was already in subjection to the Roman empire. 
We have the account, namely, from Eusebius,’ that at that time the 
Arabian commander sent an order to Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, 
and to the then prefect of Egypt, earnestly requesting, that Origen 
might be allowed to come to him, since he was desirous of conferring 
with him in person.* Assuredly, this Arabian commander was not the 
hereditary chief of some wandering tribe of Arabs, as a person of that 
class could hardly be supposed to have ever heard anything of Origen ; 
but a Roman governor, whom the fame of the great teacher, — cele- 
brated at this time for his holy life, his wisdom and scientific attainments 
even among the pagans,— might have moved to seek a personal 
conversation with him on religious subjects. Perhaps he belonged to the 
number of truth-seeking men among the pagans of those times. If so, 
Origen would not have failed to avail himself of this interview, for the 
purpose of winning over the governor to the side of the gospel. At a 
somewhat later period, we find Christian churches im Arabia, with which 
Origen stood in some more intimate connection. ‘To the further propa- 
gation of the gospel im these parts in still later times, the nomadic life 
of the people and the influence of hostile Jews presented great obstacles. 

The ancient Syro-Persian church, whose remains have been preserved 
down to the present moment on the coast of Malabar in the Hast Indies, 


1See my History of the Planting, &c. suggests some person of the Roman office 


Vol. I. p. 126. of dux Arabiz,) ἀνεδίδου γράμματα Δημη- 
2See my History of the Planting, ὥς, τρίῳ τε τῷ τῆς παροικίας ἐπισκόπῳ Kal τῷ 
Vol. 1. p. 131, Remark. τότε τῆς Αἰγύπτου ἐπάρχῳ παρὰ τοῦ τῆς 
$k. Vie. 19. ᾿Αραβίας ἡγουμένου, (as a dux Arabic: after- 


**Eniota¢ τις τῶν στιρατιωτικῶν, (which wards occurs in the Notitia imperii.) 


82 INDIA. 
names the Apostle Thomas as its founder, and professes to be able to 
point out the place of his burial. Were this a tradition handed down, 
independent of other accounts, within the community itself, we could 
not, it is true, consider it as credible testimony ; but neither should we 
be warranted to assert absolutely its falsity.! Yet this church, of which 
we find the earliest notice in the reports of Cosmas Indicopleustes, 
about the middle of the sixth century, might perhaps be indebted for 
its existence to a later mercantile colony of Syro-Persian Christians, 
and having brought with it the traditions of the Greek church, might 
have simply transmitted these, but after a time forgotten the channel 
from whence it had originally derived them. We must examine more 
closely, then, these traditions themselves. But the Greek traditions, 
although old, are yet very indefinite and uncertain. The unsettled use 
of the geographic name India contributes to this uncertamty. Ethiopia, 
and Arabia Felix, the adjacent Insula Dioscoridis, (the island Diu 
Zocotara, near the mouth of the Arabian Gulf,) were designated by this 
name.* These countries, however, maintained by trade a lively inter- 
course with India proper, and could thus furnish a channel for the 
propagation of Christianity in the latter. Gregory of Nanzianzen says? 
that Thomas preached the gospel to the Indians; but Jerome understands 
the India here meant to be Ethiopia. If the tradition in Origen, 
which makes Thomas the Apostle to the Parthians, were credible, it 
would not be so very remote from the former legend, since the Parthian 
empire touched, at that time, on the boundaries of India. In all events, 
such legends are not deserving of much confidence. Eusebius? relates, 
as we have observed already, that Pantenus undertook a missionary 
tour to the people dwelling eastward, which he extended as far as India. 
There he found already some seeds of Christianity, which had been 
conveyed thither by the Apostle Bartholomew, as well as a Hebrew 
gospel which the same Apostle had taken with him. The mention of 
the Hebrew gospel is not at all inconsistent with the supposition, that 
India proper is here meant, if it may be assumed that the Jews who 
now dwell on the coast of Malabar, had then already arrived there. 
The language of Eusebius seems to intimate, that he himself had before 
his mind a remoter country than Arabia, and rather favors the suppo- 
sition, that he meant to speak of India proper. Yet it may be a question, 
whether he was not himself deceived by the name. To settle the 
controverted question, what countries we are to think of here, we must 
compare also the later accounts of the fourth century. In the time of 


110 becomes the conscientious inquirer, 
who leans neither on the side of arbitrary 
doubt nor on that of arbitrary assertion, to 
express himself, in matters of this sort, as 
my friend and honored colleague Ritter has 
done, in his instructive remarks on this 
point, in the Erdkunde von Asien: (Bd. IV., 
1516 Abtheilung, 5. 602.) “ What European 
science cannot prove, is not therefore to be 
rejected as untrue, but only to be regarded 
as problematical for the present; by no 
means, however, is any structure to be 
erected upon it, as a safe foundation.” 


2 According to Ritter (1. ο. S. 603,) to be 
explained from the fact that not only Indian 
trade colonies — the Banianes, Banig-yana, 
according to the Sanscrit, trade-people, (see 
Ritter, 1. ο. S. 448.) had settled there, and 
that the whole region furnished staple 
places for Indian wares, but that, these 
were the few direct intermediate stations for 
the uninterrupted commerce with foreign 
India. 

ὃ Orat, 25. 

4 Ep. 148. 

δῚ, 1. ο. 10. 


AFRICA. 83 


the Emperor Constantine,! there was a missionary, Theophilus, with 
the surname Indicus, who came from the Island Diu, (Διβοῦς,) by 
which is to be understood the above mentioned island, Zokotara. He 
found in his native land, and in the other districts of India,? which he 
visited from there, Christianity planted already, and had only many 
things to correct. 

We next cross over to Africa. Zhe country in this quarter of the 
world, where Christianity must be disseminated first, was Kgypt ; for 
here were presented, in the Grecian and Jewish culture at Alexandria, 
those points of contact and union of which we have already spoken. 
Even among the first zealous preachers of the gospel, we find men of 
Alexandrian education, as, for instance, Apollos of Alexandria, and 
probably also Barnabas of Cyprus. ‘The epistle to the Hebrews, the 
epistle ascribed to Barnabas, the gospel of the Egyptians, (εὐαγγέλιον κατ 
Aiyumtious,) in which the Alexandrian-theosophic taste displays itself, — 
the Gnosis in the first half of the second century, — are proofs of the 
influence exerted by Christianity, at a very early period, on the philosophy 
of the Alexandrian Jews. An ancient tradition names the evangelist 
Mark as the founder of the Alexandrian Church. From Alexandria, 
Christianity must have easily found its way to Cyrene, on account of 
the constant intercourse and the congeniality of spirit between the two 

laces. But although the gospel early found its way into the parts of 

ower Egypt inhabited by Grecian and Jewish colonies, yet it would 
not be so easy for it to penetrate thence into Middle, and particularly 
into Upper Egypt; for in those parts, the foreign Coptic language, the 
dominion of the priests, and the old Egyptian superstition stood in 
the way. Yeta persecution of the Christians in Thebais, under the 
Emperor Septimius Severus,’ proves that Christianity had already made 
progress in Upper Egypt, as early as the last times of the second 
century. Probably, in the first half of the third century, this province 
had a version of the New Testament in its own ancient dialect. 

Respecting the diffusion of Christianity in Hthiopia (Abyssinia) we 
find, in these centuries, no distinct and credible account. History is 
silent as to the consequences which resulted from the conversion of 
that court-officer of Candace, Queen of Meroe, which is related in the 
Acts.* We shall find the first certain indications of the conversion of 
a part of Abyssinia, through the instrumentality of Frumentius, in the 
fourth century. Yet the question might be raised,> whether some 
seeds of Christianity may not, even earlier than this, have been brought 
into other districts of this country by Jewish Christians; and whether 
many Jewish customs, and the significancy which is ascribed by one 
party to the baptism of Christ,® may not be traced to this fact. 

In consequence of their connection with Rome, the gospel early found 
its way to Carthage, and to the whole of proconsular Africa. This 
church at Carthage becomes first known to us, onward from the last 


1 Vid. Philostorg. hist. 1. 1ΠΠ|,| 9. 4 and 5. has somewhere directed attention to the 
2 Ἐκεῖϑεν τίς τὴν ἄλλην ἀφίκετο Ἰνδικὴν. same inquiry. 

8 Euseb. 1. VI. c. 1. 6 See Journal of a three years’ residence 
5 Chap. 8. in Abyssinia, by S. Gobat, p. 254. Lon- 
5 The late Hr. Rettig, if I mistake not, don, 1834. 


84 GAUL. GERMANY. 


years of the second century, through the presbyter Tertullian; but 
even then it appears to have been in a very flourishing condition. The 
Christians in those districts were, at that time, already very numerous, 
and it was a matter of complaint, that Christianity continued to spread, 
in town and country, among all ranks, and indeed in the highest.! To 
pass over those passages where Tertullian expresses himself rhetori- 
cally, we find in his tract addressed to the governor, Scapula,? that he 
could speak already of a persecution of Christians in Mauritania. 
After the middle of the third century, Christianity had now made such 
progress in Mauritania and Numidia, that under Cyprian, Bishop of 
Carthage, a synod was held, consisting of eighty-seven bishops. 

Passing over to Europe, we have in Rome a principal seat for the 
propagation of Christianity, yet not the only one. Flourishing com- 
munities, at Lugdunum (Lyons) and Vienna, come to our knowledge 
during a bloody persecution, in 177. The great number of Christians 
from Asia Minor, whom we find here, and the intimate connection of 
these communities with those of Asia Minor, lead to the conjecture, 
that the commercial intercourse between these districts of France and 
Asia Minor, an original seat of the Christian church, had led to the 
formation of a Christian colony in Gaul. For a long time, the pagan 
superstition in the other parts of Gaul withstood the further spread of 
Christianity. Even so late as the middle of the third century, few 
Christian communities were to be found there. According to the nar- 
rative of the French historian, Gregory of Tours, seven missionaries 
came, at that time, to Gaul from Rome, and established communities 
in seven cities, over which they became bishops. One of these was 
that Dionysius, first bishop of the community at Paris, whom the later 
legends confounded with Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted 
by the Apostle Paul at Athens. Gregory of Tours, who wrote near 
the end of the sixth century, in a time when so many fables were propa- 
gated respecting the origin of church communities, is, we allow, no 
credible witness; at the same time there may be some truth lymg at 
the ground of this account. One of these seven, Saturnin, founder of 
the community at Toulouse, becomes known to us by a much older 
document, —the relation of his martyrdom. 

Irenzus, who became bishop of the community at Lyons sometime 
after the above mentioned persecution of 177, speaks of the spread of 
Christianity in Germany. But we must here distinguish the different 
parts of Germany, — the districts in subjection to the Roman empire, 
and the still larger portion of free, independent Germany. Very easily 
might it happen, that a seed of Christianity should find its way into the 
first of the countries just mentioned, on account of their connection with 
the province of Gaul. But the case was quite different with those 
hardy tribes, that so fiercely maintained their ancient state of rudeness 
and freedom, and repelled everything from abroad. Irenzeus, it is 


1 Apologet.c. 1. Obsessam vociferantur ditionem, et jam dignitatem transgredi ad 
civitatem ; in agris, in castellis,in insulis hoc nomen. 
Christianos; omnem sexum, xtatem, con- 2 Cap. 4. 
8 Ady. Her. 1. I. ο. 10, 


SPAIN. BRITAIN. 85 


true, says elsewhere,! ‘“‘ Many tribes of the barbarians have the words 
of salvation, written in their hearts, without paper and ink, by the Holy 
Ghost.” ? He recognized, in the efficacious power of Christianity, its 
distinguishing nature, by virtue of which, it could reach men in every 
stage of cultivation, and by its divine energy penetrate to their hearts; 
but it is also certain, that Christianity would nowhere long maintain 
itself with purity, in its distinguishing essence, unless it entered deep 
into the whole intellectual development of the people, and unless, along 
with the divine life proceeding from it, it gave an impulse, at the same 
time, to all human culture. 

The same Irenzeus is the first who speaks of the diffusion of Christ- 
ianity in Spain, (ἐν ταῖς ᾿Ιβηρίαις.) The tradition, which we find 
already at the beginning of the fourth century in Eusebius,’ that the 
Apostle Paul had preached the gospel in Spain, cannot, it is true, be 
received as credible testimony ; for in those times the propensity was 
but too strong to convert suppositions, inferences and conjectures, not 
always rightly formed, into facts; and so what St. Paul himself writes, 
(Romans xv. 24,) concerning his intention, might easily give occasion 
to this report. But when the Roman Bishop, Clemens, says,‘ that the 
Apostle Paul went as far as the bounds of the West, (τέρμα τῆς δύσεως.5) 
the expression can hardly be understood as referring to Rome ; indeed, it 
most naturally applies only to Spain; and as Clemens was probably him- 
self a disciple of the Apostle, it cannot possibly be supposed that he would 
be deceived in the same manner as might happen with those who came 
after him. It must be admitted, we find no room for a journey of the 
Apostle Paul to Spain, unless we suppose that he was set free from his 
imprisonment mentioned in the Acts, and after his release carried the 
purpose into effect, which he had previously announced. But this we 
must of necessity suppose, if we acknowledge the genuineness of the 
second epistle to Timothy, and cannot bring ourselves to consent to 
very tortuous interpretations of single passages. 

Of the extension of Christianity thus early also to Britain, Tertul- 
lian is a witness ;° although in that quite rhetorically expressed 
passage, that the gospel had penetrated already into those parts of 
Britain not subjected to the Roman dominion, the truth may be some- 
what exaggerated. A later tradition, in Bede, of the eighth century, 
reports that Lucius, a British king, requested the Roman bishop 
Hleutherus, in the latter part of the second century, to send him some 
missionaries. But the peculiarity of the later British church is evi- 
dence against its origin from Rome; for in many ritual matters it 
departed from the usage of the Romish church, and agreed much more 
nearly with the churches of Asia Minor. It withstood, for a long 
time, the authority of the Romish papacy. This circumstance would 


ΤΊ, ΤΙ c. 4. against all the forced interpretations of 

2 Sine charta et atramento scriptam ha- these words, which have been set forth of 
bentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem. late. See my History of the Planting, etc. 

81, 1. ς. 10, ὁ 2. Vol. I. p. 455. 

4 Ep. 1. v. 5. 6 Ady. Jud. c. 7. 

5 We cannot avoid once more protesting 


VOL, I. 


86 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 
seem to indicate, that the Britons had received their Christianity, 
either immediately or through Gaul, from Asia Mmor, —a thing quite 
possible and easy, by means of the commercial intercourse. The later 
Anglo-Saxons, who opposed the spirit of ecclesiastical independence 
among the Britons, and endeavored to establish the church supremacy 
of Rome, were uniformly inclined to trace back the church establish- 
ments to a Roman origin; from which effort many false legends as well 
as this might have arisen. 

We now pass over to the conflicts which the church within the Ro- 
man empire had to sustain with the state. 


3. Persecutions of the Christian Church. 
First, the Causes of them. 


It is quite important to a just understanding of the nature of these 
persecutions, to be rightly informed, in the first place, of their causes. 
Many have been surprised, that the Romans, a people in other respects 
so tolerant, should exhibit so impatient and persecuting a spirit against 
the Christians; but whatever is said about the religious tolerance of 
the Romans, must be understood with considerable restriction. The 
ideas of man’s universal rights, of universal religious freedom and 
liberty of conscience, were quite alien to the views of the whole 
ancient world. Nor could it be otherwise ; since the idea of the state 
was the highest idea of ethics, and within that was included all actual 
realization of the highest good: — hence the development of all other 
goods pertaining to humanity was made dependent on this. Thus the 
religious element also was subordinated to the political. 'There were 
none but state religions and national gods. It was first and only 
Christianity that could overcome this principle of antiquity, release 
men from the bondage of the world, subvert particularism and the 
all-subjecting force of the political element, by iés own generalizing 
Theism, by the awakened consciousness of the oneness of God’s image 
in all, by the idea of the kingdom of God, as the highest good, compre- 
hending all other goods in itself, which was substituted in place of the 
state as the realization of the highest good, whereby the state was 
necessitated to recognize a higher power over itself. Looked at from 
this point of view, which was the one actually taken by the ancient 
world, a defection from the religion of the state could not appear other- 
wise than as a crime against the state.1 

Now all this must be especially true, in its application to the one- 
sided political principle which swallowed up every other interest, 
peculiar to the ancient Romanism. We recognize this principle in 
what Cicero lays down as a fundamental maxim of legislation.? No 


1As Varro had before distinguished a 
theologia philosophica et vera, a theologia 
poetica et mythica, and a theologia civilis, 
so Dio Chrysostom, who flourished in the 
first half of the second century, (orat. 12,) 
distinguishes three sources of religion; the 
universal religious consciousness, the ἔμφυ- 
τος ἅπασιν ἀνϑρώποις ἐπίνοια ; poetry and 


morality left to propagate itself in freedom ; 
and legislation, which constrains, threatens 
and punishes, — τὸ νομοϑετικὸν, τὸ ἀναγ- 
καῖον, τὸ μετὰ ζημίας καὶ προστάξεων ;— 
although he rightly fixes upon the first only, 
as the universal and original source, whence 
all the rest has been derived. 
2 De legib. 1. 11. c. 8. 


PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 87 


man shall have for himself particular gods of his own; no man shall 
worship by himself any new or foreign gods, unless they are recognized 
by the public laws, (nisi publice adscitos.) Although the ancient 
laws in the times of the emperors were no longer so strictly observed, 
although foreign customs had been constantly gaining ground in Rome, 
and the ancient policy no less constantly declining, yet now there were 
many additional reasons to those which had previously existed, for 
guarding against the introduction of new religions. There prevailed, 
indeed, at this time, a sensitive dread of every thing with which a 
political aim could be connected, and the jealousy of despotism could 
be easily induced to suspect political aims, even where nothing of the 
kind was intended. Religion and religious associations seemed well 
calculated to serve as a cover for political plots and conspiracies. 
Hence the advice of Mzcenas to Augustus, in the well known dis- 
course reported by Dio Cassius, where, although the very words of 
Mecenas may not be used, yet the historian expresses the prevailing 
views of the Roman state at this period. ‘‘ Worship the gods in all 
respects according to the laws of your country, and compel all others 
to do the same. But hate and punish those who would introduce any 
thing whatever, alien to our customs in this particular; not alone for 
the sake of the gods, because whoever despises them is incapable of 
reverence for any thing else; but because such persons, by introducing 
new divinities, mislead many to adopt also foreign laws. Hence con- 
spiracies and secret combinations, — the last things to be borne in a 
monarchy. Suffer no man either to deny the gods,! or to practise 
sorcery.” The Roman civilian, Julius Paulus, cites, as one of the ruling 
principles of civil law in the Roman state, the following: ‘“ Whoever 
introduced new religions, the tendency and character of which were 
unknown, whereby the minds of men might be disturbed,? should, if 
belonging to the higher rank, be banished; if to the lower, punished 
with death.” Itis easy to see, that Christianity, which produced so 
great, and to the Roman statesman so unaccountable an agitation in the 
minds of men, must fall into this class of religiones nove. We have 
presented here, then, the two points of view, under which Christianity 
came necessarily into collision with the laws of the state. 1. 76 
induced Roman citizens to renounce the religion of the state, to the 
observance of which they were bound by the laws, —to refuse compliance 
with the “ cerimonias Romanas.” Hence many of the magistrates, 
who felt no personal antipathy to Christianity, explained to Christians, 
when arraigned before them, that they might comply, at least out- 
wardly, with what the laws required; viz. observe the religious 
ceremonies prescribed by the state; that the state was concerned only 
with the outward act, and in case that were performed, they might 
believe and worship in their heart, whatever they chose; or that they 
might continue to worship their own God, provided only they would 
worship the Roman gods also. 2. It introduced a new religion, not 


1 Αϑέῳ εἶναι, the very term applied to 2 De quibus animi hominum moventur. 
the Christians. 


88 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 


admitted by the laws of the state into the class of religtones licite. 
Hence the common taunt of the pagans against the Christians, accord- 
ing to Tertullian; non licet esse vos —‘“‘ you are not permitted by the 
vii ; ” and Celsus accuses them of secret compacts, contrary to the 
aws. 

Without doubt, the Romans did exercise a certain religious tol- 
eration, but it was a toleration not to be separated from their poly- 
theistic religious notions and their civil policy, and which, by its own 
nature, could not be applied to Christianity. They were in the habit 
of securing to the nations they had conyuered, the free exercise of 
their own religions,” inasmuch as they hoped by so domg to gain them 
over more completely to their interests, and also to make the gods of 
those nations their friends. ‘The Romans, who were religiously inclined, 
attributed their sovereignty of the world to this policy of conciliating 
the gods of every nation. Even without the limits of their own 
country, individuals of these nations were allowed the free exercise of 
their opinions ; and hence Rome, into which there was a constant influx 
of strangers from all quarters of the world, became the seat of every 
description of religion. ‘* Men of a thousand nations,” says Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus,* ‘‘ come to the city, and must worship the gods of their 
country, according to the prevailing laws at home.” It doubtless 
happened, that with certain modifications, many things taken from 
these foreign modes of worship, were introduced into the public worship 
of the Roman state; but then a special decree of the senate was 
requisite, before any Roman citizen could be allowed to join in the 
observance of any such foreign rites. At this particular period, indeed, 
when the authority of all national religions was on the wane; when 
the unsatisfied religious need required and sought some new thing; and 
this was offered by the conflux of strangers from all countries into 
Rome ; it was frequently the case, that Romans adopted the forms of 
those foreign modes of worship, which did not as yet belong to the 
religions recognized by the state (to the religionibus publice adscitis :) 
but this was an irregularity, which such as possessed any portion of the 
old Roman spirit attributed to the corruptions of the times and the 
decline of ancient manners. Like many other evils, which could not 
be suppressed, it was left unnoticed. The change, moreover, might be 
the less striking, since those who had adopted the foreign rites, 
observed at the same time the Roman ceremonies. Occasionally, 
however, when the evil threatened to get the upper hand, or when a 
zeal was awakened in behalf of the ancient manners and civic virtues, 
Jaws were passed for restraining profane rites (ad coercendos profanos 
ritus) and repressing the growth of foreign superstitions, (the 


1'Qe συνϑήκας κρύβδην παρὰ τὰ vevo- τὰ οἰκεῖα τιμῶσιν ἄγειν καὶ διαζῇν. Joseph. 
μισμένα ποιουμένων. L. 1. ο.1. Archeol. 1. XVI. ο. 2. § 4. 

2 See the words of Marcus Agrippa, in 8 See the Pagan’s language in Minucius 
his plea for the religious freedom of the Felix, and in Aristides’ Encom. Rome. 
Jews: Τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἣν viv τὸ σύμπαν 4 See Aristid. 1. ο. and Dionys. Halicar- 
τῶν ἀνϑρώπων γένος δὶ ὑμᾶς ἔχει τούτῳ nass. Archeol, 1. 11, ¢, 19, 
μετροῦμεν, τῷ ἐξεῖναι κατὰ χώραν ἑκάστοις 


PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 89 
valescere superstitiones externas;1) every religion, not Roman, being 
regarded as a superstition by the Roman statesman. With these 
views, it is clear that the best emperors, who were seeking to restore 
the old life of the Roman state, must therefore be hostile to Christ- 
ianity, which appeared to them only as a superstitio externa; while 
worse rulers, with nothing of the old Roman spirit, but at the same 
time not rising above the prejudices of a contracted nationality, might, 
from indifference to the old Roman policy in general, calmly look on 
when Christianity was making encroachments on all sides. 

The Jews also had the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion 
secured to them by decrees of the senate and imperial edicts, and the 
God of the Jews was regarded by many as a powerful national God ; 
they accused the people only of narrow-heartedness and intolerance, 
because they hostilely excluded the worship of other gods; or they 
found a reason for this in the jealous character of that Being himself, 
who would have no other gods beside him. Judaism was a religio 
licita for the Jews; and hence the Christians were reproached, as if 
they had contrived, by appearing as a Jewish sect, to slip in at first 
under the cover of a tolerated religion.2 Yet for all this, the Jews 
were by no means allowed to propagate their religion among the 
Ttoman pagans ; — the laws expressly forbade the latter, under severe 
penalties, to receive circumcision. It was the case, indeed, at this 
time, that the number of proselytes from the pagans was greatly multi- 
plied. This the public authorities sometimes allowed to pass unnoticed ; 
but occasionally severe laws were passed anew to repress the evil; as 
for instance, by the senate under the emperor Tiberius,* by Antoninus 
Pius, by Septimius Severus. 

The case was altogether different with Christianity. Here was no 
ancient, national form of worship, as in all the other religions. Christ- 
lanity appeared rather as a defection from a religio leita, —an 
insurrection against a venerable national faith. This is brought as a 
charge against the Christians, in the spirit of the prevailing mode of 
thinking, by Celsus.° “The Jews,” he says, “are a nation by them- 
selves, and they observe the sacred institutions of their country, — 
whatever they may be, — and in so doing, act like other men. It is 
right for every people to reverence their ancient laws; but to desert 
them is a crime.” Hence the very common taunt thrown out against 
the Christians, that they were neither one thing nor the other, neither 
Jews nor pagans, but genus tertium. A religion for mankind must 
have appeared, — as viewed from that position of antiquity according 


1 Tacitus places together, in a proposition 
to the senate, the phrases “ Publica circa 
bonas artes socordia, et quia externz super- 
stitiones valescant.” Annal. 1. XI. c. 15. 
A lady of rank is accused as superstitionis 
rea. Annal. |. XIII. c. 32. 

2 Sub umbraculo religionis saltem licitz. 
— Tertullian. 

8 The senatus consultum de sacris Agyp- 
tiis Judaicisque pellendis. Tacit. Annal. 
LIL c. 85. 

g* 


4 A religion proceeding from an éoraova- 
κέναι πρὸς TO κοινὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων. c. Cels. 
1. ΠΙ. c. 7. For keeping the Christians 
united together ἀξιόχρεως ὕπόϑεσις ἡ στά- 
δ “Ta WEL ὁ VA. 

5 Δεῖν πάντας ἀνϑρώπους κατὰ τὰ πάτρια 
ζῇν, οὐκ ἀν μεμφϑέντας ἐπὶ τουτῷ. Χριστι- 
ανοὺς δὲ τὰ πάτρια καταλιπόντας καὶ οὖὐχ᾽ 
ἕν τι τυγχανόντας ἔϑνος ὡς Ἰουδαῖοι, ἐγκτή- 
τως προστίϑεσϑαι τῇ τοῦ ᾽ἴησου διδασκαλ- 
Aig. αν. οὐ 25, 


90 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 

to which every nation had its own particular religion, —a thing con- 
trary to nature, threatening the dissolution of all existing order. The 
man that can believe it possible, — says Celsus,—for Greeks and 
Barbarians, in Asia, Europe and Lybia, to agree in one code of religious 
laws, must be quite void of understanding.1 But what had been held 
impossible, seemed more likely every day to be realized. It was now 
perceived, that Christianity steadily made progress among people of 
every rank, and threatened to overthrow the religion of the state, 
together with the constitution of civil society which seemed closely 
interwoven with the same. Nothing else remained, therefore, but 
to oppose the inward power, which men were unwilling to acknowledge, 
by outward force. As well the whole shape and form of the Christian 
worship, as the zdea of a religion for mankind, stood in direct contra- 
diction with the point of religious development hitherto attained. It 
excited suspicion to observe, that the Christians had nothing of all 
that which men were accustomed to find in every other form of wor- 
ship ; nothing of all that which the Jews had in common with the 
pagans. So Celsus calls it the countersign of a secret compact, of an 
invisible order, that the Christians alone would have no altars, images 
or temples.2, Again, the intimate brotherly union which prevailed 
among the Christians, the circumstance that every one among them, in 
every town where fellow-believers dwelt, immediately found friends, 
who were dearer to him than all the friends of this world — this was 
something that men could not comprehend.? The Roman police were 
utterly unable to fathom the nature of the bond which so united the 
Christians with one another. The jealousy of despotism could every- 
where easily see or fear political aims. ΤῸ the Roman statesman, who 
had no conception of the nghts of conscience, the unbending will, 
which could be forced by no fear and by no tortures to yield obedience 
to the laws of the state in reference to religion, to perform the pre- 
‘scribed ceremonies, appeared a blind obstinacy, inflexibilis obstinatio, 
as men called it. But such an unconquerable wilfulness must have 
presented itself to those rulers, who were accustomed to servile 
obedience, as something extremely dangerous ; and many would sooner 
pardon in the Christians their defection from the worship of the gods, 
than their want of reverence for the emperors, in declining to take any 
part in those idolatrous demonstrations of homage which pagan flattery 
had invented, such as sprinkling their images with imcense, and swear- 
ing by their genius, ‘I will assuredly,’ said Tertullian, ‘call the 
emperor my lord — but in the common acceptation — but when I am 
not forced to call him Lord in the place of God. In other respects, I 
am free of him; for I have only one Lord — the Almighty and eternal 
God —the same who is also the emperor’s Lord. How should he 
wish to be the Lord, who is the father of his country?” * What a 


1 His words are: Ὁ τοῦτο οἰόμενος oidev 
οὐδὲν. Τὶ, VIIL ο. 72. 

2 Πιστὸν ἀφανοῦς καὶ ἀποῤῥήτου κοινω- 
νίας σύνϑημα. L. VIII. ο.17. 

8 See the language of the pagan in Mi- 
nucius Felix, cited above, at page 76. 

4 Dicam plane imperatorem dominum, 


sed more communi, sed quando non cogor 
ut dominum Dei vice dicam. Czterum 
liber sum illi, dominus enim meus unus est, 
Deus omnipotens et xternus, idem qui et 
ipsius. Qui pater patrie est, quomodo 
dominus est? Apologet. c. 34. 


* PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. 91 
contrast to this free, high-hearted spirit of the Christians, is offered in 
the sort of language with which the supercilious and selfconceited 
philosopher, Celsus, addresses them: “‘ Why should it be a wrong thing, 
then, to acquire favor with the rulers among men,’ since these have 
been exalted to the control over the things of this world, not without a 
divine providence? And when it is required of you to swear by the 
emperor among men, there is nothing so mischievous in this; for what- 
ever you receive in life, you receive from him.””? Whenever, on the 
anniversary of the emperor’s accession to the throne, or at the celebra- 
tion of a triumph, public festivals were appointed, in which all were 
expected to participate, the Christians alone kept away, to avoid that 
which was calculated to wound their religious or moral feelings, which 
was uncongenial with the temper of mind inspired by their faith. I& 
cannot be denied that, in this case, many went to an extreme, and 
shrunk from joming even in such demonstrations of respect and of joy 
as contained in them nothing that was repugnant to Christian faith and 
decorum, because they were associated in their minds with the pagan 
religion and manners, — such, for example, as the illumination of their 
dwellings, and the decorating them with festoons of laurel. On one 
occasion, a certain sum of money was distributed by the emperor as a 
gratuity among the soldiers. All presented themselves, as was cus- 
tomary, with garlands on their heads, for the purpose of receiving their 
portion; but one Christian soldier came with the garland in his hand, 
because he held the practice of crowning to be a pagan rite.* Such 
acts were, indeed, but overdoings of individuals or of a party ; — where, 
however, the earnest temper at bottom might deserve respect ;— and the 
majority were far from approving such excess of zeal: but the mistake 
of zndividuals was easily laid to the charge of all. Hence the accusa- 
tion, so dangerous in those times, of high treason, (crimen majestatis, ) 
which was brought against the Christians. Men called them “ irrever- 
ent to the Czesars, enemies of the Czesars, of the Roman people” 
Cirreligiosos in Ceesares, hostes Ceesarum, hostes populi Romani.) In 
like manner, when only a minor party among the Christians regarded 
the occupation of a soldier as incompatible with the nature of Christian 
love and of the Christian calling, it was converted into an accusation 
against all, and against Christianity generally. “Does not the em- 
peror punish you justly?” says Celsus; ‘ for should all do like you, 
he would be left alone, —there would be none to defend him; the 
rudest barbarians would make themselves masters of the world, and 
every trace, as well of your own religion itself, as of true wisdom, 
would be obliterated from the human race ; for believe not that your 
supreme God would come down from heaven and fight for us.’’ ® 


1 Τοὺς ἐν ἀνθρώποις δυνάστας καὶ βασι- 
λέας ἐξευμενίζεσθϑαι. 

2 Δέδοται γὰρ τούτῳ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς, καὶ ὅτι 
ἄν λαμβάνῃς ἐν τῷ βίῳ, παρὰ τούτου λαμβά- 
veic. c. Cels.1. VIII. c. 63 et 67. 

8 Tertullian, in his book, de idololatria, 
complains because so many Christians had 
no hesitation to take a share in such festiv- 
ities. Christ, he observes, had said, Let your 


works shine, at nune lucent taberne et 
janue nostre, plures jam invenies ethnico- 
rum fores sine lucernis et laureis, quam 
Christianorum. De idololatria, c. 15. 

4 Tertullian wrote his book, “de corona 
militis,” in defence of this soldier against 
the accusations he met with from his fellow- 
believers. 

5L. VIII. c. 68. 


92 PERSECUTION. ITS CAUSES. * 


If the Christians were accused generally of morosely withdrawing 
themselves from the world and from the courtesies of civil and social 
life, this charge was grounded partly in the relation itself of Christianity 
to paganism, as that relation was present to each one’s own conscious- 
ness; but in part also to a certain one-sided tendency, growing in the 
first place out of the development of the Christian life in its opposition 
to the pagan world. So the Christians were represented as men dead 
to the world, and useless for all affairs of life ;1 dumb in public — 
loquacious among themselves; and it was asked, what would become 
of the business of life, if all were like them? 

Of this kind were the causes by which the Roman state was moved 
to persecute the Christians ; but all persecutions did not proceed from 
the state. Zhe Christians were often victims of the popular rage. 
The populace saw in them the enemies of their gods; and this was the 
same thing as to have no religion at all. The deniers of the gods, the 
atheists, (ἄϑεοι,) was the common name by which the Christians were 
designated among the people; and of such men the vilest and most 
improbable stories could easily gain belief: —that in their conclaves 
they were accustomed to abandon themselves to unnatural lust; that 
they killed and devoured children ;— accusations which we find cireu- 
lated, in the most diverse periods, against religious sects that have 
once become objects of the fanatic hatred of the populace. ‘The 
reports of disaffected slaves, or of those from whom torture had wrung 
the confession desired, were next employed to support these absurd 
charges, and to justify the rage of the populace. «If in hot climates 
the long absence of rain brought on a drought; if m Egypt the Nile 
failed to irrigate the fields ; if im Rome the Tiber overflowed its banks; 
if a contagious disease was raging ; if an earthquake, a famine, or any 
other public calamity occurred, the popular rage was easily turned 
against the Christians. ‘‘ We may ascribe this,” was the ery, “ to the 
anger of the gods on account of the spread of Christianity.” Thus it 
had become a proverb in North Africa, according to Augustine, “ If 
there is no rain, tax it on the Christians.” 2 And what wonder is it 
that the people so judged, when one who claimed to be a philosopher, 
when a Porphyry assigned as the cause why no stop could be put to a 
contagious and desolating sickness, that by reason of the spread of 
Christianity, Esculapius’ influence on the earth was over. 

There was, besides, no want of individuals who were ready to excite 
the popular rage against the Christians ; priests, artisans and others, 
who, like Demetrius in the Acts, drew their gains from idolatry ; 
magicians, who beheld their juggling tricks exposed; sanctimonious 
Cynics, who found their hypocrisy unmasked by the Christians. When, 
in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the magician whose life 
has been written by Lucian, Alexander of Abonoteichus, observed that 
his tricks had ceased to create any sensation in the cities, he exclaimed, 
‘The Pontus is filled with atheists and Christians ;”? and called on the 


1 Homines infructuosi in negotio, in publico muti, in angulis garruli. See the words of 
the Pagan in Minucius Felix. 
2 Non pluit Deus, duc ad Christianos. 


CHRISTIANS UNDER TIBERIUS. 93 


people to stone them, if they did not wish to draw down on themselves 
the anger of the gods. He would never exhibit his arts before the 
people, until he had first proclaimed, “If any Atheist, Christian or 
Epicurean has slipped in here as a spy, let him begone!”’ An appeal 
to popular violence seems, at this time, to have been considered the 
most convenient course, by the advocates of religion among the 
pagans.! Justin Martyr knew that Crescens, — one of the common 
Pseudo-cynics of the period, who were sanctimonious demagogues, — 
attempted to stir up the people against the Christians; and that he 
had threatened Justin’s own life, because he had stripped him of his 
disguise. 

From these remarks on the causes of the persecutions, the conclu- 
sion is obvious, that until Christianity had been received, by express 
laws of the State, into the class of lawful religions, (relignones licite, ) 
the Christians could not enjoy any general and certain tranquillity im 
the exercise of their religion; within the Roman empire they were 
constantly exposed to the rage of the populace and to the malice of 
individuals. We shall now proceed to consider the ever-changing 
situatiog of the Christian church, under the governments of the 
several emperors who were so differently affected towards it. 


4. Situation of the Christian Church under the several Emperors. 


It is related by Tertullian,? of the emperor Tiberius, that he was 
moved by Pilate’s report concerning the miracles of Christ and his 
resurrection, to propose to the senate, that Christ should be received 
among the gods of Rome ; but that the senate set aside the proposition, 
lest they might yield somewhat of their ancient prerogative of decidmg 
all matters relating to “‘new religions,” upon their own movement 
(6 motu proprio ;) that the emperor, however, did not wholly desist 
from his object, but went so far at least, as to threaten with severe pen- 
alties all such as should accuse the Christians on the ground of their 
religion. But an author so wanting in critical judgment as Tertullian, 
cannot possibly be received as a credible witness for a story which 
wears on its face all the marks of untruth. Should the account be 
considered as an exaggerated one, but as still having some slight 
measure of truth at its foundation, even such an hypothesis could not 
be maintained; though it amounted to no more than this, that the 
emperor once proposed to grant to the Christians a free toleration. It 
is neither credible, on the ground of Pilate’s character, that what he 
saw in Christ left on him any such lasting impression as this account 
assumes ; nor is it probable that any such effect would have been pro- 
duced by his report on the mind of Tiberius. Certainly it would not 
be in keeping with the servile character of the senate under Tiberius, for 
them to act, as they must have acted, according to this account; and 
as there were no accusers as yet of a Christian sect, there was no 
occasion for passing a law against such accusers. In fact, the succeed- 
ing history shows that no such previous law of Tiberius could have 


Σ Sec the Timocles in Lucian’s Jupiter Tragoed. 2 Apologet. c. 5 et 21. 


94 ' CHRISTIANS UNDER CLAUDIUS. 


existed. Probably Tertullian had allowed himself to be deceived by 
some spurious document. 

At first, the Christians were confounded with the Jews; conse- 
quently, the order issued under the emperor Claudius, in the year 53, 
for the banishment of the turbulent Jews, would involve the Christians 
also, if there were any at that time in Rome, and if Christianity made 
its first converts there among Jews, who continued to observe the Jew- 
ish customs. Suetonius says, ‘ the emperor Claudius expelled the 
Jews from Rome, who were constantly raising disturbances, at the 
instigation of Chrestus.”’! We could suppose, that some factious Jew 
then living, of this name, one of the numerous class of Jewish freedmen 
in Rome, was intended. But as no individual so universally known as 
the Chrestus of Suetonius seems to have been considered by that writer, 
is elsewhere mentioned ; and as the name of Christus (yeloros) was 
frequently pronounced Chrestus (χρήστος) by the pagans ; it is quite 
probable that Suetonius, who wrote half a century after the event, 
throwing together what he had heard about the political expectations 
of a Messiah among the Jews, and the obscure and confused accounts 
which may have reached him respecting Christ, was thus led to,express 
himself in a manner so vague and indefinite. 

Christianity meanwhile, had been continually making progress among 
the pagans in the Roman empire; and the worship of God, shaped 
according to the principles of the apostle Paul, rendered it no longer 
possible to mistake the Christians for a Jewish sect. Such was the 
case particularly with the Roman communities, as the persecution, soon 
to be mentioned, shows; for this could not have arisen, if the Christ- 
jans, as men who were descended from Jews and observed the Mosaic 
laws, had been held to be simply a sect of that people. They must 
have already drawn on themselves, in the capital of the world, the 
fanatical hatred of the populace, as the tertiwm genus, neither one 
thing nor the other. Already had the popular feeling given currency 
to those monstrous reports above noticed, of unnatural crimes to which 
the secret sect of these enemies of the gods abandoned themselves.? 
It was not the principles of the civil law of the empire, —it was this 
popular hate, which furnished the occasion for this first persecution of 
the Christians in Rome. But its immediate cause was something 
wholly accidental; and that precisely so reckless a monster as Nero 
must be the first persecutor of the Christians, was likewise owing im- 
mediately to a concurrence of accidental circumstances. Yet there 
was something intrinsically significant in the fact, that the individual by 
whom the renunciation of everything on the side of the divine and 
moral was most completely carried out, that the impersonation of 
creaturely will revolting against all higher order, must give the first im- 
pulse to the persecution of Christianity. 

The moving cause which led Nero, in the year 64, to vent his fury 
against the Christians, was originally nothing else than a wish to divert 


1Ympulsore Chresto assidue tumultuan- (Annal. 1. XV. ο. 44,) “per flagitia invisos, 
tes Roma expulit. quos vulgus Christianos appellabat,” must 
2 We believe the passage in Tacitus, have reference to these reports. 


CHRISTIANS UNDER NERO. 95 
from himself the suspicion of being the author of the conflagration of 
Rome, and to fix the guilt on others ; and as the Christians were already 
become objects of popular hatred, and the fanatic mob were prepared 
to believe them capable of any shameful crime that might be charged 
upon them, such an accusation, if brought against the Christians, 
would be most easily credited.1 He could make himself popular by 
the sufferings inflicted on a class of men hated by the people, and at the 
same time secure a new gratification for his satanic cruelty. All being 
seized whom the popular hate had stigmatized as Christians, and there- 
fore profligate men,” it might easily happen that some who were not 
really Christians would be included in the number.? 

Those arrested as Christians were now, by the emperor’s commands, 
executed in the most cruel manner. Some were crucified; others 
sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to be torn in pieces by 
dogs; others, again, had their garments smeared over with some com- 
bustible material, and were then set on fire to illuminate the public 
gardens at night. 

This persecution was not, indeed, in its immediate effects, a general 
one; but fell exclusively on the Christians m Rome, accused as the 
incendiaries of the city. Yet what had occurred in the capital, could 
not fail of bemg attended with serious consequences affecting the situa- 
tion of the Christians, — whose religion, moreover, was an unlawful one, 
— throughout all the provinces. ; 

The impression which this first and truly horrible persecution, by 
a man who presented so noticeable a contrast with the great historical 
phenomenon of Christianity, left behind it, endured for a long time on 
the minds of the Christians. Nor was it altogether without truth, when 
the image of the Antichrist, — the representative of that last reaction of 
the power of ungodliness against the divine government and against 
Christianity, — was transferred to so collossal an exhibition of seli-will 
rebelling against all holy restraints, and even passing over to the side 
of the unnatural,* as was presented in the character of Nero. It may 
often be observed, that the impression left by a man in whom an impor- 
tant principle, connected with the history of the world, has manifested 


1 Abolendo rumori subdidit reos, says 
Tacitus of Nero. 

2 Quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chris- 
tianos appellabat, says Tacitus. 

8 Tn the interpretation of Tacitus’ account 
of this transaction, several points may be 
doubtful. When he says, Primo correpti, 
qui fatebantur, the question arises, what did 
they confess ?—that they had set the fire, 
or that"they were Christians? When he 
says, Deinde judicio eorum multitudo ingens 
haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam 
odio humani generis convicti sunt, the 
question occurs, does the latter refer to all, 
to those that “ confessed,” as well as the rest, 
—so that, by Tacitus, all are pronounced 
free from the alleged crime of being the 
authors of the conflagration; or do the words 
refer only to the multitudo ingens, so that 


the first named class, qui fatebantur, were 
designated as being really guilty of setting 
fire to the city? If the latter be the case, 
and if the fatert is to be referred to the 
incendium, and this account deserves confi- 
dence throughout, we must conceive here 
of persons actually employed by Nero for 
the perpetration of the deed ---- not Chris- 
tians, but such as the people designated by 
the name of Christians, — hated, abomina- 
ble men. These, perhaps with the hope of 
bettering their fate, may then have de- 
nounced many others as Christians, among 
whom may have been some who really 
were, and others who were not such. 

4A characteristic trait of Nero, as de- 
scribed by Tacitus, —“incredibilium cu- 
pitor.” Annal. 1, XV. ς. 42. 


96 CHRISTIANS UNDER DOMITIAN. 

itself, or from whom a great power of destruction has gone forth, is not 
so immediately effaced, nor room allowed for the thought that such a 
person has really ceased to exist; as we see in the examples of the 
emperor Frederic II., and of Napoleon. So it was in the case of this 
monstrous exhibition of the power of evil. The rumor prevailed among 
the heathen people, that Nero was not dead, but had retired to some 
place of secrecy, from which he would again make his appearance, — a 
rumor which several adventurers and impostors took advantage of for 
their own ends. Now this rumor assumed also a Christian dress, and it 
ran, that Nero had retired beyond the Euphrates, and would return as 
the Antichrist,? to finish what he had already begun, the destruction of 
that Babylon, the capital of the world. 

Since the despotic Domitian, who ascended the imperial throne in 81, 
was in the practice of encouraging informers, and of removing out of the 
way, under various pretexts, those persons who had excited his suspicions 
or his cupidity, the charge of embracing Christianity would, in this reign, 
be the most common one after that of high treason (crimen majestatis.’) 
In consequence of such accusations, many were condemned to death, or 
to the confiscation of their property and banishment to an island.* 

The emperor moreover was secretly informed that two individuals 
were living in Palestine, of the race of David and Jesus, who were 
engaged in seditious undertakings. The seditious tendency of the 
Jewish expectations of a Messiah were already well known, and the 
language of the Christians, in speaking of the kingdom of Christ, was 
often misunderstood.® He caused the individuals who had been accused 
to be brought before him, and convinced himself that they were poor, 
Innocerit countrymen, quite incapable of engaging in any political 
schemes; he therefore allowed them to return in peace to their homes.® 
But from this, certainly, it cannot be inferred, that the emperor re- 
voked those measures which had been adopted against the Christians 
generally, and which had another motive.’ | 

The emperor Nerva, who assumed the government in the year 96, 
was by the natural justice and philanthropy of his character, an enemy 
to that whole system of information and sycophancy which had been 


the occasion of so much evil in the 


1 The words of Tacitus are: Vario super 
exitu ejus rumore edque pluribus vivere 
eum fingentibus credentibusque. Hist. 1. 
rc. 8. 

2JIn the Pseudo-Sibylline books: Ei7’ 
ἀνακάμψει ἰσάζων ϑεῷ αὑτόν. 

ὃ ΠῚ words of Dio Cassius, 1. LX VII. 
c. 14: "EyxAnua ἀϑεότητος, ὑφ᾽ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι 
εἰς τὰ τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων ἤϑη ἐξοκέλλοντες TOA- 
Aoi κατεδικάσϑησαν. The uniting of the 
charge of ἀϑεότης with that of an inclina- 
tion to Jewish customs, may have allusion 
to Christianity, if ἀϑεότης is not to be un- 
derstood as barely referring to the denial of 
the gods of the state religion. At all 
events, the charge of ἀϑεότης, if applied to 
the embracing of Judaism, which was at 
least the worship of a well-known national 


time of his predecessors. This of 


god, and for the Jews a lawful religion, 
could, a fortiori, be brought against the con- 
version to Christianity. 

4 Besides Dio Cassius, another historian 
cited in the chronicle of Eusebius, namely, 
Bruttius, says that many suffered martyr- 
dom under the reign of this emperor. 

5 For evidence of this, see Justin Martyr, 
(Apolog. 1. 11. ο. 58.) ᾿Ακούσαντες βασι- 
λείαν προσδοκῶντας ἡμᾶς, ἀκρίτως ἀνϑρώ- 
πινον λέγειν ἡμᾶς ὑπειλήφατε. ' 

6 Hegesippus in Euseb. ]. III. ο. 19 and 20. 

7 Tertullian certainly expresses himself 
in too general a manner, when he says, 
(Apologet. ¢ 5,) that Domitian made but 
one attempt to persecute the Christians ; 
but that he desisted from his purpose, and. 
recalled those that had been banished. 


CHRISTIANS UNDER NERVA. UNDER TRAJAN. YT 


itself was favorable to the Christians, inasmuch as the crime of passing 
over to their religion had been one of the most common subjects of 
accusation. Nerva set at liberty those who had been condemned on 
charges of this nature, and recalled such as had been banished; he 
caused all the slaves and freedmen, who had appeared as accusers of 
their masters, to be executed. He forbade generally the accusations 
of slaves against their masters to be received. All this must have 
operated favorably on the Christians, as the complaimts brought against 
them proceeded frequently from ill-disposed slaves. Accusations on 
such accounts as had furnished the matter of the great number of con- 
demnations under the preceding reign, were in general no longer to be 
allowed; and among these Christianity was probably included. Thus 
it is true, the complaints against the Christians must, during the short 
reign of Nerva, have been suspended; yet no lasting tranquillity was 
secured to them, since their religion was not recognized by any public 
act as a religio licita; and we may easily conceive, that if Christianity, 
during these few years, could be diffused without opposition, the fury 
of its enemies, which had been held in check, would break forth with 
fresh violence on this emperor’s death. 

These consequences ensued under the reign of Trajan, after the year 
99; since this emperor, a statesman in the Roman sense, could not 
overlook the encroachments on all sides of a religious community so 
entirely repugnant in its character to the Roman spirit. And the law 
issued by him against close associations, (the Hetzeriz,) for the pur- 
pose of suppressing the factious element in many districts, might easily 
be turned against the Christians, who formed a party so closely united 
together. It was at this time, (A. D. 110,) the younger Pliny, whose 
noble susceptibility to all purely human feelings shines forth so amiably 
in his letters, came, as proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus, into countries 
over which many Christians were dispersed. A great number of them 
were arraigned before his tribunal. He was thrown into embarrass- 
ment, as he had never before taken a share in such transactions; as 
there was no settled law on the matter, except the general principles of 
the civil law of the empire, relating to “ religiones novee et peregrine,” 
and as the number of the accused was so great; ‘‘ for many,” he writes 
to the emperor, “‘of all ages, of every rank, and of both sexes would 
be involved in the danger; for the contagion of this superstition has 
seized not only cities, but also the villages and open country.” The 
temples were deserted, the ordinary rites of worship could not fora 
long time be celebrated, and victims for sacrifice were rarely purchased.? 
Pliny, like a lover of justice, did not allow himself to prejudge the case, 
but took all pains to inform himself as to the character of the Christian 
sect. He questioned such as had for many years been separated from 
the Christian community, and apostates are usually little inclined to 


1Dio Cassius mentions, in connection 2 Plin. 1. X. ep. 97. Prope jam desolata 
with the crimen majestatis, the charge of templa, sacra solennia diu intermissa, vic- 
ἀσέβεια, also of the ἰουδαϊκὸς βιὸς, although time, quarum adhuc rarissimus emtor in- 
certainly by ἀσέβεια, we are not to under- veniebatur. 
stand the ἀϑεότης͵ or Christianity. 


VOL. I. 


98 CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. 

speak well of the society to which they formerly belonged. Following 
the brutal custom of Roman justice, which paid no regard to man’s 
universal rights, he applied torture to two female slaves, who held the 
ofhce of deaconesses in the Christian communities, for the purpose of 
extorting from them the truth. And after all he could learn only, that 
the Christians were in the custom of meeting together on a certain day, 
(Sunday;) that they then united in a hymn of praise to their God, 
Christ; and that they bound one another,! — not to the commission of 
erimes,? — but to refrain from theft, from adultery; to be faithful in 
performing their promises, to withhold from none the property intrusted 
to their keeping ;? that after this they separated, and met again in the 
evening at a simple and innocent meal.t But these latter assemblies 
had been discontinued im compliance with the emperor’s edict against 
the Hetzeriz. 

If we compare Pliny with his friend Tacitus, so far as it concerns 
their relation to Christianity, the former distinguishes himself at once 
by the greater freedom and impartiality of his judgment. Tacitus, 
without entering into any further investigation of the facts, allows him- 
self to be swayed by his prejudices against everything not Roman, 
against a religion coming from the Jews, the founder of which had been 
executed by the order of a Roman governor, a religion which found so 
many adherents among people of the lower class; he is carried away 
by the popular reports which fell in with those prejudices. He reckons 
Christianity among the many new and bad customs, which from all 
quarters of the world flowed together and found sympathy in the great 
capital, Rome.® He sees in it nothing but an exitiabilis superstitio, — 
in the Christians, only hommes per flagitiis invisos, — men hateful for 
their crimes, and who deserved the severest punishments.® Pliny does 
not allow himself to be hurried at once to a conclusion by his own 
prejudices or prevailing rumors. He considers it his duty to enter to 
a careful investigation of the case, before he decides. The result of 
his inquiry was favorable to the Christians, in so far as the judgment 
was based on purely moral grounds, and the general right of mankind 
to freedom in the worship of God was recognized. But Pliny shares in 
common with Tacitus the partial and contracted views of the Roman 
statesman, which prevented him from taking that elevated stand. He 
sees in a religion which absorbs the whole interest of men, and makes 
them forget everything else, nothing but a superstitio prava,’ —or as 
we might express it, by converting the phrase into modern language, a 
misty pictism. He requires, inasmuch as he looks upon religion as a 
matter of the state, unconditional obedience to the laws of the empire. 


1 An allusion to the baptismal vow, the 
sacramentum militiz Christianx, to which 
there is frequent reference in the practical 
homilies. 

2 A plain contradiction of those popular 
rumors respecting the objects had in view in 
the secret assemblies among the Christians. 

8 Whoever by such a sin violated his 
baptismal vow, was excluded from the fel- 
lowship of the church. 


4 Plainly in contradiction of the popular 
rumors respecting those unnatural repasts 
of the Christians, the epule Thyestex. 

5 Quo cuncta undique atrocia aut puden- 
da confluunt celebranturque. 

6 Sontes et novissima exempla meritos. 

7 Not exitiabilis, because he was obliged 
to acknowledge that the Christians were 
blameless in their lives. 


CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. 99 
With the character of the religion he has nothing to do. Whatever that 
might be, defiance of the imperial laws must be severely punished.! 

The Christians must deny their faith, mvoke the gods, offer incense 
and pour out libations before the image of the emperor, together with 
the images of the gods, and curse Christ. If they declined so to do, 
and, after having been thrice called upon, by the governor, to abjure 
their faith, continued steadfastly to confess that they were Christians 
and would remain so, Pliny condemned them to death, as obstinate 
confessors of a religio illicita, who dared publicly defy the laws of the 
empire. They who complied with the governor’s terms, were pardoned. 

It is no matter of wonder, considermg the rapid and powerful 
spread of Christianity in this country, if the faith of many, who had 
come over to the religion during the peaceful times of Nerva, was of 
no such nature as to stand the trial cf persecution. Sudden and 
extensive conversions of this kind are not apt to prove the most 
thorough. So was it in the present case ; many who had embraced 
Christianity, or were on the point of embracing it, drew back at the 
threatening prospect of death, and the consequences of this change 
were visible in the increase of the numbers who participated in the 
public religious ceremonies. 

In observing the effect of his measures, Pliny fell into the same mis- 
take into which statesmen, crafty in all other things, have often fallen, 
with regard to concerns which stand related to what is highest and most 
free in human nature. The happy issue which for the moment seemed 
to attend the course he had chosen, led him to hope that by degrees 
the new sect might easily be suppressed, if the same method should 
continue to be pursued ; if severity were suitably blended with mild- 
ness ; if the obstinate were punished to terrify the others, while such 
as were disposed to retract, were not driven to desperation by the 
refusal of pardon. 

In submitting the report of these transactions to the emperor Trajan,? 
he requested his advice particularly on the following questions: 
whether a distinction was to be made of different ages, or the young and 
tender were to be treated precisely in the same way with the more ma- 
ture ?* whether any time was to be allowed for repentance, or every 
person who had once been a Christian was in every case to be punish- 
ed? whether the Christians were liable to punishment simply as such, 
or only on account of other offences? It is plain, from the judicial 
proceedings of Pliny above described, how most of these questions 
ought, according to his own view of the case, to be answered; and the 
emperor approved of these proceedings; moreover, in deciding the 
questions submitted to his authority, he went on the same principles. 
The Christians, he did not place in the same class with ordinary crim- 


indubitable marks of genuineness on its 
face. No one but the Roman statesman 


1 His words are: Neque enim dubitabam 


"3 


qualecunque esset, quod faterentur, pervi- 


caciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem 
debere puniri. 

27. X. ep. 97. This report of Pliny, 
which we have followed thus far, bears the 


could so write on the affair. 

8 This question was probably occasioned 
by the fact that many children and youth (see 
above) were found among the Christians. 


100 CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. 

mals, for whom the governors in the provinces caused search to be made 
by the police.t They were not to be sought after; but when informa- 
tion was lodged against them, and they were arraigned before the 
tribunal, they must be punished. In what way, the emperor does not 
explain; he even admits that on this poimt no certain rule of general 
application, could be given.? It appears, however, that the punishment 
was generally understood to be death. Moreover, Trajan accorded 
pardon to such as manifested repentance. 

As early a Christian writer as Tertullian found that this decision 
involved a contradiction. If the emperor considered the Christians as 
guilty, he ought to have directed that, like all other criminals, they 
should be sought out and delivered over to punishment ; if he regarded 
them as innocent, punishment was in all cases alike unjust. Without 
doubt, a correct judgment, when the matter is considered in its purely 
moral aspect; but this was not the view of it taken by the emperor, 
He stood in the position of a politictan and a judge, governed by the 
laws of the Roman State. He was of the opmion, that open contempt 
of the ““ Roman ceremonies,”’ open resistance to the laws of the empire, 
could not be suffered, in any case, to go unpunished, even though no 
act was connected with it of a morally punishable nature.* Thus the 
emperor believed himself obliged to proceed, whenever such unlawful 
conduct attracted public attention; but he wished, as far as possible, 
to ignore it, so that indulgence might be exercised to the full extent 
compatible with due regard for the laws. Agreemg with Pliny, that 
Christianity was but a fanatic delusion, he too probably imagined, that 
if severity were tempered with clemency, if too much notice were not 
to be taken of the matter, and if open offences were neither suffered to 
go unpunished, nor prosecuted with rigor, the hot enthusiasm would 
easily cool to indifference, and the cause gradually expire of its own 
accord. If Christianity had possessed no higher principle, the result 
would have justified the emperor’s opinion. 

The change produced by the rescript of Trajan was this: Christ- 
ianity, which hitherto had tacitly passed for an “ unlawful religion,”’ 
(a religio illicita,) was now condemned as such by an express law.4 


1 The eipnvapyovc, Curiosos. 

2 Neque enim in universum aliquid, quod 
quasi certam formam habeat, constitui po- 
test. 

8 Like Pliny; see his language cited on 
page 99, note 1. 

According to a document preserved in 
the chronicle of Johannes Malalas, (1. XI. 
p. 273, ed Niebuhr,) Tiberianus, Preefect of 
Palestina prima, had informed the empe- 
ror, that the Christians offered themselves 
in crowds, and that nothing could be ac- 
complished by the effusion of blood. Moved 
by this information, the emperor issued a 
new edict, forbidding the execution of the 
Christians. Against the authenticity of the 
writing here communicated, we would not 
adduce the name “ Galileans,” which is ap- 
plied to the Christians in no other document 
of this period. There might have been 
some particular local reason for the em- 


ployment of this name. But when Tiberi- 
an says, that he had not become tired of 
destroying the Christians, this assuredly 
does not agree very well with the above- 
cited rescript of Trajan, which expressly 
commands that the Christians should not 
be sought after. And the statement that the 
Christians hastened to surrender themselves, 
hardly agrees with the times. It was the 
more violent persecutions, which first called 
forth such an enthusiastic tendency. Neith- 
er can we regard the report of the martyr- 
dom of the bishop Ignatius of Antioch as 
a document belonging to this period. In 
this narrative we do not recognize the Em- 
peror Trajan, and therefore feel ourselves 
compelled to entertain doubts, with regard 
to every thing reported in this account; as, 
for example, that Christians were already, 
in the reign of this emperor, thrown to 
wild beasts. 


CHRISTIANS UNDER TRAJAN. — HADRIAN. 101 
It was the emperor’s design, that the Christians should be subjected 
only to legal trials ; but the impulse had been now given to a move- 
ment to which no limits could be fixed. With the political opposition 
associated itself the religious, which exercises a vastly greater power 
on men’s passions. The open war of paganism with the spiritual 
might that threatened its destruction was lighted up. The fanatical 
rage of the populace imagined it had found a point of union and sup- 
port in the laws, and the Christians were laid bare to their assaults. 
These commenced in the first years of the government of Hadrian, 
who was elevated to the imperial throne in 117. There were govern- 
ors who looked on the shedding of human blood with indifference, and 
who were very ready to sacrifice persecuted men to the popular fury, 
in order to gain for themselves the good will of their provinces, or who 
also shared in the fanaticism of the people. They might the more 
easily believe they could pursue this course with impunity, or even 
with the emperor’s approbation, because they knew he was ardently 
attached to the sacred customs (the sacra) of his country. When, in 
the year 124, he made a tour through Greece, and procured himself to 
be initiated into all the Hellenic mysteries, the enemies of Christianity 
thought it a favorable opportunity to begin their persecutions of the 
hated sect. The two learned Christians, Quadratus and Aristides, 
were hence induced to present, each of them, to the emperor, an 
apology in behalf of their companions in the faith. But a still greater 
influence than could possibly have come from such apologetic writings, 
was doubtless produced on an emperor who loved justice and social 
order, by the representations of Serrenius Granianus, proconsul of 
Asia Minor, who complained of the disorderly attacks of the populace 
on the Christians. In consequence of this complaint, the emperor 
issued a rescript to his successor in office, Minucius Fundanus.} 
Hadrian declared himself decidedly against a practice, whereby the 
mnocent might be disturbed, and opportunity would be given to false 
accusors of extorting money by threatening to bring before the tribu- 
nal such as were suspected of Christianity.2_ No accusations against 


c. 9,) ἵνα μὴ τοῖς συκοφάνταις χορηγία Ka- 
κουργίας παρασχεϑῇ. Rufinus, ne calum- 
niatoribus latrocinandi tribuatur occasio. 


1 The genuineness of the rescript is 
proved, not only by its being cited in an 
apology which the bishop Melito of Sardis 


addressed to the second successor of this 
emperor, (Euseb.1. 1V.c. 26,) but still more 
clearly by its contents ; for it cannot be sup- 
posed, that a Christian would have been 
contented with saying so little to the ad- 
vantage of his fellow-believers. That Ha- 
drian treated the Christians with gentleness, 
appears evident from the praise bestowed 
on him by some Christian, who probably 
wrote not long after this time, in the fifth 
book of the Pseudo-Sibyllines: ’Apyvpo- 
Kpavoc ἀνὴρ, τῷ δ᾽ ἔσσεταί τ’ οὔνομα πόντου, 
ἔσται καὶ πανάριστος ἀνὴρ καὶ πάντα νοῆσει. 

21 am of the opinion that Rufinus had 
before him the Latin original, but that 
Eusebius, as usual, has not translated with 
sufficient accuracy. Eusebius says, (1. VI. 

* 


It is not easy to see, how it could ever oc- 
cur to Rufinus to translate the general term, 
κακουργία, into the special one, latrocinatio, 
when the context furnished no occasion 
whatsoever for such a change; while on the 
other hand, it is easy to see how Eusebius 
might loosely employ a general term to ex- 
press the special one of the original. La- 
trocinari is here synonymous with concutere 
elsewhere. 'Tertullian’s words to the Goy- 
ernor Scapula, when the latter began to ap- 
pear as a persecutor, may serve to explain 
the sense: Parce provincix, que, visa in- 
tentione tua, obnoxia facta est concussioni- 
bus et militum et inimicorum suorum 
cujusque. 


* 


102 


CHRISTIANS 


Christians were to be received, but such as were in the legal form; the 
Christians were no longer to be arrested on mere popular clamor. 
When legally brought to trial, and convicted of doing contrary to the 
laws,! they were to be punished according to their deserts; but a 


severe punishment was also to be inflicted on false accusers. 


Similar 


rescripts were sent by the emperor to many other provinces.? If by 
“‘doimg contrary to the laws” in this rescript, were meant criminal 
conduct, or any infraction of civil order, without reference to religion, 
we should be obliged to consider it as a proper edict of toleration, 
whereby Christianity was received into the class of ‘ lawful religions ; ᾽ἢ 
but had this been the emperor’s intention, he would certainly have 
explained more distinctly what was meant by acts contrary to the laws. 
After the reseript of Trajan, a particular declaration, distinctly 
expressed, was required, unless the silence itself was to be permitted to 


operate to the disadvantage of the Christians.® 


Hadrian’s rescript 


was properly directed only against the attacks of the excited populace 
on such as were reported to be Christians ; it only required a legal 


form of trial, which had been also the will of Trajan. 


At best, the 


vague expressions of the rescript might be turned to the advantage of 


the Christians, by those who were so disposed.4 


It was not so much 


his regard for Christianity, or the Christian people, as his love of jus- 
tice, that led the emperor to the adoption of these measures; for Ha- 
drian, as we have already remarked, was a strict and zealous follower 
of the old Roman, and, it may be added, the old Grecian religions, and 


looked upon the sacred rites of foreigners with disdain.° 


This temper 


of mind shines out through the remarkable letter which the emperor 


wrote to the Consul Servianus.® 


It is true, Christianity, in itself, 


forms no part of the subject of this letter, but is only introduced by the 
way. He is speaking simply of the multifarious and restless activity of 
the Alexandrians, of their polypragmatic character, and of the peculiar 
religious syncretism, which had sprung up in that common centre of the 
commerce of the world. A vein of sarcasm runs through the whole. 


“Those who worship Serapis,’’ 


says Hadrian, “are Christians, and 


those who call themselves bishops of Christ, are worshipers of Sera- 


pis. 


1 Kos adversum leges quicquam agere. 

2 According to Melito of Sardis. See 
Euseb. |. 17. c. 26. 

8 If Melito of Sardis (1. c.) says after- 
wards to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
that his predecessors had honored Christi- 
anity together with other modes of worship, 
πρὸς ταῖς ἄλλαις ϑρησκείαις ἐτίμησαν, very 
little can be inferred from this; for whoev- 
er claimed an emperor's protection for 
Christianity, would naturally make the 
most of what had been done, or seemed to 
have been done, for the Christians, by his 
predecessors. 

4 Tertullian (ad Scapulam, c. 5,) cites 
the examples of two magistrates who took 
advantage of this rescript, to procure the 


There is no ruler of a synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of 


acquittal of Christians. Vespronius Can- 
didus dismissed a Christian who had been 
arraigned before him, because it was con- 
trary to good order to follow the clamor of 
the multitude, (quasi tumultuosum civibus 
satisfacere.) Another, Pudens, observing 
from the protocol (elogium) with which a 
Christian was sent over to him, that he 
had been seized in a disorderly manner and 
with threats, (concussione ejus intellecta,) 
dismissed him, with the remark, that in 
conformity with the laws, he could not hear 
men, where there was no certain, legal ac- 
cuser. 

5 Vid. Alius Spartian. vita Hadriani, 
c. 22. 

6 Flavii Vopisci Saturninus, c. 8. 


UNDER HADRIAN. 108 
the Christians, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer. The patriarch 
of the Jews himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by one party to 
worship Serapis, by the other, Christ.1 They have but one God, who 
isnone. Him, Christians, Jews, and all races, worship alike.”2 He 
touches on Christianity, merely as one element in this mixture of reli- 
gions. The picture floating before his mind is rather the general 
aspect of Alexandrian life, or such exhibitions of 1t as might be pre- 
sented, for example, in Gnostic sects, which started into existence there 
as purely Christian communities. At the same time, it is impossible 
not to perceive from this description, how very far Hadrian was from 
respecting Christianity, or monotheistic religion generally. 

The account, therefore, appears incredible, which we have from a 
historian belonging to the early part of the fourth century, #lius Lam- 
pridius,? that the emperor had it im view to place Christ among the 
Roman gods, and hence caused to be erected, in all the cities, temples 
without images, which were called “ Hadrian’s temples” (templa Hadri- 
ani)*; but that he was prevented, by the representations of the priests, 
from carrying out his design. This report probably sprung from the 
same source with that of so many other fictitious legends, — the desire 
of accounting for something, the true cause of which was unknown; in 
the present case, from the desire of explaining the object of these tem- 
ples, which had been left unfinished. United with this, was the exag- 
gerated opinion, resting on a few misapprehended facts, of the empe- 
ror’s favorable disposition towards Christianity. On so slender a foun- 
dation, men thought themselves warranted to transfer to this emperor 
a mode of thinking which they found in others who came after him, —as, 
for instance, in Alexander Severus. 

Under this government, so favorable to the Christians in the Roman 
empire, they suffered a serious persecution in another quarter. A 
certain Barcochba,—who pretended to be the Messiah, and under whom, 
as their leader, the Jews once more revolted against the Romans, — 
endeavored to prevail on the Christians in Palestine to renounce their 
faith, and join in the insurrection. Failing of his purpose, he caused 
those that fell into his hands to be executed in the most cruel manner. 

After the death of Hadrian, a. p. 138, the rescripts issued by him 
lost their power; at the same time, under the government of his suc- 
cessor, Antoninus Pius, various public calamities, famine, an inundation 
of the Tiber, earthquakes in Asia Minor and in the island of Rhodes, 
ravaging fires at Rome, Antioch and Carthage, rekindled the popular 
fury against the Christians to greater violence than ever.’ The mild 
and philanthropic emperor could not approve of such injurious treat- 


1 ΤΙ], qui Serapim colunt, Christiani sunt, 
et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi episco- 
os dicunt. Nemo illic archisynagogus 
Judzorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christi- 
anorum presbyter non mathematicus, non 
haruspex, non aliptes. Compare this with 
Juvenal’s description of the braggart dis- 
position, the boastful pretension to clear 
understanding of all matters, which char- 


acterized the class whom he calls “ Greecu- 
li’ Bet. IEE. v.73. 

2 Unus illis Deus nullus est. Hune Chris- 
tiani, hunc Judzi, hunc omnes venerantur 
et gentes. 

8 Alex. Sever. c. 24. 

4'Adpcaveta, mentioned already in Aristid. 
orat. sacr. 1. 

5 Julii Capitolini vita Antonini Pii, ὁ. 9. 


104 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER 


ment of a part of his subjects. In different rescripts, addressed to 
Grecian States, he declared himself wholly opposed to these violent 
proceedings. ‘The indulgence shown by this emperor to the Christians 
would appear to have been carried to a still greater length, might we 
regard as genuine a rescript ascribed in all probability to him, (not to 
his successor, Marcus Aurelius,)—the rescript to the Assembly of 
Deputies in Asia Minor, (πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν τῆς °Aoles;) for in this he 
declares expressly, that the Christians were to be punished only when 
convicted of political crimes; that, on the other hand, whoever accused 
them on the score of their religion, should be liable himself to prosecu- 
tion. But the author of this rescript speaks rather the language of a 
Christian than of a pagan emperor, especially of one whose distin- 
guishing praise was his “‘ singular and scrupulous regard for the public 
ceremonies,” (insignis erga czerimonias publicas cura et religio. Fa- 
bretti marmor.) The succeeding history, moreover, does not notice the 
existence of such an edict.! 

Under the reign of the succeeding emperor, Marcus Aurelius the 
philosopher, a. p. 161, many public calamities occurred, particularly a 
destructive pestilence, whose ravages gradually extended from Ethiopia 
through the entire Roman empire as far as Gaul. Such events could 
not fail to produce the same mjurious impression of hostility to the 
enemies of the gods, on the feelings of the multitude. It was during 
this time, the magician Alexander stirred up the zeal of the people for 
their gods, promismg them miraculous aid from these higher powers, 
and exasperating their hatred against the Christians. If the persecu- 
tions of this reign, however, had sprung only from the popular fury, 
and if Aurelius had been similarly disposed with his predecessors, this 
fury might have been restrained also under the influence of his adminis- 
tration. But, on the contrary, we now see the higher authorities of 
the state leagued together with the people im the cause of oppression. 
In Asia Minor, the Christians were persecuted with such extreme 
violence, that Melito, bishop of Sardis, who appeared as their advocate 
before the emperor, said,? “the race of God’s worshipers in this 
country are persecuted as they never were before, by new edicts ; for 
the shameless sycophants, greedy of others’ possessions, — since they are 
furnished by these edicts with an opportunity of so domg, — plunder 
their innocent victims day and night. And let it be right, if it is done 
by your command, since a just emperor will never resolve on any unjust 
measure ; and we will cheerfully bear the honorable lot of such a death. 
Yet we would submit this single petition, that you would inform yourself 
respecting the people who excite this contention, and impartially decide 
whether they deserve punishment and death, or deliverance and peace. 
But if this resolve, and this new edict, — an edict which ought not so 


1 Fusebius, it is true, says that Melito of this rescript, though it would have been far 
Sardis refers to this rescript in his apology more favorable to the Christians than the 
addressed to the succeeding emperor. But edict he actually cites. 
it is remarkable, that Melito, in the frag- 2 Kuseb. 1. IV. c. 26. 
ment introduced by Eusebius, fails to quote 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 105 


to be issued even against hostile barbarians, — comes from yourself, we 
pray you the more not to leave us exposed to such public robbery.” 

These words of Melito, in which he shows no less of Christian dignity 
than of Christian prudence, lead us to several reflections. Already, 
after the edict of Trajan, Christians once accused might be punished 
with death; and this edict had never been officially revoked, though 
the clemency of the last emperors may have operated to prevent its 
being rigorously executed. But Melito says, that a new and terrible 
edict had been issued by the proconsul, inviting men to lodge informa- 
tions against the Christians. This is the more extraordinary, as it 
happens to be under the government of an emperor who was by no 
means inclined to the disorderly practice of information,! and as it 
appears to have been the policy of Aurelius, in other cases, to diminish 
the penalties affixed to crimes by the laws.2_ And we can hardly sup- 
pose the proconsul would venture to issue a new edict on lis own 
responsibility. Indeed, Melito himself seems not to have believed 
otherwise, than that the edict proceeded from the emperor. His ex- 
pressions of doubt were necessary, to enable him, with due respect for 
the imperial authority, to invite a repeal of the obnoxious edict. 

Perhaps by glancing at the philosophical and religious system of 
Marcus Aurelius, considered in its relation to Christianity, we shall be 
prepared to understand better his views and conduct with regard to it. 
The Stoic philosophy was not calculated to make him a friend to the 
Christians. What he esteemed as the highest attainment, was that 
composure in view of death, which proceeded from cool reflection, from 
conviction on scientific grounds — the resignation of the sage, ready to 
surrender even personal existence to the annihilation.demanded by the 
iron law of the universal whole. But a thing altogether unintelligible 
to him, was the enthusiasm, springing out of a living faith, and a well- 
assured hope, grounded on that faith, with which the Christians met 
death. A conviction which by arguments of reason could not be 
communicated to all, appeared to him as nothing but fanaticism ; and 
the way in which many Christians, really under fanatical excitement, 
even courted death, might confirm him in these views. He, too, like 
Pliny and Trajan, could see nothing in disobedience to the laws of the 
empire on matters of religion, but blind obstinacy. 

Let us quote the emperor’s own language respecting the Christians, 
as we find it in his Meditations.? ‘‘ The soul,” he says, ‘‘ when it must 
depart from the body, should be ready to be extinguished, to be dis- 
persed, or to subsist a while longer with the body. But this readiness 
must proceed from its own judgment, and not from mere obstinacy,* as 
with the Christians; it must be arrived at with reflection and dignity, 
so that you could even convince another, without declamation.” Judg- 
ing the Christians from this point of view, though he found them guilty, 
in other respects, of nothing immoral, though he could hardly credit 
the popular rumors which had been 50 often refuted, yet he might still 


1 Julii Capitolini vita, c. 11, 4 Μὴ κατὰ ψιλὴν παράταξιν, ἀτραγῴδως, 
L. ¢. Ὁ; 24, pervicacia, obstinatio. 
8L. XL c. 3. 


106 MARCUS AURELIUS — 


regard them as enthusiasts, dangerous to social order; and when he 
observed how Christianity, under the least mild governments, was 
continually making encroachments on all sides, he might consider him- 
self called upon to check its further progress by energetic measures. 
We must see in Marcus Aurelius, not barely the Roman statesman 
and the Stoic philosopher, but also the man of a child-like piety of 
disposition, for which he was indebted, as he tells us himself, to the 
influence of a pious mother on his education; and assuredly, he had 
received in this way something of more substantial worth than an 
abstract religion of reason could have given him. To the question, 
(often proposed to the Christians,) where have you seen the gods, or 
whence know you their exzstence, that you so reverence them? he 
answers ; ‘‘in the first place, they make themselves visible even to the 
eye of sense ;’? — where we may suppose he had in mind, either those 
visible deities, the heavenly bodies, or, what is more probable, appear- 
ances of the gods in visions and dreams. ‘ But again, I have never 
seen my own soul, and yet I respect it. So too I come to know the 
existence of the gods, because I constantly experience the effects of 
their power, and hence I reverence them.’’? And certainly there 
was truth lying at the ground of those experiences, although Marcus 
Aurelius knew not the “unknown God” from whom they came, and to 
whom they were designed to lead him, as the God of revelation; as 
for example, when he says, on a retrospect of the divine providence 
which had guided him along from childhood, ‘so far as it depended on 
the gods, on the influences coming from them, on their aids and sugges- 
tions, I might have attained already to a life in harmony with nature ; 
but if I still fall short of this mark, it is my own fault, and must be 
ascribed to my neglect of following the admonitions, 1 might almost 
say, the express instructions, of the gods.” We find traces in his 
writings of an honest self-examination; we see how very far he was 
from confounding himself with the ideal of the wise man, how the sense 
of his own deficiency disposed him to gentleness towards others. It is 
true, such kind of self-knowledge, which, for others, led the way to 
Christianity, could not conduct him thither, because he was skilful in 
interpreting those inner experiences by his Stoic doctrine of fatalism, 
which made the bad necessary, no less than the good, to the realization 
of the harmony of the universe. And in this view, also, he found 
comfort in a stoical resignation; for says he, ““ When you see others 
sin, reflect that you also sin in various ways, and are just such as they. 
And though you abstain from many sinful actions, yet you have within, 
the inclination to commit them, though you may be restrained from 
indulging it, by fear, by vanity, or some similar motive.” * He belonged 
to the class of those, who, like the Platonists above mentioned, were 
seeking for a middle way between superstition and infidelity. He de- 
sired a cheerful piety, without superstition. He believed honestly, as 
appears evident from the passages above cited, in the reality of the gods, 


1 Tapa τῆς μητρὸς τὸ ϑεοσεβές. ΡΣ, ΟἿ 
21,. ΧΙΠ. ο. 28. 41, ΧΙ. c. 18. 





HIS VIEWS OF RELIGION. 107 


and of their appearances. With other devout pagans of his time, he was 
convinced that the gods revealed in dreams, sent to those that honored 
them, the knowledge of remedies for bodily disease, and imagined that 
he had experienced such assistance himself in several cases of sickness.} 
When the pestilence, already mentioned, was raging im Italy, he looked 
upon it as a warning to restore the ancient worship in its minutest 
particulars. He summoned priests from all quarters to Rome, and 
even put off his expedition against the Marcomannians, for the purpose 
of celebrating the religious solemnities by which he hoped that the evil 
might be averted.2 The multitude of victims which he caused to be 
sacrificed in the preparation for that war, provoked ridicule, even from 
many of the pagans.? 

It may easily be explained, then, how an emperor, with the love of 
justice and the gentleness which we see expressed in the actions and 
writings of Marcus Aurelius, could yet, from a political and a religious 
interest, become a persecutor of the Christians. We have a law from 
him, which condemns to banishment on an island, those ‘that do any 
thing whereby a superstitious fear of the deity could be insinuated into 
men’s excitable minds.”’* That this law was pointed at the Christians, 
cannot, indeed, be asserted ; inasmuch as there were, under this gov- 
ernment, an unusual number of magicians and popular impostors, by 
whose practices such a law may have been called forth. But it may 
easily be conceived, that Marcus Aurelius, ike Celsus, who wrote at 
that time against the Christians, would not scruple to place the latter 
in the same class with the others. This prince was inclined to pardon 
such as confessed thcir crimes and showed signs of penitence, even in 
cases where he could have punished without being severe.’ But the 
Christians could not be induced to acknowledge they had done wrong ; 
they rather persisted in that which was forbidden by the laws. It was, 
perhaps, for this reason, the emperor directed that every means should 
be employed to constrain them to a renunciation of their faith; and 
only in the last extremity, when they could not be forced to submit, 
was the punishment of death to be inflicted. But an ill-advised human- 
ity, aiming to spare the effusion of human blood, might easily become 
the occasion of much cruelty. 

Bringing together what offers itself to our notice as peculiar in the 
character of the persecutions of this time, we find two things particu- 
larly worthy of remark: first, that search was made for the Christians, 
by express command ; although, indeed, such search was often antici- 
pated by the popular fury. We have seen above, that, according to 
Trajan’s rescript, the Christians were expressly distinguished fiom 
those criminals for whom it was the duty of the provincial authorities 
to make search. Now, on the contrary, diligent search was made for 
them; and they were often obliged to conceal themselves to save their 


mat, Ὁ; 17. *Relegandum ad insulam qui aliquid 

2 Jul. Capitol. c. 13 et 21. fecerit, quo leves hominum animi supersti- 

8 Hence the epigram, οἱ λευκοὶ βόες Μάρ- tione numinis terreantur, in the Pandects. 
κῳ τῷ Καίσαρι; ἄν σὺ νικήσῃς, ἡμεῖς dxwad- ὅ See the example in Capitolinus, cap. 13. 


veda. Ammian. Marcellin. 1. XXV. c. 4. 


108 MARCUS AURELIUS — 


lives, as appears from the several accounts of the persecutions, and 
from the assertions of Celsus.! Wet, the practice hitherto had been 
this: when the Christians accused, after repeated summons, persisted 
in refusing to deny their faith, they were executed without torture. 
Now it was attempted to force them to a denial by tortures. An edict 
which agrees in all respects with this practice, is still extant, under 
the name of the Emperor Awrelian,? and as in style and contents it 
bears every mark of authenticity, may, doubtless, be the edict against 
the Christians, originally addressed by this emperor (Aurelius) to the 
presidents of the provinces. It runs thus: “‘ We have heard that the 
laws are violated by those who in our times call themselves Christians. 
Let them be arrested; and unless they offer to the gods, let them be 
punished with divers tortures ; yet so that justice may be mingled with 
severity, and that the punishment may cease, as soon as the end is 
gained of extirpating the transgressors.” The last clause is altogether 
in the character of Marcus Aurelius. The governors were to keep 
steadily in view the one object, which was to put down Christiafiity in 
its collision with the State religion, and to bring men back to the wor- 
ship of the Roman gods. They were not to act by the promptings of 
blind passion ; but even such a clause was plainly insufficient to place 





a check on cruel and arbitrary measures.? 
We proceed now, under the guidance of authentic records, to take a 


1 Celsus, speaking of the Christians, that 
not without reason they do every thing in 
concealment: “Ate διωϑούμενοι τὴν ἐπηρτη- 
μένην αὐτοῖς δίκην τοῦ ϑανάτου. Τ,. 1. ας. 1. 
Ἤτοι φεύγοντες καὶ κρυπτόμενοι ἢ ἁλισκό- 
μενοι καὶ ἀπολλύμενοι. L. VIII. c. 41. 
Ὑμῶν δὲ κἀν πλανᾶται τις ἕτι λανϑάνων, 
ἀλλὰ ζητεῖται πρὸς ϑανώτου δίκην. L. 
VIII. ὁ. 69. 

2 A name which, as Pagi and Ruinart 
rightly conjectured, probably stands for 
Aurelius. 

8 The edict, which is preserved to us in 
the actis Symphoriani, of which we shall 
afterwards speak, reads in the original as 
follows: “ Aurelianus Imperator omnibus 
administratoribus suis atque rectoribus. 
Comperimus ab his, qui se temporibus nos- 
tris Christianos dicunt, legum precepta 
violari. Hos comprehensos, nisi diis nos- 
tris sacrificaverint, diversis punite cruciati- 
bus, quatenus habeat districtio prolata jus- 
titiam et in resecandis criminibus ultio ter- 
minata jam finem.” Certainly no unpreju- 
diced person can suppose this edict to be 
spurious, as there was no imaginable end to 
be gained by a forgery, as it is conceived 
wholly in the spirit of pagan statesmen, 
and expressed in the official language of 
the times. If it belonged to the age of 
Aurelian, whose name it bears, the martyr 
in whose history it stands, must have per- 
ished in that reign. But it can hardly be 
assumed, that the persecution under this 
emperor proceeded so far as to the effusion 


of Christian blood, (see beyond.) The 
manner, too, in which the Christians are 
spoken of, as a sect by no means old, suits 
better to the time of M. Aurelius than that 
of Aurelian, when the Christian sect had 
now been so long known. The charge 
brought against the Christians, that by the 
exercise of their xeligion they violated the 
laws of the empire, would hardly be so 
stated in the time of Aurelian, since Chris- 
tianity had at that time been already for 
the space of fifteen years admitted into the 
class of “religiones licite.” No doubt, 
therefore, Aurelius is the proper reading, 
instead of Aurelianus, such names being 
frequently confounded with each other. 
But Lucius Aurelius Commodus is out of 
the question, since he was well disposed 
towards the Christians. So it can only be 
M. Aurelius Antoninus. What Gieseler has 
said against this hypothesis, in the second 
vol. of his Church History, (2 te Auflage, S. 
134,) does not suffice, to say the least, to 
invalidate the above reasoning. ‘The lan- 
guage of the concluding clause is somewhat 
singular, it is true, for the age of the An- 
tonines ; yet I find nothing in particular in 
it, which is quite foreign to the Latinity of 
that age; and it by no means seems so 
clear to me that the Emperor M. Aurelius 
would not have employed the words rectores 
(rector provincia see Tacit. Annal. 1, II. c. 
4,) and administratores, to designate the va- 
rious governors. 


MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP. 109 


nearer view of the manner in which these persecutions were conducted 
in the provinces, and of the behavior of the Christians under them. 

We have first to notice that which befel the church of Smyrna, in 
167, and in which the aged and venerable Bishop Polycarp, a disciple 
of the Apostle John, gave up his life. Of this persecution we have a 
detailed account, in a circular letter addressed by the church of 
Smyrna to other Christian churches.’ The proconsul of Asia Minor, 
at that time, does not appear to have been personally hostile to the 
Christians; but the heathen populace, with whom the lower class of 
Jews had united themselves, were fiercely hot against them. The 
proconsul yielded to the popular violence and to the demands of the 
law. He endeavored to move the Christians by threats, by displaying 
before them the imstruments of torture, and the savage animals to 
which they were to be thrown, to deny their faith; if they remained 
firm, he condemned them to death. In one respect, he certainly 
evinced too ready a compliance with the ferocious will of the people. 
He chose deaths that were painful and ignominious; such as being 
thrown to wild beasts or perishing at the stake — punishments he was 
not compelled to resort to by the laws. Yet it must be allowed, that 
if the laws denounced death in general terms, as the penalty for per- 
severance in Christianity, it was considered right to assume, that such 
as were not Roman citizens ought to suffer a more painful death than 
those who were.” 

Under the most agonizing torments, calculated to excite pity even in 
pagan bystanders, the Christians displayed great tranquillity and com- 
posure. ‘‘ They made it evident to us all,’ says the church, “that 
in the midst of those sufferings, they were absent from the body; or 
rather, that the Lord stood by them and walked in the midst of them ; 
and, staying themselves on the grace of Christ, they bid defiance to the 
torments of the world.’’ But even here the difference was shown be- 
twixt the momentary intoxication of enthusiasm, which, with a rash 
confidence in itself, courted and defied danger, and that calm, delibe- 
rate submission to God’s will, which first awaited his call, and then 
looked to him for the needed strength. A certain Phrygian, Quintus 
by name, of a nation peculiarly inclined by nature to fanatical extrav- 
agance, presented himself, in company with many others, whom he had 
wrought up by his discourses to the same pitch of enthusiastic zeal, 
uncalled for, before the proconsul’s tribunal, and declared himself a 
Christian. But when the magistrate pressed him, and wrought upon 
his fears, by showing him the wild beasts, he yielded, swore by the 
genius of the emperor, and sacrificed. After stating this fact, the 


1 By portions in Euseb. 1. IV. c. 15. Qui hominem immolaverint, sive ejus san- 
More complete in the collections of the guine litaverint, fanum, templumve pollue- 
Patres Apostolici. rint, bestiis objiciuntur, vel si honestiores 

2 To many of the crimes charged on the sint, capite puniuntur. Magice artis con- 
Christians by blind popular rumor, such scios summo supplicio affici placuft, id est, 
capital punishments were assigned. Qui bestiis objici aut cruci suffigi, ipsi autem 
sacra impia nocturnave, ut quem obcanta- magi vivi exuruntur. Julius Paulus in sen- 
rent, fecerint faciendave curaverint, aut  tentiis receptis. 
cruci suffiguntur, aut bestiis objiciuntur. 


VOL, I. 


110 MARCUS AURELIUS — 


church adds, ‘‘ We therefore praise not those who voluntarily sur- 
render themselves; for so are we not taught im the gospel.”! Quite 
different from this was the behavior of the venerable Bishop Polycarp, 
now ninety years of age. When he heard the shouts of the people, 
demanding his death, it was his intention, at first, to remain quietly m 
the city, and await the issue which God might ordain for him. But, 
by the entreaties of the church, he suffered himself to be persuaded to 
take refuge in a neighboring villa. Here he spent the time, with a few 
friends, occupied, day and night, in praying for all the churches 
throughout the world. When search was made for him, he retreated 
to another villa; and directly after appeared the servants of the police, 
to whom his place of refuge had been betrayed by unworthy men, who 
enjoyed his confidence. The bishop himself, indeed, was gone; but 
they found two slaves, one of whom was put to the torture, and 
betrayed the place whither Polycarp had fled for refuge. As they 
were approaching, Polycarp, who was in the highest story of the dwell- 
ing, might have escaped to another house, by the flat roof peculiar to 
the oriental style of building; but he said, ““ The will of the Lord be 
done.’’ Descending to the officers of justice, he ordered whatever 
they chose to eat and drink to be placed before them, requesting them 
only to indulge him with one hour for quiet prayer. But the fulness 
of his heart hurried him through two hours, so that the pagans them- 
selves were touched by his devotion. 

The time being now come, they conveyed him to the city on an ass, 
where they were met by the chief officer of the police, ( εἰρηνάρχος,) 
coming, with his father, from the town. He took up Polycarp into his 
chariot, and addressing him kindly, asked ‘‘ what harm there could be 
in saying ‘ the emperor, our Lord,’ and in sacrificing.” At first, Poly- 
carp was silent; but as they went on to urge him, he said mildly, “I 
shall not do as you advise me.’”” When they perceived they could not 
persuade him, they grew angry. With opprobrious language, he was 
thrust out of the carriage, so violently as to mjure a bone of one of his 
legs. Without looking round, he proceeded on his way, cheerful and 
composed, as though nothing had happened. Having arrived before 
the proconsul, he was urged by the latter to have respect at least to 
his own old age, to swear by the genius of the emperor, and give proof 
of his penitence, by joining in the shout of the people, ‘‘ Away with the 
godless !”’ Polycarp looked with a firm eye at the assembled crowd, 
pointing to them with his finger; then with a sigh, and his eyes uplifted 
to heaven, he said, ‘“‘ Away with the godless!’”’ But when the procon- 
sul urged him farther, ‘‘ Swear, curse Christ, and I release thee.” 
“‘ Six and eighty years,’’ the old man replied, “‘ have I served him, and 
he has done me nothing but good; and how could I curse him, my Lord 
and Saviour!’ The proconsul still persisting to urge him, “ Well,” 
said Polycarp, “if you would know what I am, I tell you frankly, I am 
a Christian. Would you know what the doctrine of Christianity is, 


1 Διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπαινοῦμεν τοὺς mpoot- the reading should be ἑκόντας,) ἐπειδὴ οὐχ 
ὄντας ἑαυτοῖς, (where, if it is not bad Greek, οὕτως διδάσκει τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. 


MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP. 111 


appoint me an hour and hear me.” The proconsul, who showed here 
how far he was from sharing in the fanatic spirit of the people, how 
gladly he would have saved the old man, if he could have appeased 
the multitude, said, ‘‘ Do but persuade the people.’ Polycarp replied, 
“To you I was bound to give account of myself, for our religion 
teaches us to pay due honor to the powers ordained of God, so far as it 
ean be done without prejudice to our salvation. But those I regard as 
not worthy of hearing me defend myself before them.’”’ The governor 
having once more threatened him in vain with the wild beasts and the 
stake, caused it to be proclaimed by the herald, in the circus, ‘ Poly- 
earp has declared himself to be a Christian |’? With these words, was 
pronounced the sentence of death. The heathen populace, with an 
infuriate shout, replied, ‘‘ This is the teacher of atheism, the father of 
the Christians, the enemy of our gods, by whom so many have been 
tumed from the worship of the gods and from sacrifice.”? The pro- 
consul having yielded to the demands of the people, that Polycarp 
should die at the stake, Jews and pagans hastened together, to bring 
wood from the shops and the baths. As they were about to fasten him 
with nails to the stake of the pile, he said, “‘ Leave me thus; he who 
has strengthened me to encounter the flames, will also enable me to 
stand firm at the stake.” Before the fire was lighted, he prayed, 
“Lord, Almighty God, Father of thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, 
through whom we have received from thee the knowledge of thyself; 
God of angels, and of the whole creation; of the human race, and of 
the just that live in thy presence; I praise thee that thou hast judged 
me worthy of this day and of this hour, to take part in the number of 
thy Witnesses, in the cup of thy Christ.” 

What appeared the greatest thing, to this church, was not the mar- 
tyr’s death of Polycarp in itself, but the Christian manner in which it 
was suffered. They expressed it as their conviction, that all had been 
so ordered, that he might exhibit what was the essential character of 
evangelical martyrdom ;! “‘for,”’ so they write, “he waited to be 
delivered up, (did not press forward uncalled to the martyr’s death,) 
imitating, in this respect, our Lord, and leaving an example for us to 
follow ; so that we should not look to that alone which may conduce to 
our own salvation, but also to that which may be serviceable to our 
neighbor. For this is the nature of true and genuine charity, to seek 
not merely our own salvation, but the salvation of all the brethren.’” 

The death of the pious shepherd contributed also to the temporal 
advantage of his flock. The rage of fanaticism, after having obtained 
this victim, became somewhat cooled; and the proconsul, who was no 
personal enemy of the Christians, suspended all farther search, and 
refused to know that another Christian existed. 

The second persecution under this emperor’s reign, of which we 


1 Σγεδὸν γὰρ πάντα τὰ προάγοντα éyéve- peda, μὴ μόνον σκοποῦντες τὸ Ka’ ἑαυτοὺς, 
το, ἵνα ἡμῖν ὁ κύριος ἄνωϑεν ἐπιδείξη τὸ ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ κατὰ τοὺς πέλας, ἀγάπης γὰρ 
κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον μαρτύριον. ἀληϑοῦς καὶ βεβαίας ἐστὶν μὴ μόνον ἑαυτὸν 

2 Περριέμενεν γὰρ, ἵνα παραδοϑῇ, ὡς καὶ ϑέλειν σώζεσϑαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς 
ὁ κύριος, ἵνα μιμηταὶ καὶ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῦ γενώ- ἀδελφούς. 


112 MARCUS AURELIUS— 


have any account, fell upon the churches of Lyons, (Lugdunum,) and 
of Vienna, in the year 177, and the source from which we derive our 
more exact knowledge of its details, is a letter from these churches to 
those of Asia Minor.! The fanatic excitement of the populace, in these 
cities, was the same as at Smyrna, if not still higher; but in addition 
to this, the superior magistrates seem to have been imfected with the 
rage of the lower classes. The bursts of popular fury had gradually 
increased in violence; the Christians were insulted and abused when- 
ever they appeared abroad, and were plundered in their own houses. 
At length the better known were seized and conducted before the mag- 
istrates. Having avowed themselves Christians, they were thrown into 
prison ; for during the absence of the governor, or legate, they could 
not be brought at once to trial. The legate, on his arrival, immedi- 
ately began the examination with tortures, not only for the purpose of 
forcing the Christians to abjure, but also of wringing from them a con- 
fession of the truth respecting those absurd stories of unnatural crimes, 
of which they were so generally accused. Vettius Epagathus, on learn- 
ing that such charges were laid against his brethren, felt constrained to 
present himself at the legate’s tribunal, as a witness of their inno- 
cence. He demanded a hearing, since he wished to show that nothing 
of a criminal nature was transacted in the Christian assembles. The 
legate refused to listen; but only asked him if he too was a Chris- 
tian. When he distinctly admitted that he was, he was imprisoned 
with the rest, as the Christian’s advocate, (παράκλητος χριστιανῶν.) 
Although the testimony of slaves against their masters was, by an 
ancient law,? made inadmissible in criminal causes, —a law,* it must 
be owned, often violated in the arbitrary proceedings of the times of the 
empire, — yet fanaticism would allow no attention to be paid to the 
regular forms of justice. ‘The testimony of slaves was welcome, if it 
served to establish the incredible charges laid to the account of the 
Christians. The torture must be applied to pagan slaves. Terror 
made them say what they were required to say, — that those abomina- 
tions, of which blind rumor accused the Christians, were practised by 
their masters. Men now believed they had a right to indulge them- 
selves in every cruelty. No kindred, no age nor sex was spared. In 
the firmness and composure of many Christians, under tortures the most 
refined, it was seen, say the churches, in their report of these proceed- 
ings, ‘‘ how they were bedewed and invigorated by the spring of living 
water that flows from the heart of Christ; how nothing is dreadful 
where the love of the Father dwells; nothing painful, where the glory 
of Christ prevails.” Pothinus, the aged bishop of the church, a man 
of ninety years, infirm with old age and a sickness from which he was 
but just recovered, but inspired with the vigor of youth by his zeal to 


1 Kuseb. |. V.c. 1. * When Tiberius first allowed himself in 

2 Vetere senatusconsulto questio in caput this practice, he was in the habit, before he 
Domini prohibebatur. Tacit. Annal. 1. II. put the queestio per tormenta, of giving the 
c. 80. slaves their freedom, so as to observe the 

8 Even Pliny seems to have paid no at- law in appearance,—callidus et novi juris 
tention to this law, in conducting his inves- repertor, as Tacitus calls him for this reason. 
tigations against the Christians. , 


PERSECUTION AT LYONS. 113 


bear witness of the truth, was also dragged before the tribunal. The 
legate asked him, ‘‘ Who is the God of the Christians ὃ He answered, 
“You shall come to the knowledge of him, when you show yourself 
worthy of 10. All who surrounded the tribunal, now strove with each 
other in venting their rage on the venerable old man. Scarcely 
breathing, he was cast into a dungeon, where he survived only two 
days. Even those who yielded and denied, gained nothing by their 
inconstancy. ‘They were now cast into prison, not, indeed, as Chris- 
tians, but as guilty of those crimes with which the Christians were 
charged ; and to justify the proceeding, advantage had doubtless been 
taken of the fact, that several, under the pains of torture, had acknowl- 
edged guilt. Numbers perished in the gloomy cells of the prisons, 
where means had been devised for adding to their torment, and even 
hunger and thirst employed to aggravate the sufferings of these impris- 
oned confessors. On the other hand, to use the language of the church, 
‘¢many, who had endured so severe torments that it seemed impossible 
for them to be restored by the most careful assiduities, continued to live 
in their dungeon, destitute indeed of human aid, but strengthened and 
refreshed, in soul and body, by the Lord, so that they could encourage 
and comfort the rest. It so happened, ‘by the grace of God, who 
wills not the death of the sinner, but has joy in his repentance,’ that 
the exhortations of these heroes of the faith had a powerful effect on 
many who had been induced to deny their religion, and the mother 
church had the great satisfaction of receiving once more alive from the 
prison, those whom she had cast forth as dead.” 

The number of the prisoners being large, including several Roman 
citizens, who could not be sentenced in the province, it was thought 
best by the legate, with regard to them all, to send his report to Rome, 
and wait until the emperor’s answer determined their fate. The impe- 
rial rescript was to this effect, that those who denied should be set free, 
and the rest beheaded. In this case, it is evident that Marcus Aure- 
lius possessed the same views as Trajan, and was far from giving credit 
to the current charges laid against the Christians. 

The legate now summoned first before his tribunal all who, in the 
previous examinations, had been brought to abjure their faith, and were 
awaiting, in prison, the decision of their fate. Nothing else was 
expected than that they would stand by their denial, and thus obtain 
deliverance; but great were the rage and the consternation of the 
multitude, at seeing many of these now stand forth and maintain a 
steadfast confession, thus passing sentence of death on themselves; so 
that, in the language of the church, none remained without, but such 
as possessed none of the marks of faith, no anticipation of the Lord’s 
bridal garment, no fear, but had already, by their conduct, dishonored 
the way of truth. Those of the prisoners who possessed the rights of 
Roman citizenship, the legate ordered to be executed with the sword ; 
although, to gratify the fury of the populace, he caused one of these, 
Attalus, in violation of the laws, to undergo a variety of tortures, and 
at last to be thrown to the wild beasts; and not until after he had 
survived the whole, was the sword of mercy allowed to put an end to 


114 PONTICUS. BLANDINA. SYMPHORIAN. 


his suffermgs. The rest were thrown to the wild beasts. Two of these, — 

Ponticus, a youth of fifteen, and Blandina, a young woman, — whom 

they attempted first to intimidate by making them witness the sufferings 

of the others, and then to shake from their constancy by exhausting upon 

them all’ their means of torture, created universal astonishment, at what 

God’s power could effect in such weak and tender vessels. Although 

the intoxication of enthusiasm, suppressing the natural feelings, is capa- 

ble of producing such extraordinary phenomena, yet the enthusiasm of 

these martyrs was distinguished by those true marks, a sobriety and 

a humility indicating the sense of weakness, and by love and gentle- 

ness. ‘They declined the honors which the Christians were eager to 

bestow on them. Even when they were led back to prison, after hay- 

ing repeatedly undergone the most exquisite tortures, still they were by 

no means confident of victory, well foreseeing the struggle between the 

flesh and the spirit. They pointedly contradicted such as dignified 

them with the name of ‘‘ martyrs.” ᾿ “ This name,” said they, * prop- 

erly belongs only to the true and faithful Witness,! the First Born 

from the dead, the Prince of life; or, at least, only to those martyrs 

whose testimony Christ has sealed by their constancy to the end. We. 
are but poor, humble confessors.”’ With tears, they besought the breth- 

ren fervently to pray for them, that they might attain to the glorious 

consummation. ‘They received with the kindest love such as had fallen 

from the faith; they became their companions in prison, praying, with 

many tears, that the Lord would restore these dead once more to life. 

Even their persecutors were never mentioned by them with resent- 
ment, but they prayed that God would forgive those who had subjected 
them to such cruel sufferings. They left as a legacy to their brethren, 

not strife and war, but joy and peace, unanimity and love. 

With the mutilation and burning of the dead bodies, the rage of the 
populace had finally reached its utmost height. The ashes, with all the 
fire had left, was cast into the neighboring Rhone, that not a remnant 
of these enemies of the gods might pollute the earth. Neither by 
money, nor by entreaties, could the Christians succeed in obtaining 
possession of those so dear to them, for the purpose of interment. The 
blinded pagans imagined they could, in this way also, confound the 
hopes of the Christians. ‘ We will now see,” said they, ‘ whether 
they will arise, and whether God can help them, and deliver them out 
of our hands.”” Yet so great was the number of the Christians, that 
even here men at last became weary of bloodshed, so that a branch of 
the church survived this terrible persecution. 

In places where but few Christians dwelt, they could more easily 
remain concealed, and the popular rage was not turned against them. 
In such districts, the governors did not think it necessary to set on foot 
any inquiries for them, except in particular cases, when individuals had 
become notorious as enemies of the State religion. A case of this sort 
occurred, about this time, in the town of Autun,? at no great distance 
from Lyons. No one in the place was thinking of a persecution 


1 Μάρτυρ, Revel. 1: 5. 2 Augustodunum, Aidua. 


THE LEGIO FULMINEA. 115 
against the small number of obscure Christians who were to be found 
there, when an individual first drew upon himself the public attention. 
The noisy multitude were celebrating, with great display, a festival in 
honor of Cybele, whose worship, probably derived from Asia Minor 
through the same channel which Christianity afterwards found, was 
held here in the highest repute. An image of Cybele, in one of the 
usual sacred cars, was carried round in procession, accompanied by a 
vast crowd of the people. ΑἹ] fell upon their knees ; but Symphorian, 
a young man of a respectable family and a Christian, who happened 
to be standing by, thought that he could not conscientiously unite in the 
ceremony, and when called upon to explain his conduct, he might easily 
take occasion to speak of the vanity of idol worship. As a violator of the 
public ceremony and a disturber of the peace, he was immediately seized 
and conducted before the governor, Heraclius, aman of consular dignity. 
Said the governor to him, “ You are a Christian. As far as I can see, 
you have escaped our notice, because so few of the followers of this sect 
happen to be among us.”” “I am a Christian,” he replied ; “ I worship 
the true God, who reigns in heaven; but your idol, I cannot worship ; 
nay, if permitted, I will dash it in pieces, on my own responsibility.” 
Upon this, the governor declared him guilty of a double crime, — against 
the religion, and against the laws of the State; and as Symphorian 
could be moved neither by threats nor by promises to abandon his faith, 
he was sentenced to be beheaded. As they led him to the execution, 
his mother cried out to him, ‘“‘ My son, my son, have the living God in 
thy heart. Be steadfast. There is nothing fearful in that death which 
so surely conducts thee to life. Let thy heart be above, my son ; look 
up to Him who dwells in heaven. To-day thy life is not taken from 
thee, but transfigured to a better. By a blessed exchange, my son, 
thou art this day passing to the life of heaven.’”! 

According to a report widely diffused among the Christians after 
the beginning of the third century, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was 
induced, by a wonderful event, to change the course of policy he had 
thus far adopted towards the Christians. While prosecuting the war 
with the Marcommanians and Quades, in 174, he, with his army, was 
thrown into a situation of extreme peril. ‘The burning sun shone full 
in the faces of his soldiers, who were suffering under the torture of 
intolerable thirst; while, at the same time, under these unfavorable 
circumstances, they were threatened with an attack of the enemy. In 
this extremity, the twelfth legion, composed entirely of Christians, fell 
upon their knees. Their prayer was followed by a shower of rain, 
which allayed the thirst of the Roman soldiers, and by a storm, which 
frightened the barbarians. The Roman army obtained the victory, 
and the emperor, in commemoration of the event, gave those Christian 
soldiers the name of the ‘“ thundering legion.” He ceased to persecute 


1 The story of the martyrdom of Sym- 
phorian is, in all the essential particulars, so 
simple, is so wholly free from the common 
exaggerations of later times, is so conform- 
able to the circumstances of that period, 
that it is impossible to doubt that we have 


here a more than ordinarily genuine found- 
ation, although the account is in places 
rhetorically overwrought. But all the par- 
ticulars go to show, that the event took 
place very near to the time of the persecu- 
tion at Lyons and Vienna. 


116 THE LEGIO FULMINEA. 

the Christians ; and though he did not receive Christianity immediately 
into the class of ““ lawful religions,’ yet he published an edict which 
threatened with severe penalties such as accused the Christians merely 
on the score of their religion.! 

In this account, truth and falsehood are mixed together. In the 
first place, it cannot be true, that the emperor was led to put a stop to 
the persecution of the Christians by any event of this time; for the 
bloody persecution at Lyons did not take place till three years after- 
wards. Again, the ‘ thundering legion,” or ‘the twelfth of the 
Roman legions,” had borne this name from the time of the Emperor 
Augustus.2- The fact at bottom, namely, that the Roman army, about 
that time, was rescued from a threatening danger by some such 
remarkable providence, is undeniable. The heathen themselves 
acknowledged it to be the work of Heaven; they ascribed it, however, 
not to the Christian’s God, nor to their prayers, but to their own gods, 
to their Jupiter, and to the prayers of the emperor, or of the pagan 
army; to say nothing of the blind superstition which attributed the 
storm to the spells of an Egyptian necromancer.? The emperor, it is 
said, stretched forth his hands, in supplication to Jupiter, with the 
words, “‘ This hand, which has never yet shed human blood, I raise to 
thee.” There were paintings, in which he was represented in the atti- 
tude of prayer, and the army catching the rain im their helmets.* The 
emperor has expressed his own conviction of the matter upon a medal, 
where Jupiter is exhibited launching his bolts on the barbarians, who 
lie stretched upon the ground ;°> and perhaps, also, at the close of the 
first Book of his Monologues, where he mentions, among the things for 
which he was indebted, not to himself, but to the gods and his good 
fortune, what had happened among the Quades.® It is certain, there- 
fore, that this remarkable event can have had no inflwence in changing 
the disposition of the emperor towards the Christians. But it by no 
means follows, that the latter are to be charged with making up a false 
story. ‘The matter admits of a natural explanation. It is not impossi- 
ble that, in the thundering legion, there were Christians; perhaps a 
large number of them; for it is certain that it was but a party among 
them, who condemned the military profession. And although it was 
difficult for Christians, at all times, and especially under an emperor 
so unfavorably disposed, to avoid participating, while connected with a 
Roman army, in the rites of paganism, yet they might succeed im doing 


1 Tertullian. Apologet. c. 5; ad Scapu- 
lam,c.4. Euseb. 1. V.c. 5. 

2 Dio Cassius, in his catalogue of the le- 
gions existing from the time of this empe- 
ror, mentions (1. LV. ο. 23): Td δωδέκατον 
(στρατόπεδον) τὸ ἐν Καππαδοκίᾳ, τὸ κεραυ- 
νοφόρον. ΑΒ late as the fifth century, we 
find mention in the Notitia dignitatum im- 
perii Romani, Sect. 27, of the preefectura 
legionis duodecimae fulminez Melitenz, 
under the dux Armeniz. The province 
of Melitene was on the borders of Arme- 
nia, towards Cappadocia, 


8 Dio Cass. 1. LXXI. § 8 

4 Themist. orat, 15: Τίς ἡ βασιλικωτάτη 
τῶν ἀρετῶν. 

5 In Eckhel numism. III. 64. 

6 Ta ἐν Kovadore πρὸς τῷ ypavota. Some 
suppose, it is true, that M. Aurelius here 
simply designates the place where this was 
written. But as a notice of this sort occurs 
nowhere else except in the third book, these 
words might rather refer, perhaps, to events 
in certain places, the remembrance of which 
was associated with the preceding medita- 
tions. 


117 


so, under particular circumstances. The Christian soldiers, then, 
resorted, as they were ever wont to do on like occasions, to prayer, 
The deliverance which ensued, they regarded as an answer to their 
prayers ; and, on their return home, they mentioned it to their brethren 
in the faith. These, naturally, would not fail to remind the heathen, 
how much they were indebted to the people whom they so violently 
persecuted. Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, 
might have heard the story, soon after the event itself, from the Chris- 
tian soldiers belonging to this legion, which had returned to its winter 
quarters in Cappadocia; and he introduced it, either in an -apology 
addressed to this emperor, or in other apologetical works.’ Tertullian 
refers to a letter of the emperor, addressed probably to the Roman 
Senate, in which he owns that the deliverance was due to the Christian 
soldiers. But this letter, if it contained, in so many words, a state- 
ment of this sort, must, as appears evident from the above remarks, 
have been either a spurious or interpolated one. It may be a question, 
however, whether the letter contained any distinct affirmation of this 
sort,—whether the emperor may not have spoken simply of solders, 
and Tertullian explained it, according to lis own belief, of Christian 
soldiers. He expresses himself, at any rate, with some degree of hesi- 
tation.2 How the Christians might possibly sometimes interpret the 
religious profession of the heathens according to the principles of their 
own faith, is shown by another account of this event, which we find in 
Tertullian. It is in these words: ‘ Marcus Aurelius, in the German 
expedition also, obtained, through the prayers offered to God by Chris- 
tian soldiers, showers of rain, during that time of thirst. When has 
not the land been delivered from drought, by our geniculations and 
fasts 3. In such cases, the very people, when they cried to the God 
of gods, who alone is mighty, gave our God the glory, under the name 
of Jupiter.” 

It is the less necessary to search after any single cause for the ces- 
sation of the persecution, since it not only belongs to the nature of the 
passion, that rage will finally expend itself, but it is also true, in the 
present case, that, only a few years after the last bloody persecution in 
France, the government passed into different hands, and thus brought 
about an entire change of measures. The depravity of the contempti- 
ble Commodus, who succeeded to his father, A. D. 180, was made to 
subserve the interests of the Christians, by procuring for them a season 
of respite and tranquillity, after their long suffermgs under M. Aure- 
lius ; for it cannot be supposed that a man like Commodus was capa- 
ble of appreciating, in the slightest degree, the worth of Christianity. 


THE CHRISTIANS UNDER COMMODUS. 


1 Where Eusebius represents Apollinaris 
as affirming that the legion received the 
name fulminea from this event, the suspi- 
cion naturally arises, that he read too hasti- 
ly; since it is difficult to suppose, that a 
contemporary, who lived in the vicinity of 
the winter quarters of that legion, could 
have committed so gross a mistake. Per- 
haps Apollinaris merely said, the emperor 
might now rightly call the legion by the 


name fulminea, or something of that sort. 
There is no difficulty in supposing that 
some such expression lay at the foundation 
of Eusebius’ words, 1. V.c.5. Ἔξ ἐκείνου 
τὴν δὶ εὐχῆς TO παράδοξον πεποιηκυῖαν 
λεγεῶνα οἰκείαν τῷ γεγονότι πρὸς τοῦ βασι- 
λέως εἰληφέναι προσηγορίαν. 

2 Christianorum /orte militum. 

8 Days of prayer and fasting were com- 
monly united by the Christians. 


118 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER 
A certain Marcia,! who stood with him in a forbidden connection, was, 
for some unknown reason, friendly to the Christians, and enlisted in 
their favor also the brutal emperor. It is not impossible, that the 
indulgent law cited above from Tertullian, proceeded from this sover- 
eign, who was disposed to befriend the Christians, and was afterwards 
wrongly transferred to the last years of his predecessor. Under the 
government of this emperor, events did occur, in which it was supposed 
the effects of such a law might be traced. But it may be a question, 
whether it was not too hasty a conclusion, to infer from these events 
the existence of the law; whether it did not arise out of a misconcep- 
tion. At all events, it seems quite improbable that accusations against 
Christians would continue to be received as before, that Christians, 
when accused, would be condemned to death by Trajan’s law, while 
their accusers, at the same time, were also capitally punished! An 
example will, perhaps, set the whole matter in its true light.2 Avpollo- 
nius, ἃ Roman senator, was accused before the city preefect of being 
a Christian. His accuser was immediately sentenced to death, and 
executed. But Apollonius, who boldly confessed his faith before the 
senate, was also beheaded by a decree of that body. Now Jerome, 
who, in this case, would hardly be misled by a wrong interpretation of 
Eusebius, but spoke rather from a correct knowledge of the facts, says 
that the accuser was a slave of Apollonius; and the ignominious char- 
acter of his punishment, death by breaking the limbs, (the suffringi 
crura,) confirms this account. The accuser, then, as it would seem, 
was punished, not as the accuser of a Christian, but as a servant faith- 
less to his master. From too broad a conclusion drawn from cases of 
this description, it is quite possible, the tradition of the favorable law, 
referred to above, may have derived its origin. | 

Since this emperor, then, had probably made no ehange, by an ex- 
press edict, in the situation of the Christians; since the old laws had 
never been distinctly repealed, but everythmg depended on the altered 
tone of the emperor himself; it follows, that the Christians must have 
been placed in very precarious circumstances. ‘They were exposed 
still, as much as they ever were, to be persecuted by individual gover. 
nors, inimically disposed. ‘Thus Arrius Montanus, proconsul of Asia 
Minor, began to wreak his vengeance on them; but a vast multitude 


1 Ἱστορεῖται δὲ αὕτη πολλά Te ὑπὲρ τῶν 


lating, as it did, to an event in the West. 
Χριστιανῶν σπουδώσαι καὶ πολλὰ αὐτοὺς 


He may have been deceived by Greek acta 


εὐηργετηκέναι, ἅτε καὶ παρὰ τῷ Κομμόδῳ 
πᾶν δυναμένη. Dio Cass. 1. LXXIL ο. 4. 
2 We must allow, this matter gives occa- 
sion to many doubts. We must assent to 
the remark of Gieseler, so far as this, viz: 
that of course, either accusations proceed- 
ing from slaves against their masters were 
not received at all, or if they were received, 
the person from whom they proceeded 
might be punished as a criminal. Now 
Jerome, (de v. i. ὁ. 42,) does not, indeed, 
say, that the slave was executed. The ac- 
count in Eusebius, (1. V.c. 21,) might be 
one, then, mixed up with false reports, re- 


martyris, in which the false story of the 
condemnation of this slave had been fabri- 
cated out of the rumor of the law above 
mentioned against accusers of Christians. 
On the other side, the following considera- 
tions should be duly weighed. The narra- 
tive of Jerome, in conformity with its pur- 
pose, may have been incomplete, and there- 
fore may furnish no evidence against the 
truth of what Eusebius has added. We 
are not obliged to presuppose, that the 
judges, especially where the question related 
to the death of a slave, acted in perfect con- 
sistency with justice. 


COMMODUS—SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. 119 
of Christians immediately presented themselves before the tribunal, 
with a view to intimidate the proconsul by their numbers, —a proceed- 
ing which might easily have been attended with the desired effect, 
under a government where the persecutions did not proceed from the 
imperial throne, but from the will of individuals. In fact, the procon- 
sul was intimidated, and contenting himself with condemning to death 
a few out of the multitude, he said to the rest,! “If you want to die, 
ye wretched men, you have precipices from which you can throw your- 
selves, or ropes.” IJrenzeus, who wrote under the reign of this empe- 
ror, remarks, that Christians were to be found in the imperial court, 
that they enjoyed the same privileges which belonged to all through- 
out the Roman empire, and were suffered to go unmolested, by land or 
by sea, wherever they chose.? Yet the same Irenzus observes, that 
the church, at all times, not excepting his own, sends many martyrs to 
their heavenly Father. The apparent contradiction is explained by 
what has been said. 

The political disorders which followed after the assassination of Com- 
modus, in A. D. 192; the civil wars betwixt Pescennius Niger in the 
Kast, Claudius Albinus in Gaul, and Septimius Severus, who finally 
obtained the sovereign power in Rome, would, like all other public 
calamities, be attended with injurious effects on the situation of the 
Christians. Clement of Alexandria, who wrote soon after the death 
of Commodus, says, ‘‘ Many martyrs are daily burned, crucified, be- 
headed, before our eyes.”® When Septimius Severus obtained the vic- 
tory, and found himself in secure possession of the sovereignty, he man- 
ifested, it is true, a favorable disposition towards the Christians ; and 
Tertullian’s account may doubtless be correct, that he was induced to 
this by an incident of a personal nature, having been restored to health 
through the skill of Proculus,° a Christian slave, whom he received 


1 Tertullian. ad Scapulam, c. 5: δειλοί, 


d et in palatio suo habuit usque ad mortem 
εἰ ϑέλετε ἀποϑνῆσκειν, κρημνοὺς ἢ βρόχους 


ejus. In respect to the right understanding 


ἔχετε. 

2 Tn the second century, three proconsuls 
are known under this name: the Antoninus 
Pius, who was afterwards Emperor; his 
grand father ; and a third under the Empe- 
ror Commodus. /#]. Lamprid. vita Com- 
modi, c.6 et 7. We most naturally think 
of the one who was Tertullian’s contempo- 
rary; for if he meant another, he would 
probably have given some intimation that 
he was speaking of an older man. This 
proconsul, as we learn from Lampridius, 
stood in high estimation with the people. 
Perhaps it was his eagerness to acquire this, 
that led him to persecute the Christians. 

3L. IV. c. Heres. c. 30: Hi, qui in regali 
aula sunt fideles. 

£L. IV. c. 33, v. 9. 

5 L. II. stromat. p. 414. 

6 Thus we are informed by Tertullian, in 
his work addressed to Scapula, ο. 4: Pro- 
eulum Christianum, qui Torpacion cogno- 
minabatur, Euodiz procuratorem, qui eum 
per oleum aliquando curaverat, requisivit 


of these words, it may be disputed, whether 
the term Euodiz, (which moreover is writ- 
ten in different ways, ) is a proper name or 
not, and how the word procurator should 
be taken. It might mean, “an overseer of 
the causeways ;” yet probably it is a slave 
or freed man from the mansion of some 
Roman lady, who held under her the office 
of steward or bailiff. Through his connec- 
tion with this noble woman, Septimius Sev- 
erus, before he became Emperor, may have 
come in contact with this man, and the lat- 
ter offered his services to heal him in some 
sickness. ‘The oil, in this case has some 
connection probably with the charisma of 
healing. according to Mark, 6: 13, and 
James, 5: 14. The inadvertent, and where 
he had no particular interest in doubting, 
credulous Tertullian, is, indeed, not a wit- 
ness of any great weight; but the circum- 
stantiality with which he speaks of this 
matter, as one generally known, might point 
to something which had a true foundation, 
He appeals to the fact, that Caracalla, the 


120 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER 

into his family, and retained ‘constantly by his side. He knew that 
men and women of the highest rank in Rome, senators and their 
wives, were Christians ; and protected them from the popular indigna- 
tion.! But as the old laws remained still in force, violent persecutions 
could break outin particular provinces ; and we know, from several of 
the works of Tertullian which were composed in these times, that one 
actually took place in proconsular Africa. The festivities in honor of 
the emperor, where the absence of the Christians excited public atten- 
tion, might easily have been the occasion of it.” 

If, in this reign, the law against “close associations ’’ was renewed,? 
this circumstance must have operated, as under the government of T'ra- 
jan, to the disadvantage of those whose union had always been declared 
to be a collegium illicitum. mally Severus, in the year 202, passed 
a law which forbade, under severe penalties, a change, either to Juda- 
ism or to Christianity.* That he held it necessary to enact such a pro- 
hibition, which was in truth mvolved in the earlier laws, shows how 
little these laws were then regarded. It may be a question, too, how 
the matter of this law of Severus is to be mterpreted. If the emperor 
forbade the change to Christianity, (Christianos fieri,) merely in the 
sense in which he forbade the change to Judaism, (Judzeos fieri,) it 
would seem to be implied, that he held it necessary, only to check the 
farther inroads, as well of Christianity as of Judaism, but had no wish 
to disturb those who were already Christians, in the practice of their 
religion ;——and such a tacit recognition of Christianity must certainly 
be regarded as an advantage gained by the Christian party m the em- 
pire. But, as may be inferred from what we have already said, the 
situation of the Christians, in this case, was quite different from that of 
the Jews. In the case of Judaism, it was naturally assumed in the 
prohibition, Judeeos fieri, that the Jews, as a nation, were to remain 
unmolested in their right to the free exercise of their own religion ; and 
in the criminality of the act, Judzos fieri, this law pronounced the 
criminality of all other Roman citizens, who had heretofore passed over - 
to Judaism. But in the case of the Christians, no such distinction as 
this could be made; so that, as it concerned them, the law would pro- 
nounce all to be criminal, without exception, who had ever become 


son of Severus, was very well acquainted 
with this Proculus ; that Caracalla himself 
was lacte Christiano educatus, whether it 
was, that he had a Christian for his nurse, 
or had spent his childhood amidst Chris- 
tians in the service of the imperial house- 
hold, With this may be compared what 
ZElius Lampridius says in the life of this 
emperor, (c. 1,) namely, that the playmates 
of Caracalla, when he was seven years old, 
had, contrary to his father’s will, led him to 
embrace Judaism, (ob Judaicam religionem 
gravius verberatus,) and in connection with 
the last, should be kept in mind what we 
quoted recently from Celsus, that Chris- 
tianity was propagated among the children. 
But although Septimius Severus may have 
had Christians among the members of his 


household, yet it by no means follows, that 
he was himself favorable either to Chris- 
tianity or its followers. 

1 Tertullian says of Septimius Severus, 
(in the passage just referred to,) Clarissi- 
mas feminas et clarissimos viros sciens hu- 
jus sectee esse, non modo non lesit, verum 
et testimonio exornayit et populo furenti 
in nos palam restitit. ᾿ 

2 See above, p. 91. 

8 As may be inferred from the fact that 
he issued a rescript directing that those 
“qui illicitum collegium coisse dicantur,” 
should be accused before the Prvefectus 
urbi. Vid. Digest. 1. XII. tit. XIT. 1. § 14. 

4 Alii Spartiani Severus, c. 17: Judxos 
fieri sub gravi poena vetuit. Item etiam 
de Christianis sanxit. 


SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. 121 
Christians. We should possess the words of the law itself, however, in 
order to decide with any certainty as to its true meaning. 

At all events, so explicit a declaration, from an emperor who had 
thus far, shown himself personally favorable to the Christians, could 
only operate to render their circumstances still more distressing. In 
many districts, the persecution was so fierce, that it was looked upon 
as a sign of the speedy appearance of the Antichrist! In Egypt and 
in proconsular Africa, this seems to have been particularly the case ; 
yet these persecutions were certainly not general. 

At a period somewhat earlier, the threat of lodgmg an information 
with the magistrates, had already been employed to extort money from 
the Christians ;2 and many had bargained, at a certain price, with 
informers, or greedy policemen, for the privilege of not being disturbed 
in the exercise of their religion.? But as, under this government, the 
laws against the Christians continued to be neither strictly nor univer- 
sally carried into effect, such proceedings became more common, doubt- 
less, than in earlier persecutions. And it was now the case, that entire 
communities purchased freedom from disturbance in this way.4 Many 
bishops thought that, by this course, they consulted best for the inter- 
est of their churches.® But such measures would be opposed, not only 
by such as cherished a fanatic longing after martyrdom, but also on the 
score of prudence, and of zeal for the dignity and purity of the Chris- 
tian name. On the score of prudence, because it was only individuals, 
after all, who could be satisfied thus; and the rage or cupidity of 
others would only be excited the more ;®—on the score of interest for 
the honor and purity of the Christian name, because Christians became 
associated, by this course, with those who purchased immunity with 
bribes fromthe punishment due for unlawful or nefarious crimes or 
pursuits.’ When the advocates of this course pleaded, in their 
defence, that men ought to give to Cesar the things that are Ceesar’s, 
and to God the things that are God’s, Tertullian answered them 
thus: ‘“‘He who would extort money from me, in this way, demands 
nothing for the emperor, but rather acts against him, since, for the sake 
of gold, he lets the Christians go free, who are guilty by the laws.” 8 It 
appears to him remarkable, that, at a period when so many new regu- 
lations were devising for the improvement of the revenue, when so 


1 Euseb. 1. VI. c. 7. Ut regno suo securi frui possent, sub ob- 


2 The concutere Christianos. — Quid dicit 
ille concussor? Da mihi pecuniam, certe 
ne eum tradat. Tertullian. de fuga in per- 
secutione, ὁ. 12. 

3 Tu pacisceris cum delatore vel milite 
vel furunculo aliquo preside, sub tunica et 
βίη; quod aiunt, ut furtivo, quem coram 
toto mundo Christus emit, imo et manumi- 
sit, says the high-hearted Tertullian, as the 
opponent of such transactions. ]. c. 

5 Parum est, si unus aut alius ita eruitur. 
Massaliter tote ecclesia tributum sibi irro- 
gaverunt. ‘Tertullian. 1. c. c. 13. 

5 To this Tertullian sarcastically alludes : 


VOL. I. 11 


tentu pacem procurandi. 

6 Neque enim statim et a populo eris tu- 
tus, si officia militaria redemeris, says Ter- 
tullian, 1]. 6. ο. 14. 

7 Tertullian says, with reference to this, 
(1. ὁ. c. 13): Nescio dolendum an erubes- 
cendum sit, cum in matricibus beneficiario- 
rum et curiosorum inter tabernarios et 
lanios et fures balnearum et aleones et le- 
nones Christiani quoque vectigales conti- 
nentur. 

8 Miles me vel delator vel inimicus con- 
cutit, nihil Cesari exigens; imo contra 
faciens, cum Christianum, legibus humanis 
reum, mercede dimittit. Tertullian, 1.c.c.12. 


122 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER CARACALLA. 

many new taxes were introduced, it had never occurred to any one, to 
propose the free profession of Christianity, at a certain rate, fixed by 
law. Thus, owing to the great number of the Christians, of which all 
were aware, the public revenue would be greatly increased.1 

The situation of the Christians continued to be the same under the 
government of the insane Caracalla, although the cruel emperor him- 
self was the occasion of no new persecutions. Everything depended 
on the accidental temper of the different governors. Many of these 
were active in devising expedients for saving, without open violation of 
the laws, the lives of those Christians who were arraigned before their 
tribunals. Others were furious, from personal hatred, or to flatter the 
people. Others, again, were contented to proceed according to the 
letter of the law enacted by Trajan. Ina letter to one of the perse- 
cutors of the Christians, the proconsul Scapula, Tertullian remarks, 
that if he would use the sword only against the Christians according 
to the original laws, and as was still done by the governor of Maurita- 
nia, and by the governor of Leon, in Spain, he might discharge every 
lawful duty of his office, without resorting to cruelty. ‘'Trajan’s law, 
then, was not always the governing rule. 

We will now select a few individual examples which may serve to 
illustrate the character of the persecutions of this time.? In the year 
200, some Christians belonging to the city of Scillita in Numidia, were 
brought before the tribunal of the proconsul Saturninus. He said to 
them, ‘“‘ You may obtain pardon of our emperors (Severus and Cara- 
calla,) if in good earnest you will return to our gods.” One of them, 
Speratus, replied, ‘‘ We have injured no man; we have spoken ill of 
none ; for all the evil you have brought upon us, we have only thanked 
you. We give praise for it all to our true Lord and King.” The 
proconsul replied, ‘‘ We also are devout; we swear by the genius of 
the emperor our master, and we pray for his welfare, as you too must 
do.” Hereupon Speratus: “1 know of no genius of the ruler of this 
earth ; but I serve my God in heaven, whom no man hath seen nor can 
see. Ihave defrauded no man of his dues. I have never failed to pay 


1 Tanta quotidie erario augendo prospi- 
ciuntur remedia censuum, vectigalium, col- 
lationum, stipendiorum, nec unquam usque 
adhuc ex Christianis tale aliquid prospec- 
tum est, sub aliquam redemptionem capitis 
et sect redigendis, cum tantz multitudi- 
nis nemini ignote fructus ingens meti pos- 
get. L.c..c. 12. 

2 Tertullian relates, that a preses even 
went so far as to furnish the Christians 
himself with the means of so answering the 
questions of the judge, as to get discharged. 
Another released at once a Christian who 
had been brought before him, declaring it 
contrary to the laws to yield to the demands 
of his fellow-citizens, —i. 6. if we take tu- 
multuosum as neuter; or perhaps the cor- 
rect reading may be, he discharged the 
individual as a factious person, who must 
settle the matter with his fellow-citizens; 


viz. do what would satisfy them, — dimisit 
quasi tumultuosum, civibus suis satisfacere 
(ut — satisfaceret.) A third subjected a 
Christian to slight torture, and as he yield- 
ed at once, dismissed him without requiring 
anything more of him, expressing at the 
same time his regret to the assistant judges, 
that he had anything to do with such busi- 
ness. Another tore in pieces the elogium 
or writ, when a Christian, seized by violence, 
was brought before him, declaring that se- 
cundum mandatum,— the law of Trajan, — 
he would listen to no complaint in the ab- 
sence of the accusers. See Tertullian. ad 
Scapulam, ec. 4. 

8'The documents from which we take 
them, are in Ruinart. Acta Martyrum, the 
Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum, and Acta 
Perpetuz et Felicitatis. 


MARTYRDOMS IN AFRICA. 123 


the custom upon all which I purchase, for I acknowledge the emperor as 
my lord; but I can worship none but my Lord, the King of kings, 
the Lord of all nations.’? Upon this the proconsul ordered the Christ- 
ians to be conducted back to their prison until the next day. When 
they appeared again, he addressed them once more, and granted them 
a space of three days for reflection. But Speratus answered in the 
name of the rest; “I am a Christian, and we all are Christians; we 
abandon not our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do with us as you 
please.”? Having thus confessed themselves Christians, and refused to 
pay due honor to the emperor, they were sentenced to decapitation. 
On receiving their sentence, they thanked God, and at the place of 
execution, they again kneeled and gave thanks. 

Some few years afterwards, three young men, Revocatus, Saturnius, 
and Secundulus, and two young women, Perpetua and Felicitas, were 
arrested at Carthage, all of them being still catechumens. The story 
of their imprisonment and of their sufferings presents us with many a 
fine trait of the power of Christian faith, combined with Christian 
tenderness of feeling. Perpetua, two and twenty years of age, who was 
a mother, with her child at the breast, had to struggle not alone with 
the natural feelmgs which shrunk from death, and with the weakness 
of her sex. The hardest conflict which she had before her was with 
those purely human feelings, grounded in the sacred ties of nature, 
feelings which Christianity recognizes in all their rights, and makes 
even more profound and tender, but yet causes to be sacrificed to the 
One Thing for which all else must be yielded. The mother of Perpetua 
was a Christian, but her aged father was still a pagan. His daughter 
was dear to him, but he dreaded also the disgrace connected with her 
suffermgs as a Christian. When she was first brought to the police 
office, her aged father came and urged her to recant. Pointing to a 
vessel that lay on the ground, she said, ‘Can I call this vessel any- 
thing else than what it is? No. Neither can I say to you anything 
else, than that I am a Christian.” ‘In the meantime, she was baptized ; 
for the clergy usually found no difficulty in purchasing, at least, from 
the overseers of the prisons, admission to the Christians in confinement, 
for the purpose of administering to them the offices of religion ; although, 
in the present case, even this was perhaps unnecessary, as the prisoners 
were not as yet placed under a rigorous guard. Perpetua said, ‘‘ The 
Spirit bade me pray for nothing at my baptism but patience.” After 
a few days they were thrown into the dungeon. ‘I was tempted,” 
said she, ‘‘ for I had never been in such darkness before. O what a 
dreadful day! The excessive heat occasioned by the multitude of pris- 
oners, the rough treatment we experienced from the soldiers, and, 
finally, anxiety for my child, made me miserable.” The deacons, who 
administered to them the communion in the dungeon, purchased for 
the Christian prisoners a better apartment, where they were separated 
from other criminals. Perpetua now took the child to herself in the 
dungeon, and placed it at her breast; she recommended it to her 
mother ; she comforted her friends; and felt cheered herself by the 
se eg of her babe. ‘The dungeon,” said she, “became a palace 

me. 


124 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER CARACALLA— 


The report reached her aged father, that they were about to be 
tried. He hastened to her and said, “My daughter, pity my grey 
hairs, pity thy father, if I am still worthy to be called thy father. If 
I have brought thee up to this bloom of thy age, if I have preferred thee 
above all thy brothers, expose me not to such shame among men. Look 
upon thy son, who, if thou diest, cannot long survive. Let that lofty 
spirit give way, lest thou plunge us all into ruin. For if thou diest 
thus, not one of us will ever have courage again to speak a free word.” 
Whilst saying this, he kissed her hands, threw himself at her feet, and 
called her with tears not his daughter, but his mistress. ‘ My father’s 
grey hairs,” said the daughter, ‘ pained me, when I considered that 
he alone of my family would not rejoice that I must suffer.” She re- 
plied to him, “‘ What shall happen when I come before the tribunal, 
depends on the will of God; for know, we stand not in our own strength, 
but only by the power of God.”’ On the arrival of this decisive hour, 
her aged father also appeared, that he might for the last time try his 
utmost to overcome the resolution of his daughter. Said the governor 
to Perpetua, ‘“ Have pity on thy father’s grey hairs, have pity on thy 
helpless child. Offer sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor.”” She 
answered, “That I cannot do.” ‘ Art thou a Christian?”’ ‘“ Yes,” 
she replied, “1 am a Christian.” Her fate was now decided. They 
were all condemned together to serve, at the approaching festival, on the 
anniversary of the young Geta’s nomination,! as a cruel sport for the 
people and soldiers in a fight of wild beasts. They returned back re- 
joicing to the dungeon. But Perpetua did not suppress the tender 
feelings of the mother. Her first act was to send a request to her aged 
father that she might have the child, whom she wished to give the 
breast; but he refused to part with it. As to Felicitas, on her return 
to the dungeon, she was seized with the pains of labor. The jailer said 
to her, “If thy present sufferings are so great, what wilt thou do, when 
thou art thrown to the wild beasts? This thou didst not consider, when 
thou refusedst to sacrifice.” She answered, ‘I now suffer myself all 
that I suffer; but then there will be another who shall suffer for me, 
because I also will suffer for him.”” A custom which had come down 
from the times of human sacrifices, under the bloody Baal-worship 
of the Carthaginians, still prevailed, of dressing those criminals who 
were condemned to die by wild beasts, in priestly raiment. It was 
therefore proposed, in the present case, that the men should be clothed 
as the priests of Saturn, and the women as the priestesses of Ceres. 
Nobly did their free, Christian spirit protest against such a proceeding. 
‘‘ We have come here,” said they, “‘ of our own will, that we may not 
suffer our freedom to be taken from us. We have given up our lives, 
that we may not be forced to such abominations.”’ The pagans them- 
selves acknowledged the justice of their demand and yielded. 

After they had been torn by the wild beasts, and were about to re- 
ceive the merciful stroke which was to end their sufferings, they took 
leave of each other, for the last time, with the mutual kiss of Christian 
love. 


1 Natales Ceesaris. 


HELIOGABALUS——ALEXANDER SEVERUS. 125 


A more quiet season for the Christian Church began with the reign 
of the ignoble Heliogabalus, A. D. 219. But we have already ex- 
plained the singular phenomenon, that the worst princes proved to 
be the most favorably disposed towards the Christians. Helioga- 
balus was not a follower of the old religion of the state, but even 
devoted to a foreign superstition which united with itself the most 
abominable excesses, the Syrian worship of the Sun. This worship he 
wished to make predominant in the Roman empire, and to blend with 
it all other religions. Τὸ this end he tolerated Christianity, as he did 
other foreign religions. Had he ever proceeded to the execution of his 
plan, πὸ would assuredly have met with the most determined opposition 
from the Christians.? 

From an entirely different source proceeded the favorable disposition 
of the noble-minded and devout Alexander Severus, (from the year 
222 to 235,) an emperor wholly unlike to his abandoned predecessor. 
This excellent prince possessed a ready sympathy with all that is good, 
and a reverence for everything connected with religion. He was at- 
tached to that religious eclecticism, the grounds of whose origin we 
have earlier explained. But he distinguished himself from others of 
the same principles, by giving Christianity a place in his system. In 
Christ he recognized a Divine Being, equal with the other gods; and 
in the domestic chapel (the Larareum) where he was used to offer his 
morning devotions, among the images of those men, whom he regarded 
as beings of a superior order —of Apollonius of Tyana, of Orpheus— 
stood also the bust of Christ. It is said that it was his intention to 
cause Christ to be enrolled among the Roman deities. The words of 
our Saviour, which this emperor was constantly repeating, ‘ As ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,”—a 
maxim which, taken alone, is but little suited, it must be confessed, to 
mark the distinguishing character of Christianity,—he caused to be 
engraven on the walls of his palace and on public monuments. When 
the mother of this emperor, Julia Mammza, resided at Antioch, she 
sent for Origen, the great teacher of the Alexandrian church; and we 
may be certain that this father, who, more than any other, knew how to 
make Christianity intelligible to a foreign mode of thinking, availed 
himself of this opportunity to do this in the case of Mammeea, who exer- 
cised a great influence over the feelings of her son. The declarations 
of this emperor on several occasions are based on the recognition of 
Christianity as a religio licita, and of the Christian church as a law- 
fully existing corporation; as, for example, when, in recommending a 
new mode of appointment to the civil offices of the state, he referred 
for a model to the regulations ἴῃ Christian churches; and when in a 
dispute betwixt the guild of cooks and the Christian church in Rome, 
respecting a lot of land which the latter had appropriated, he decided in 
favor of the church; saymg, “It was better that God should be wor- 
shipped in whatever manner, on that spot, than that it should be given 


1 El. Lamprid. vit. c. 3, 6, 7. 


= 


126 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER MAXIMINUS— 

up to the cooks. In view of this so favorable disposition of Alexander 
Severus towards the Christians, and of the declarations which imply a 
tacit recognition of Christianity as a religio licita; it is the more singu- 
lar that he should still omit taking the decisive step, by which he 
would have given to the Christian church the greatest, the most 
certain and the most lasting advantage — that of adopting Christianity 
by an express law of the empire among the tolerated religions. It is 
evident from this fact how difficult it was for a Roman emperor to effect 
a change in anything that related to the public religion of the state. 
In fact, it was under the reign of Severus, that the civilian whose 
authority stands so high in the Roman law, Domitius Ulpian, collected 
together in the seventh of his ten books, De officio proconsulis,! the 
rescripts of the emperors against the Christians.” 

The rude Thracian, Maximinus, who in the year 235 raised himself 
to the imperial throne, after the assassination of the excellent Alexander 
Severus, hated the Christians on account of the friendly relations in 
which they stood with his predecessor, and persecuted in particular 
those bishops who had been on terms of intimacy with him.? In addi- 
tion to this, several of the provinces, as Cappadocia and Pontus, were 
visited with destructive earthquakes, which re-enkindled the popular 
hatred against the Christians. The fury of the people, under such an 
emperor, had free scope; and it was, moreover, encouraged by hostile 
governors. The persecutions were confined, indeed, to single provinces, 
so that the Christians could save themselves by flying from one proy- 
ince to another. But although the persecutions were less violent than 
in other times, they made the greater impression, begause they fell on 
those who, during the long interval of peace, had become unused to 
violence.* 

A more favorable period for the Christians returned again with the 
accession of Philip the Arabian, in the year 244. It is said, that this 
emperor was himself a Christian.© We have a circumstantial account 
which states, that on the vigils of Easter, the night after Easter Sun- 
day, he presented himself for the purpose of joming in the worship of 
a Christian assembly ; that he was met at the door by the bishop of the 
church,® and told that, on account of his past crimes,’ he could obtain no 
admittance there, until he had submitted to the penance of the church ; 
and that the emperor actually consented to comply with the terms pre- 
scribed. But this story does not harmonize with all we otherwise know 
respecting the emperor Philip; for in no part of his public life, not 
even on his coins, has he left the least trace of his Christianity ; but he 
everywhere appears as a follower of the pagan religion of the state. 


1 Of which the fragments are to be found 
in the Digests, 1. I. tit. XIV. c. 4, and the 
following. 

2 Lactant. institut. 1. V.c¢. 11: Ut doce- 
ret, quibus oportet eos poenis affici, qui se 
cultores Dei confiterentur. 

8 Euseb. 1. VI. c. 28. 

4 Vid. ep. Firmiliani Cesareens. 75 apud 
Cypr. and Orig. Commentar. in Matth. T. 
111. p. 857. Ed. de la Rue. 


5 Eusebius, in his Church History, makes 
use of the expression: κατέχει λόγος. But 
in the Chronicle he calls him distinctly, 
the first Christian emperor. 

6 According to the later tradition of Ba- 
bylas, bishop of Antioch. 

7 The assassination of his a 
Gordianus, was doubtless one of the crimes 
here meant. 


PHILIP THE ARABIAN. 127 


Origen, who was on terms of correspondence with the imperial family,} 
and who wrote, during this reign, his work against Celsus, gives us to 
understand, indeed, that the Christians now enjoyed a season of quiet ; 
but we find in this writer no intimation of the fact, that the ruler of the 
Roman empire was a Christian, when assuredly he had occasion to 
mention it, if it was true. ‘The only possible way of explaining this 
would be to say, that the emperor, led by political motives, kept his con- 
version to Christianity a secret. But then again, this statement could 
not be reconciled with the other, namely, that he had visited a Christian 
assembly, especially on such an occasion, or that he had submitted to 
the penance of the church. We find, indeed, the first traces of the 
tradition respecting the conversion of this emperor to Christianity in an 
author of no less credit than Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote under 
the reign of Valerian, the second in succession after Philip. He says 
of Valerian, that ‘“‘He showed more good will towards the Christians, 
than even those emperors who were held to be Christians themselves.’”? 
By those emperors, we can conceive no others to be meant than the 
present Philip, and Alexander Severus. Probably, then, the well-in- 
formed Dionysius placed them both in the same class. Philip, like 
Alexander Severus, might have included Christianity in his system of 
religious eclecticism; and the exaggerated legend made of him a 
Christian. But the assassination of his predecessor, and many other 
actions of which he was known to be guilty, seemed inconsistent with 
his Christianity ; to solve the contradiction, the legend added this fig- 
ment of the occurrence at the Easter vigils. 

But instead of dwelling longer upon this exaggerated story, we will 
cite, before we pass to new trials of the Christian church, the remarkable 
words of that great ecclesiastical teacher and writer of those times, — 
Origen, — respecting the trials which the church had already encoun- 
tered, and respecting her then external condition and future prospects. 
In relation to the earlier persecutions, he remarks, “‘ As the Christians, 
who had been commanded not to defend themselves against their ene- 
mies by outward force, observed the mild and philanthropic injunctions ; 
what they could not have gained, had they been ever so powerful, in 
case they had been permitted to wage war, that they received from the 
God who constantly fought for them, and who, from time to time, 
constrained to peace those who had arrayed themselves against the 
Christians and would have exterminated them from the earth; for in 
order to remind them, when they saw some few of their brethren ex- 
posed to sufferings on account of their religion, that they should be the 
bolder and despise death, a few, now and then, so few that they may 
easily be numbered, have died for the Christian religion;* while God 
has always prevented a war of extermination against the whole body of 
Christians, since it was his pleasure that they should remain, and that 
the whole earth should be filled with this saving and most holy doc- 


1 He had written letters to the emperor, *L. III. c. 8. 
and to his wife Severa, which have not 4 Ὀλίγοι κατὰ καιροὺς καὶ σφόδρα εὐαρί- 
been preserved. ὕϑμητοι ὑπὲρ τῆς Χριστιανῶν ϑεοσεβείας 
2 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 10. τεϑνήκασιν. 


128 CHRISTIANS UNDER PHILIP THE ARABIAN. 


trie. And yet, on the other hand, in order that the weaker brethren 
might breathe freely, delivered from their fear of death, God has taken 
care of the faithful, scattering, by his mere will, all the assaults of their 
enemies, so that neither emperor, nor governor, nor the populace, has 
been able to rage against them longer.” In reference to his own times, 
he observes, ‘The number of the Christians, God has caused contin- 
ually to increase, and some addition is made to it every day; he has, 
moreover, given them already the free exercise of their religion ;1 al- 
though a thousand obstacles still hinder the spread of the doctrines of 
Jesus in the world. But since it was God who willed that the doctrines 
of Jesus should become a blessing also to the heathen, the machinations 
of men against the Christians have all been turned to shame, and the 
more emperor, governor and the populace have endeavored to destroy 
the Christians, the more powerful have they become.”’? He says, that 
among the multitude who became Christians, might be found men of 
wealth and of high stations in the government, as also rich and noble 
women ;* that the teacher of a Christian church might now, indeed, ob- 
tain honor and respect, but that the contempt which he met with from 
others exceeded the respect which he enjoyed from his brethren in the 
faith. He says, moreover, that those absurd accusations against the 
Christians were still believed by many, who carried their prejudice so 
far as even to avoid speaking with them.® He writes, that by the 
divine will, the persecutions against the Christians had long since 
ceased ; but he adds, with a glance to the future, that this time of 
tranquillity would, in its turn, certainly come to an end, when the 
calumniators of Christianity had once more diffused abroad the opinion, 
that the cause of the many disturbances (in the latter part of this 
emperor’s reign) was the great multitude of the Christians, who had so 
increased their numbers, because they were no longer persecuted.® 
Thus he foresaw, that the persecutions had not yet come to an end, 
and the opinion that the decline of the state religion and the unceas- 
ing progress of Christianity was bringing calamity upon the Roman 
empire, would, sooner or later, bring on another persecution of the 
Christians. “If God,” says he, “ grants liberty to the tempter, and 
gives him the power to persecute us, we shall be persecuted. But if 
it is God’s will that we should not be exposed to these sufferings we 
shall, in some wonderful way, enjoy tranquillity, even in the midst of a 
world that hates us; and we trust in him who has said, Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world. And in truth he has overcome 
the world. In so far, then, as he who has overcome the world, wills 


L"Hdn δὲ καὶ παῤῥησίαν ἐπιδέδωκεν. Τ,. δΤ, VI. c. 28. Origen says, that Jews 


FLL 2. 26. had spread abroad those reports about the 
2 Τοσούτῳ πλείους ἐγίνοντο καὶ κατίσχυ- murder of children, &., against the Chris- 
ov σφόδρα. L. c. tians. 
ὃ Τινὲς τῶν ἐν ἀξιώμασι, καὶ γύναια τὰ 6 Καὶ εἰκὸς παύσεσϑαι τὸ ὡς πρὸς τὸν 
ἁβρὰ καὶ εὐγενῆ. L. III ©. 9. βίον τοῦτον τοῖς πιστεύουσιν ἐγγινόμενον 


4 Καὶ νῦν δὲ πλείων ἐστίν ἡ παρὰ τοῖς ἀδεὲς, ἐπὰν πάλιν οἱ παντὶ τρόπῳ διαβάλ- 
λοιποῖς ἀδοξία τῆς παρὰ τοῖς ὁμοδόξοις νο- λοντες τὸν λόγον, τὴν αἰτίαν τὴν ἐπὶ τοσοῦ- 
μιζομένης δόξης καὶ οὐ πᾶσιν, (an allusion τὸ νῦν στάσεως ἐν πλήϑει τῶν πιστευόντων 
to the parties existing among the Chris- νομίσωσιν εἶναι. ἹΤ,. Il. ο. 15. 
tians.) L.c. 


ORIGEN’S REMARKS. 129 
that we should overcome it, since he has received from the Father 
power to overcome the world, we rely upon fis victory.!_ But if it is 
his pleasure that we should again strive and battle for the faith, then 
let the enemy come, and we will say to him, “We can do all things 
through him that strengthens us, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Although 
Origen was too sensible and sagacious to place great confidence in the 
peaceful times which the Christian church then enjoyed, though he saw 
that new struggles must be undergone, yet he was firmly persuaded 
that the day was coming when Christianity, by virtue of its intrinsic, 
divine power, would come forth victorious out of them all, and gain the 
dominion over entire humanity. As Celsus had said, that im case all 
behaved like the Christians, the emperor would be left without an army, 
the Roman empire would fall a prey to the wildest barbarians, and 
consequently all culture become extinct ; to this Origen replied, “ If, as 
Celsus says, all did as I do, then the barbarians also would receive the 
divine word, and become the most moral and gentle of men. All other 
religions would cease from the earth, and Christianity alone be supreme, 
which indeed is destined one day to have the supremacy, since the divine 
truth is continually bringing more souls under its sway.” The con- 
viction which Origen here expresses, — that Christianity, by its own 
intrinsic power, would in addition to its other conquests, subdue all the 
rudeness of the savage stock of human nature, and bestow all true cul- 
ture on the barbarians, — this conviction was nothing new, but from 
the beginning given with the Christian consciousness itself. The 
Apostle Paul describes Christianity as a power that should reach as 
well to Scythians as to Greeks, and impart the same divine life to both 
these national stocks, binding them together in one divine family ; and 
Justin Martyr testifies that no barbarian or Nomadic race was to be 
found, in which prayers did not ascend to God in the name of the cruci- 
fied. But the really new,— wherein we perceive the change which 
the onward progress of history, during the course of this century, had 
produced in the mode of thinking among Christians and in their antici- 
pations of the future development of God’s kingdom, —was, that Origen 
confidently avows the expectation that Christianity, working outward 
From within, would overcome and suppress every other religion, and 
gain the dominion of the world. Such an anticipation was foreign to. 
the thoughts of the older teachers of the church. They could conceive 
of the Pagan state in no other relation than one of constant hostility to 


ΤΊ render the passage, (1. VIII. c. 70,) 


κρατῆσει, Tod λόγου ἀεὶ πλείονας νεμομένου 


Ii. VIII. c. 68. 


according to what seems to me to be a ne- 
cessary correction of the text: Διόπερ εἰς 
ὅσον νικῆσαι (instead of ¢) ἡμᾶς (this I in- 
sert) αὐτὸν βούλεται, λαβὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ πατ- 
ρὸς τὸ νικᾷν τὸν κόσμον, ϑαῤῥοῦμεν (δὲ I 
omit) τῇ ἐκείνου νίκῃ. 

2 Δηλονότι καὶ οἱ βάρβαροι, τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ 
ϑεοῦ προσελϑόντες͵ νομιμώτατοι ἔσονται, καὶ 
πᾶσα μὲν ϑρησκεία καταλυϑήσεται, μόνη δὲ 
9 Χριστιανῶν κρατήσει: ἦτις καὶ μόνη ποτὲ 


ψυχάς. 

8 Dial. c. Tryph. f. 345, ed. Colon: Οὐδὲ 
ἕν γὰρ ὄλως ἐστί τὸ γένος ἀνϑρώπων, εἴτε 
βαρβάρων, εἴτε ἑλλήνων, εἴτε ἁπλῶς ᾧτινι- 
οὖν ὀνόματι προσαγορευομένων ἢ ᾿Αμαξοβί- 
WY ἢ ἀοίκων καλουμένων ἢ ἐν σκηναῖς κτη- 
νοτρόφων οἰκούντων, ἐν οἷς μὴ διὰ τοῦ ὀνό- 
ματος τοῦ σταυρωϑέντος Ἰησοῦ εὐχαὶ Kat 
εὐχαριστίαι τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ποιητῇ τῶν ὅλον 
γίνονται. 


130 THE PERSECUTION 


Christianity, and expected the triumph of the church only as the result 
of a supernatural interposition, at the second coming of Christ.1 

What the sagacious Origen had foretold, with regard to impending 
persecutions, was soon verified. Indeed, at the very time he was in- 
diting these words at Czesarea in Palestine, they had already begun to 
be verified in another district of the empire. When the enthusiastic 
followers of the old religion observed the encroachments which, during 
this long season of peace, Christianity had made on every side, threat- 
ening the destruction of all they held dearest, the fanatic spirit would 
be excited in them to so much the greater degree of violence. And so 
it was, that even before the change of rulers, a certain individual made 
his appearance in Alexandria, who imagined that he had been called 
by a revelation of the gods,’ to arouse the people to war in defence of 
their ancient sanctuaries, against the enemies of the gods; and by his 
means the fury of the extremely excitable populace of that city was 
kindled against the Christians. They had already suffered much from 
this quarter. 

It had repeatedly been the case before, that a government favorable 
to the Christians was immediately succeeded by another under which 
they were oppressed—the reign of Antonius Pius, for example, by 
that of Marcus Aurelius— of Marcus Aurelius by that of Maximinus 
the Thracian. So it proved once more, when, in 249, Decius Trajan 
conquered Philip the Arabian, and placed himself on the throne of the 
Cesars. It would be natural for an emperor, zealously devoted to the 
pagan religion, who succeeded to a government whith had been lenient 
towards the Christians, to consider himself bound to reénforce the 
ancient laws, now fallen into desuetude, and to carry them into more 
rigorous execution against the religion which, durmg the preceding 
reign, had become so much more widely diffused. In many parts of 
the empire the Christians had now enjoyed undisturbed peace for a 
period of thirty years; in several districts, for a still longer time. A 
persecution, following after so many years of tranquillity, could not 
fail to prove a sifting process for the churches, where many had for- 
gotten the conflict with the world to which they were called as Christ- 
ians, and the virtues which they should maintain in this conflict. It 
was in this light, as such a process for the sifting and cleansing of the 
churches, now asleep and become worldly under the long enjoyment of 
quiet, that this new persecution was regarded by the bishop Cyprian of 
Carthage. It was thus he expressed himself before the Christians under 
his spiritual guidance, soon after the first storm of the persecution was 
over.’ “ΤΡ said he, “‘the cause of the disease is understood, the 
cure of the afflicted part is already found. ‘The Lord would prove his 
people ; and because the divinely prescribed regimen of life had be- 


1 This is expressed by Justin Martyr, in 2 Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in a 
the Dial. c. Tryph. f. 358, where he says of letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, cited in 
the ἄρχοντες, --- Ὅν ob παύσονται Yava- Eusebius, (1. VI. ¢. 41,) calls him, ‘O κακῶν 
τοῦντες καὶ διωκοντες τοὺς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ TH πόλει ταύτῃ μάντις Kal ποιητῆς. 
Χριστοῦ ὁμολογοῦντας, ἕως πάλιν παρῇ καὶ ἅ58 In his sermo de lapsis. 
καταλύσῃ πάντας. 


UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 131 


come disturbed in the long season of peace, a divine judgment was 
sent to re-establish our fallen, and I might almost say slumbering faith. 
Our sins deserve more; but our gracious Lord has so ordered it, that 
all which has occurred seems rather like a trial than a persecution. 
Forgetting what believers did in the times of the apostles, and what 
they should always be doing, Christians labored, with insatiable desire, 
to increase their earthly possessions. Many of the bishops, who, by 
precept and example, should have guided others, neglected their divine 
calling, to engage in the management of worldly concerns.” Such 
being the condition of things in many of the churches, it may be easily 
understood that a persecution, which was now so unusual an occurrence, 
and which in the present case, became after the first outbreak, so ex- 
tremely violent, must have produced a powerful impression. 

It was certainly the design of the emperor, to suppress Christianity 
entirely. In the year 250, he ordered rigorous search to be made for 
all suspected of refusing compliance with the national worship, and the 
Christians were to be required to conform to the ceremonies of the 
Roman religion. In case they declined, threats, and afterwards tor- 
tures were to be employed to compel submission. If they remained 
firm, it was resolved to inflict, particularly on the bishops, whom the 
emperor hated most bitterly, the punishment of death. There was a 
disposition, however, to try first the effect of commands, threats, per- 
suasions and the milder forms of chastisement. By degrees, recourse 
was had to more violent measures; and gradually the persecution 
extended from the capital of the empire— where the presence of an 
emperor known to be hostile to the Christians made it the most severe 
at the beginning — into the provinces. Wherever the imperial edict 
was carried into execution, the first step was publicly to appoint a day 
against which all the Christians of a place were to present themselves 
before the magistrate, renounce their religion, and offer at the altar. 
In the case of those who before the end of the time fled their country, 
nothing further was done; except that their goods were confiscated, 
and themselves forbidden to return under penalty of death. But if 
they were unwilling to make so immediate a sacrifice of their earthly 
goods for the heavenly treasure, if they waited, in the expectation that 
some expedient might perhaps yet be found whereby both could be re- 
tained, then, unless they had voluntarily presented themselves by the 
day appointed, the examination was commenced before the magistrate, 
assisted by five of the principal citizens.1 After repeated tortures, 
those who remained firm were cast into prison, where the additional 
suffermgs of hunger and thirst were employed to overcome their resolu- 
tion. ‘The extreme penalty of death appears to have been resorted to 
less frequently. Many magistrates, whose avarice exceeded their zeal 
for the laws, or who were really desirous of sparing the Christians, 
gladly let them off, even without sacrificing, provided they bought a 
certificate, or libel, as it was called, attesting that they had satisfactorily 

1 Cyprian. ep. 40. Quinque primores illi, expression edicto renders it not probable, 


qui edicto nuper magistratibus fuerant cop- to say the least, that this regulation was 
ulati, ut fidem nostram subruerent. The confined to Carthage alone. 


152 THE PERSECUTION 
complied with the requisitions of the edict.! Some Christians pursued 
a bolder course, and instead of providing such certificates, maintained, 
without appearing before the authorities, that their names were entered 
on the magistrate’s protocol, along with those by whom the edict had 
been obeyed (acta facientes.)? Many erred through ignorance ; sup- 
posing themselves guilty of no violation of religious constancy, when 
they did nothing contrary to their professed faith either by sacrificing 
or burning incense; but only allowed others to report that they had 
done so. But this proceeding the church always condemned as a tacit 
abjuration.® 

The effect produced by this sanguinary edict among the Christians 
in large cities, such as Alexandria and Carthage, may best be described 
in the words of the Alexandrian bishop Dionysius.4 ‘“ All,” says he, 
‘‘ were thrown into consternation by the terrible decree; and of the more 
reputable citizens,’ many presented themselves immediately, of their own 
accord: some, private individuals, impelled by their fears ; others, 
such as were invested with some public office, and were forced to do it 
by their employment ;° while others still were conducted forward by 
their relations and friends. As each was called by name, they 
approached the unholy offering; some pale and trembling, as if they 
were going not to sacrifice, but to be themselves sacrificed to the gods, 
so that the populace, who thronged around, derided them; and it was 
plain to all, that they were equally afraid to sacrifice and to die. 
Others advanced with more alacrity, carrying their boldness so far as 
to avow they never had been Christians. In all of these, was verified 
the saying of our Lord, ‘how hardly can a rich man enter into the 
kingdom of heaven.’ As to the rest, some followed the example of 
these two classes of the more reputable; others betook themselves to 
flight, and others were arrested; of these last, a part held out, indeed, 
till the manacles were fastened on, and some even suffered themselves 
to be imprisoned for several days; but they abjured before they were 
summoned to appear at the tribunal. Others endured their tortures to 
a certain point, but finally gave in. Yet the firm and ever blessed pil- 
lars of the Lord, who through him were made strong, and endured, 
with a power and steadfastness worthy of, and corresponding to, the 
strength of their faith, became wonderful witnesses of his kingdom.” 
Among these, Dionysius mentions a boy, of fifteen years, Dioscurus by 
name, who, by his apt replies and constancy under torture, forced the 





1 Those who procured such a certificate 
were styled /ibellaticr. 

2 Cyprian. ep. 31. Qui acta fecissent, li- 
cet preesentes, cum fierent, non affuissent— 
ut sic scriberetur mandando. 

8 The Roman clergy, in their letter to 
Cyprian, say: Non est immunis a scelere, 
qui ut fieret imperavit, nec est alienus a 
crimine, cujus consensu licet non a se ad- 
missum crimen tamen publice legitur. 

4 Euseb. |. VI. c. 41. 

5 Οἱ περιφανέστεροι, the persone insignes, 
on whom the attention of the pagans was 


always first directed, and who, above all 
others, were exposed to danger. 

6 Among the person insignes, a distine- 
tion was made between the ἰδιωτεύοντες, 
who appeared voluntarily before the civil 
authorities and complied with the edict, and 
the δημοσιεύοντες, of ὑπὸ τῶν πράξεων 
ἤγοντο, who were obliged by their official 
duties to appear in the places of public re- 
sort, and were therefore under the necessi- 
ty of deciding immediately, whether they 
would obey the edict, or render themselves 
liable to the penalty by their ee, 
publicly expressed 


UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 133 


admiration of the governor himself, who finally dismissed him, declaring 
that, on account of his minority, he was willing to allow him time for 
better reflection. 

If the number of the wavering, or of those who fell in the conflict, 
was great, yet were there, also, many glorious exhibitions of the power 
of faith, and of Christian devotedness. At Carthage, we find a cer- 
tain Numidicus, who, for his exemplary conduct in the persecution, 
was, by bishop Cyprian, made a presbyter. This man, after having 
inspired many with courage to suffer martyrdom, and seen his own 
wife perish at the stake, had himself, when half burned and covered 
under a heap of stones, been left for dead. His daughter went to 
search under the stones for the body of her father, in order to bury 
it. Great was her joy at finding him still giving signs of life, and when 
her filial assiduities finally succeeded in completely restoring him. A 
woman had been brought to the altar by her husband, where she was 
forced to offer, by some one holding her hand. But she exclaimed, “I 
did it not, —it was you that did it;’’ and she was thereupon condemned 
to exile.1 In the dungeon at Carthage, we find confessors of Christ, 
whom their persecutors had endeavored, for eight days, by heat, hun- 
ger and thirst, to force to abjuration, and who now saw death by starv- 
ation staring them in the face.? Certain confessors at Rome, who 
had already been confined for a year, wrote to the bishop Cyprian in the 
following terms:? ‘‘ What more glorious and blessed lot can, by God’s 
grace, fall to man, than, amidst tortures and the fear of death itself, to 
confess God, the Lord ; than, with lacerated bodies, and a spirit depart- 
ing, but yet free, to confess Christ, the Son of God; than to become 
fellow-sufferers with Christ, in the name of Christ? If we have not 
yet shed our blood, we are ready to shed it. Pray then, beloved Cy- 
prian, that the Lord would daily confirm and strengthen each one of 
us, more and more, with the power of his might, and that he, as the 
best of leaders, would finally conduct his soldiers, whom he has disci- 
plined and proved in the dangerous camp, to the field of battle which 
is before us, armed with those divine weapons which never can be 
conquered.” 4 

The hatred of the emperor was particularly directed against the 
bishops, and perhaps the punishment of death was expressly intended 
for them alone. At the very outset of the persecution, the Roman 
bishop Fabianus suffered martyrdom. Several of the bishops withdrew 
from their communities, till the first tempest of the persecution was 
over. This course might be an act of weakness, if the fear of death, 
threatened first to themselves, impelled them to it. But they might 
also be actuated by loftier motives; they might look upon it as their 
duty, since their presence served merely to exasperate the pagans, to 
contribute, by their temporary absence, to the preservation of the peace 
of their flocks, and moreover, so far as was consistent with steadfast- 
ness to the faith and the discharge of their pastoral duties, to secure 


1 Cyprian. ep. 18. ὃ Ep. 26. 
“sar P 
2Ep. 21. Luciani ap Cyprian. 4 Ephes. 6, 11. 
VOL. I. 12 


134 THE PERSECUTION - 


their own lives for the future services of their communities and of the 
church. But such a step was ever liable to different interpretations, 
and the bishops, particularly those in the large capital towns, on whom 
all eyes were turned, exposed themselves to many an accusation. Even 
the bishop Cyprian could not escape these censures, when, moved by 
the cry of these furious pagan people, who demanded his death, he with- 
drew, for a period, into a place of concealment.! His later conduct, at 
least, shows that he knew how to overcome the fear of death, and the 
frankness and peace of conscience with which, in a letter to the Roman 
church, he explains his conduct, clear him from all reproach.2 “ Im- 
mediately,” he writes, ‘“‘on the first commencement of the troubles, 
when the people, with furious clamors, had frequently demanded my 
death, I retired for a while, not so much out of regard for my own safe- 
ty, as for the public peace of the brethren, lest the disturbances which 
had begun, might be increased by my obstinate presence.” This con- 
duct was in accordance with the principles which he recommended to 
others in all similar cases.? “ Thus our Lord,”’ he says, ‘* commanded 
that, in times of persecution, we should give way and fly; he pre- 
scribed this rule, and followed it himself. For, as the crown of mar- 
tyrdom comes from the grace of God, and can only be gained when the 
hour for receiving it is arrived, he who retires for a season, while he 
still remains true to Christ, denies not the faith, but’ abides his time.” 
There was some difference, it must be allowed, between the case of all 
other Christians, and of one who had the office of a pastor to adminis- 
ter, and duties to fulfil towards souls which were committed to his care. 
But Cyprian waived none of these obligations. He could truly say, that 
although absent in the body, yet in spirit he was constantly present with 
his flock, and by counsel and act, endeavored to guide them according 
to the precepts of the Lord. The letters which he sent from his re- 
tirement by means of certain ecclesiastics, through whom he main- 
tained a constant correspondence with his people, show how truly he 
could say this of himself; how vigilantly he labored to maintain the 
discipline and order of his church, and to provide, in every way, for 
the wants of the poor, who were hindered by the persecution from pur- 
suing their ordinary employments, and for the relief of the prisoners. 
The same principles of Christian prudence which moved him to avoid 
a momentary danger, were also exhibited in his exhortations to his 
flock, which, while they enforced the duty of Christian constancy, 
warned against every approach to fanatical extravagance. “I beg of 
you,” he writes to his clergy,® “to use all prudence and care for the 
preservation of quiet; and if our brethren, in their love, are anxious to 
visit those worthy confessors whom divine grace has already honored 
by a glorious beginning, yet this must be done with caution, and not in 
crowds, lest the suspicion of the heathen should be excited, lest our ac- 
cess to them should be wholly prohibited, and, in our eagerness for too 


1 The Roman clergy, in their letter to the sa, quod utique recte fecerit, propterea 
Clerus at Carthage, express themselves with quod sit persona insignis.” Ep. 2. 
some doubt on the matter: “They had 2 Ep. 14. 8 De lapsis. 
learned Cyprianum secessisse certa ex cau- 4Ep.14. . 5 Ep. 4. 





UNDER DECIUS TRAJAN. 186 


much, we should lose the whole. Be careful, then, that, for the greater 
safety, this matter be managed with due moderation ; so that even the 
presbyters who administer the communion to the prisoners in their 
dungeon, may severally take their turns, as well as those deacons who 
go to assist; for, by this alternation of persons and change of visitors, 
the thing will be rendered less obvious. Indeed, we must im all things, 
with meekness and humility, as becomes the servants of God, accom- 
modate ourselves to the times, and seek for the preservation of peace 
and the best good of the people.” He advised his church to regard 
this persecution as an admonition to the duty of prayer.! “Let each 
of us,’ he says, “ pray to God, not for himself alone, but for all the 
brethren, according to the example which our Lord has given us, where 
we are taught to pray, not as individuals, each for himself, but as a com- 
mon brotherhood, all for all. When the Lord shall see us humble and 
peaceful, united among ourselves, and made better by our present suf 
ferings, he will deliver us from the persecutions of our enemies.” 
From a comparison of the letters of Cyprian which belong to this 
period, with those of Dionysius ef Alexandria, we may conclude, that 
the persecution became gradually more severe; a fact to be accounted 
for, however, without supposing that any new edict was issued by the 
emperor Decius. As so many had wavered on the first menace of the 
magistrate, it was the more confidently hoped that the Christians 
might be altogether suppressed without resorting to extremities, if they 
were but deprived of their bishops, who constantly inflamed their zeal 
for the faith. The management of the whole matter had, at first, been 
intrusted to the city and local magistrates in the several provinces ; 
persons who, from their acquaintance with the individual citizens, best 
knew how to approach them, and who could find out those means which 
were adapted to operate most effectually upon each individual, accord- 
ing to his particular character and his particular connections. The 
severest punishments, at first, were imprisonment and exile. But when 
it was seen that the hope which had been excited by the first success- 
ful result, was disappointed, the proconsuls took the matter into their 
own hands; and the proceedings against those whose constancy had 
been the cause of this disappoitment, became more violent, in order 
that they might be forced, at least, to yield like the rest. Hunger and 
thirst, the more refined and cruel methods of torture, in some cases the 
punishment of death, inflicted even upon such as were not connected 
with the sacred office, were ΠΟΙ employed. But it was natural that, in 
course of time, men would grow tired of their fury, and the excited 
passions become cool again. ‘The change, moreover, which took place 
in the provincial governments, when the old proconsuls and presidents, 
with the begmning of the year 251, laid down their office, might, for a 
time, have been favorable for the Christians. Finally, the attention of 
Decius himself was more withdrawn from his persecutions of the Chris- 
tians, by political events of greater importance to him, the insurrection 
in Macedonia, and the Gothic war. In this last war, towards the 


1 Ep. i 


136 PERSECUTION UNDER GALLUS AND VOLUSIANUS. 


close of the year, he lost his life. The calm which the Christians en- 
joyed in consequence of this change, continued under the reign of 
Gallus and Volusianus, through a part of the following year, 252. But 
a destructive pestilence, which had broke out in the preceding reign 
and was now gradually spreading its ravages through the whole Roman 
empire, besides drought and famine in several of the provinces, excited, 
as usual, the fury of the populace against the Christians.! An impe- 
rial edict appeared, requiring all Roman subjects to sacrifice to the 
gods, in order to obtain deliverance from so great a public calamity.? 
The public attention was again arrested, by observing how many with- 
drew from these solemnities because they were Christians. Hence 
arose new persecutions, to increase the number of sacrifices, and to 
sustain everywhere the declining interests of the ancient religion. 

On the approach of these new trials, the bishop Cyprian wrote a letter 
of encouragement to the African church of the Thibaritans,? in which he 
thus addresses them. ‘Let no one, my dearest brethren, when he 
observes how our people are scattered by the fear of persecution, be 
disturbed because he no longer sees the brethren together, nor hears 
the bishops preach. We, who may not shed others’ blood, but must 
be ready to pour out our own, cannot, at such a time, all meet in the 
same place together. Wherever it may happen, in these days, that a 
brother is separated awhile from the church, in body, not in spirit, by 
the necessity of the times, let him not be moved by the fearful cir- 
cumstances of such a flight, nor appalled at the solitude of the desert, 
which he may be obliged to make his refuge. He is not alone, who 
has Christ for a companion in his flight; he is not alone, who, pre- 
serving the temple of God inviolate, is not without God, wherever he 
may be. And if robber or wild beast fall upon the fugitive in the 
desert or on the mountains; if hunger, thirst or cold destroy him; or 
if his flight lead him over the sea, and the storm and waves overwhelm 
him ; still Christ is present, to witness the conduct of his soldier, wher- 
ever he fights.” 

The bishops of the metropolis, under the eye of the emperor, became 
naturally the first mark for persecution; for how could it be expected 
to put down the Christians in the provinces, if their bishops were tole- 
rated in Rome? Cornelius, who, at the hazard of his life, entered on 
his office while Decius was yet emperor, was first banished, then con- 
demned to death. Lucius, who had the Christian courage to succeed 
him in the office during these perilous times, became his follower also, 
soon afterwards, in banishment and in martyrdom. 

Yet the wars and the insurrections which occupied the attention of 
Gallus, prevented him from prosecuting with vigor any general perse- 
cutions in the provinces ; and. these events, which terminated, in the sum- 
mer of the year 253, with his assassination, at length restored tranquil- 
lity and peace to the Christians throughout the empire. 

The emperor Valerian, in the first year of his reign, treated the 


1 See Cyprian’s Apology for the Chris- qu edicto proposito celebrare populus ju- 
tians against the charges of Demetrianus. _ bebatur. 
2 Cypriani ep. 55 ad Cornel. Sacrificia,  * Ep. 56, 


UNDER VALERIAN ——CYPRIAN. 137 


Christians with unusual clemency ; indeed, he is said to have had many 
of them about him, in his own palace.! But if, at first, he gave him- 
self no concern about the affairs of religion, and let things take their 
course, without any intention, however, of leaving the old state religion 
to perish, yet the ever increasing multitude of the Christians, whose 
influence reached even into his own court, may have been used as an 
argument to convince him of the necessity of some stricter measures. 
It was manifestly his object, at first, when, in 257, he suffered himself 
to be induced to alter his conduct towards the Christians, to check the 
advance of Christianity without bloodshed. The churches were only 
to be deprived of their teachers and pastors, and particularly of their 
bishops. Next, the assembling of the churches was prohibited. Thus 
the trial was made, whether the end could be accomplished without the 
effusion of blood. 

The forms of procedure, in the first persecution under this emperor, 
are most clearly presented in the protocols or minutes of examination, 
in the cases of the bishops Cyprian and Dionysius. The proconsul Pa- 
ternus summoned Cyprian before his tribunal, and thus addressed him. 
“The emperors Valerian and Gallienus have sent me a rescript, in 
which they command, that all who do not observe the Roman religion 
shall immediately adopt the Roman ceremonies. I ask, therefore, what 
are you? what do you answer?” Cyprian. —‘‘I am a Christian and a 
bishop. I know of no other god than the true and only God, who cre- 
ated the heavens, earth and sea, and all that they contain. This God 
we Christians serve; to him we pray, day and night, for ourselves, for 
all men, and for the welfare of the emperors themselves.” The pro- 
consul. — “ Do you persist, then, in this resolution?” Cyprian.— “A 
good resolution, grounded on the knowledge of Ged, cannot be 
altered.”” Upon this, the proconsul, in compliance with the imperial 
edict, pronounced upon him the sentence of banishment; and at the 
same time, having explained to him, that the rescript had reference not 
only to the bishops, but also to the presbyters, proceeded thus: “1 
desire, therefore, to know of you, who the presbyters are who dwell in 
this city.” Cyprian.—‘ Your laws have justly forbidden against 
informing ; therefore I cannot inform you; but in the places where 
they preside, you will be able to find them.” Proconsul. —‘“‘ The ques- 
tion relates to this place. To-day I am prosecuting the investigation 
here, in the place where we are.”’ Cyprian. — “‘ As our doctrine forbids 
a man to inform against himself, and it is likewise contrary to your own 
rules, so neither can they inform against themselves; but if you seek 
for them, you will find them.” The proconsul dismissed him with the 
declaration, that the assembling of the Christians, in whatsoever place, 
“oe visiting of Christian cemeteries, were forbidden under pain of 

eath. 

The design, at present, was only to separate the bishops completely 
from their churches ; but spiritual ties are not to be sundered by any 
earthly power. We soon find not only bishops and clergy, who con- 


1 See the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, 1. VII. ο. 10. 
12" 


* 


188 PERSECUTION UNDER VALERIAN. 


tinued to be the special objects of persecutions, but also the laity, 
even women and children, subjected to the scourge, and then con- 
demned to imprisonment, or to labor in the mmes. They had probably 
been seized at the graves, or in the forbidden assemblies. The bishop 
Cyprian was active in providing, from his place of exile at Curubis, for 
their bodily and spiritual wants, and in proving his sympathy by words 
and deeds of love. On sending them, for their support and for the 
relief of their sufferings, a large sum of money, taken from his own 
income and the treasury of the church, he thus addressed them:! ‘ In 
the mines, the body is refreshed not by beds and pillows, but by the 
comforts and joys of Christ. Your limbs, wearied with labor, recline 
upon the earth; but with Christ, it is no punishment to lie there. If 
the outward man is defiled, the inner man is but the more purified by 
the spirit from above. Your bread is scanty; but man lives not b 
bread alone, but by every word of God. You are in want of clothing, 
to defend you from the cold; but he who has put on Christ, is provided 
with clothing and ornament enough. Even in the fact, my dearest 
brethren, that you cannot now celebrate the communion of the Lord’s 
supper, your faith may still be conscious of no want. You celebrate 
the most glorious communion; you present God the costliest offering, 
since the holy scriptures declare, that to God the most acceptable sac- 
rifice is a broken and a contrite heart. You present yourselves to God 
as a pure and holy offering.” ‘‘ Your example,” he writes to the 
clergy, ‘‘ has been followed by a large portion of the church, who have 
confessed and been crowned with you. United to you by ties of the 
strongest love, they would not be separated from their shepherds by 
dungeons and mines. Even young maidens and boys are with you. 
What power do you now possess of a victorious conscience ; what tri- 
umph in your hearts; when you can walk through the mines, with im- 
prisoned body, but a heart conscious of the mastery over itself; when 
you know that Christ is with you, rejoicing over the patience of his 
servants, who, in his own footsteps, and by his own way, are. entering 
into the kingdom of eternity!” 

The emperor must soon have learned, that nothing could be accom- 
plished by such measures. This local separation could not tear the 
bishops from their connection with their flocks. By letters, by ecclesi- 
astics, whose travels preserved the means of correspondence, they still 
acted upon the churches as if they were in the midst of them, and 
their state of exile only made them dearer to their people. Wherever 
they were banished, a little church gathered round them; so that m 
many countries where the seed of the gospel had never been scat- 
tered, it was by such exiles, whose life as well as lips bore testimony to 
their faith, the kingdom of God was first introduced. Thus the bishop 
Dionysius, who had been banished to a remote district of Lybia, could 
say of his exile:? “ We were, at first, persecuted and stoned; but 
soon, not a few of the pagans forsook their idols, and turned to God. ᾿ 
It was by us, that the first seed of the divine word was conveyed to 


1 Ep. 77. 2 Kuseb. 1. VII. c. 11. 


CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE. 139 
that spot; and, as if God had conducted us thither for this sole 
purpose, he brought us back again after we had fulfilled the com- 
mission.” 

Valerian thought it necessary, therefore, to employ more vigorous 
and severe measures to effect a total suppression of Christianity. In 
the following year, 258, appeared the edict. ‘“‘ Bishops, presbyters 
and deacons were to be put to death immediately by the sword; 
senators and knights were to forfeit their rank and their property, 
and if they still remained Christians, to suffer the like punishment ; 
women of condition, after bemg deprived of their property, were 
to be banished. Those Christians who were in the service of the 
palace,’ —slaves and freedmen are, without doubt, particularly intended 
here, —“ who had formerly made profession of Christianity, or now made 
such profession, should be treated as the emperor’s property, and after 
being chained,! distributed to labor on the various imperial estates.’’? 
From this rescript, it is evident the emperor had it especially in view, 
to deprive the Christians of their spiritual heads, and to check the pro- 
gress of Christianity in the higher classes. Unnecessary cruelty did 
not enter into his design; but yet, the people and the governors did 
not always stop here, as we may learn from certain martyr legends of 
the time, against the authenticity of which no valid objection can be 
urged. 

‘The Roman bishop Sixtus, and four deacons of his church, were the 
first who suffered martyrdom in consequence of this rescript, on the 
sixth of August, 258. 

In the provinces, the new governors had provisionally recalled from 
exile those who had been banished under their predecessors, and were 
now causing them to await in retirement,— where they were obliged to 
remain, —the decision of their fate by the new rescript expected from 
Rome. Cyprian resided at a secluded villa in the neighborhood of 
Carthage, until he heard he was to be conveyed to Utica, there to 
suffer the sentence of the proconsul, who for the present happened to 
be residing in that place. It was his choice to give his last testimony, 
by word and by suffering, like a faithful shepherd, in the presence of his 
flock ; he therefore yielded to the persuasions of his friends, and with- 
drew himself for a while, until the proconsul should return. From 
the place of his concealment, he addressed the last letter to his church.? 


1 Perhaps, according to one reading, 
branded also. 

2 The rescript of the emperor to the sen- 
ate, in the original, is extant in Cyprian, 
ep. 82, ad. Successum: Ut episcopi et pres- 
byteri et diacones in continenti animadver- 
tantur; senatores vero, egregii viri et (the 
second et is doubtless surreptitious, — the 
egregil viri are the equites themselves, as 
the senatores are the clarissimi,) equites 
Romani, dignitate amissa, etiam bonis spo- 
lientur, et si, ademptis facultatibus, Chris- 
tiani esse perseveraverint, capite quoque 
mulctentur; matronz vero, ademptis bonis, 
in exsilium relegentur; Cesariani autem 
quicunque vel prius confessi fuerant, vel 


nunc confessi fuerint, confiscentur et vincti 
in Cesarianas possessiones descripti mit- 
tantur. Instead of descripti, (distributed,) 
another text has, scripti, or inscripti, — 
branded. ‘That as early as the ‘persecution 
of Decian, Christians were branded on the 
forehead, may be gathered from a passage 
in Pontius’ Life of Cyprian: Tot confesso- 
res frontium notatorum secunda inscriptione 
signatos. The prima inscriptio, namely, the 
inscriptio crucis, χαρακτὴρ, σφραγὶς τοῦ 
σταυροῦ, was that received at baptism. Yet 
the position of the words would better cor- 
respond, perhaps, with the common reading. 
8 Ep. 83. 


4 
140 PERSECUTION UNDER VALERIAN. 


“‘T have allowed myself,” he says, “to be persuaded to retire for a 
short time, since it becomes the bishop to confess the Lord in the 
place where he presides over the church of the Lord, so that the whole 
church may be honored by the confession of their bishop. For what- 
ever proceeds from the lips of the confessing bishop, in the moment of 
confession, comes, under the guidance of the divine Spirit, from the 
mouths of all. Let me, then, in this secret retirement, await the return 
of the proconsul to Carthage, that I may learn from him the commands 
of the emperor in relation to the laity and the bishops among the 
Christians, and speak whatever it may please the Lord, in that hour, 
to cause me to speak. But do you, my dearest brethren, in conform- 
ity with the directions which, according to the doctrine of the Lord, 
you have often received from me, study to preserve quiet. Let no one 
of you lead the brethren into tumults, nor voluntarily give himself up 
to the heathen. The only time for any one to speak, is after he has 
been apprehended ; in that hour, the Lord, who dwells in us, speaks in 
us.”” At length the proconsul returned ; and when, on the fourteenth 
of September, the fatal sentence was pronounced by him, the last words 
of Cyprian were, ‘‘ God be thanked.” 1 

This persecution ended with the reign of its author, when Valerian, 
by the unfortunate issue of the war, became, in the year 259, a pris- 
oner in the hands of the Persians, and his son Gallienus, who had already 
been associated with him in the government, obtained the sole authority. 
With regard to all public affairs, and so, consequently, to the main- 
tenance of the national worship, this prince was more indifferent than 
his father. He immediately published an edict, by which he secured 
the Christians in the free exercise of their religion, and commanded 
the cemeteries, as well as other buildings and lands belonging to the 
churches, which had been confiscated in the preceding reign, to be 
restored. He thus recognized the Christian church as a legally exist- 
ing corporation ; for no other, according to the Roman laws, could hold 
common property. 

But as Macrianus had usurped the imperial authority in the East 
and in Egypt, it was not till after his overthrow, in the year 261, that 
the edict of toleration, by Gallienus, could go into effect in these prov- 
inces.2 Hence, while the Christians of the West were already in the 
enjoyment of repose, the persecutions might still be going on in these 
provinces, under the laws of Valerian. A remarkable example which 
occurred at this period in Palestine, is mentioned by Eusebius.* Marius, 
a Christian soldier of Caesarea Stratonis, was about to be invested with 
the office of centurion. Just as he was to receive the centurion’s staff, 
(the vitis,) another soldier, the next claimant to the office, stepped 
forward and declared that, according to the ancient laws, Marius was 
incapable of holding rank in the Roman army, because he was a Chris- 
tian, and did not sacrifice to the gods and to the emperor. Upon this, 


1 He was condemned as inimicus Diis but the rescript by which the same edict, 
Romanis et sacris legibus. after the defeat of Macrianus, was applied 
2 Eusebius, (1. VII. c. 13,) has not pre- also to Egypt. 
served the original edict of this emperor, 8L. VIL. ¢. 15. 





THE CHRISTIANS UNDER GALLIENUS— AURELIAN. 141 


a delay of three hours was granted to Marius, within which time he 
must decide whether he preferred to remain a Christian. Meanwhile 
the bishop Theotecnus led him into the church. On the one hand, he 
pointed to the sword, which the centurion wore at his side, and on the 
other, to a volume of the gospels, which he held up before him. He 
was to choose between the two; the military office and the gospel. 
Without hesitation, Marius raised his right hand, seized the sacred vol- 
ume. ‘ Now,’ said the bishop, “‘hold fast on God, and may you 
obtain what you have chosen. So depart in peace.” He bravely con- 
fessed, and was beheaded. 

By the law of Gallienus an essential change, prolific of consequences, 
would necessarily be produced in the situation of the Christians. The 
important step at which many an emperor, still more favorably dis- 
posed to Christianity than Gallienus, had hesitated, was now taken. 
Christianity was become a religio licita; and the religious party that 
threatened destruction to the old state religion and all the institutions 
connected with it, had now for once attained a legal existence. Many 
ἃ prince, who at an earlier period, in accordance with the existing laws, 
would have had no scruples in persecuting the Christians, would now 
doubtless be shy of attacking a corporation, once established by law. 
This was shown directly, in the case of the second successor of Gal- 
lienus, Lucius Domitius Aurelian, who became emperor in 270. Sprung 
from a low rank, and educated in pagan superstition, he could be hard- 
ly otherwise than hostilely disposed towards the Christians from the 
first; for he was not only devoted, with singular fanaticism, to the 
Oriental worship of the Sun,—which doubtless would not have pre- 
vented him, however, from showing toleration to various other foreign 
rites (sacra,) —but he was also in every respect a blind devotee to 
the old religion. The well-being of the state seemed to him closely 
connected with the proper administration of the ancient rites (sacra. ) 
When on an occasion of threatening danger from a war with German 
tribes, certain persons in the Roman senate moved that, according to 
the ancient practice, the Sibylline books should be opened and consulted 
for advice, other senators replied, that there was no need of having 
recourse to them; the emperor’s power was so great, that it was un- 
necessary to consult the gods. The matter remained for the present, 
and was not called up again till afterwards. But the emperor, who 
perhaps had been informed of these proceedings in the Roman senate, 
expressed his displeasure, and wrote to them, “I am surprised, that 
you have hesitated so long about consulting the Sibylline books, as if 
you were conducting your deliberations in a Christian church, and not 
in the temple of all the gods.” He called upon them to support him 
in every way by the ceremonies of religion; since it was no disgrace 
to conquer with the assistance of the gods. He declared himself 
ready to defray all expenses which might be incurred in offering every 
description of sacrifice, and to furnish captives for that purpose from all 


1 This language perhaps may have con- Christians among the senators themselves, 
veyed a suspicion that there were several who had an influence on the deliberations. 


142 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER 

nations. Human sacrifices, then, must have been included.1 We may 
presume, therefore, that this emperor was not averse to the shedding 
of: the blood of the Christians in honor of his gods. He was inclined 
by natural temperament to harsh and violent measures. Yet in the 
first years of his reign, he engaged in no persecution of the Christians. 
He even showed by his conduct on one occasion, in the third year, that 
he recognized the Christian church as a lawfully existing corporation ; 
for a dispute having arisen among the Christians of Antioch, as to the 
individual who should be their bishop, the church applied to the empe- 
ror himself and submitted it to his arbitration, whether the bishop Paul 
of Samosata, long since deposed on account of his doctrinal opinions, 
but who had found a patroness in Queen Zenobia, now vanquished by 
Aurelian, should not at last be compelled to resign his office. The 
emperor decided, that the one should be bishop who was recognized as 
such by the bishop of Rome, his own residence. It was not till the year 
275, when busied with warlike enterprises in Thrace, that with a view 
perhaps to show his gratitude to the gods, who, in his opinion, had thus 
far so signally favored him, and to conciliate their good will for the 
future, he resolved to dismiss all farther scruples, and proceed to 
severities against the Christians. But before he could carry his plan 
into effect, he was assassinated in a conspiracy.” 

For more than fifty years, the Christian ghurch remained in this 
condition of peace and repose. Meanwhile, the number of Christians, 
in every rank of society, went on increasing. But without doubt, 
among the multitude who embraced Christianity at a time when it 
required no sacrifice to be a Christian, not a few were counterfeits, 
bringing over with them into the Christian church the vices of pagan- 
ism. ‘The outward form of the church underwent a change, with the 
increased wealth of its members, and instead of the simple places of 
assembly, splendid churches began to be erected in the large cities. 
The emperor Dioclesian, who from the year 284 was the sole ruler, but 
soon after 286 shared the sovereignty with Maximian Herculius, 
seemed, at least to outward appearance, no otherwise than favorable to 
the Christians; for the stories of persecutions in the earlier years of 
this emperor are at variance with the records of authentic history, and 
altogether unworthy of credit. Christians held offices of trust in the 
imperial palace. They were to be found among the principal eunuchs 
and officers of the bed-chamber, (cubiculariis;) although it could not 
be fairly presumed, it is true, from this circumstance alone, that the 
emperor was governed by any special regard for the Christians, — since 
from an early period, Christians had been members of the Czesarian 
household, (Czesariani,) —and if but one mdividual were such, his zeal 
and prudence might have a great influence in bringing the majority of 


1 Flav. Vopisce. c. 20. 

2 Eusebius says, in his History of the 
Church, that Aurelian died as he was upon 
the point of subscribing an edict against 
the Christians. In the book, De mortibus 
persecutorum, it is said, the edict had al- 
ready been issued, but could not reach the 


more distant provinces until after the death 
of the emperor. Others represent the per- 
secution as having already begun. But it 
is most probable, that the report of Euse- 
bius, who says the least, contains the truth, 
and the rest was added through exaggera- 
tion. 


DIOCLESIAN. 148 
his associates to embrace Christianity, or in causing that none but 
Christians should be chosen to these offices. 

The chief chamberlain (przepositus cubiculariorum) JLucianus was 
probably one of this class, a man in high favor with his prince, and to 
whom Theonas, bishop of Alexandria, imparted much wise counsel as 
to the management of his office, in a letter which has come down to 
our times.! He exhorts him to assume nothing to himself, because 
many in the palace of the emperor had been brought through him to 
the knowledge of the truth; but rather to thank God, who had used him 
as the instrument of so good a work, and given him great authority 
with the emperor, in order that by his means the reputation of the 
Christian name might be promoted. If he recommends to him the 
greater zeal and prudence, masmuch as the emperor, though not a 
Christian himself,? yet entrusted to Christians, as his most faithful 
servants, the care of his life and person, still we ought not to infer too 
much from an expression of this kind, as to the emperor’s favorable 
opinion of Christianity. The bishop allowed himself, without doubt, 
to transfer the judgment of his own mind to that of the emperor; in- 
deed, this would seem natural from the fact that many who had entered 
into the service of the palace as pagans, had been converted by the 
influence of this Lucian. In case the charge over the imperial library 
should be committed to any one of the Christian chamberlains,? this, it 
was represented, would be a very important occurrence; the favored 
individual was exhorted to take advantage of the opportunity thus 
afforded him, to render the emperor favorably disposed towards Christ- 
ianity. He should not show contempt for pagan literature, but let it 
be seen that he was a proficient in it; should praise it, and use it for 
the emperor’s entertainment. Only at times he should introduce some 
notice of the sacred scriptures, and endeavor to lead the emperor to 
remark their superiority. It might so happen in the course of conver- 
sation, that Christ would be mentioned ; in that case, it might be grad- 
ually shown, that he is the only true God.* So important did it seem 


1 This letter was first published in the 3d 
vol. of D’Archery’s Spicilegium, f. 297, and 
again reprinted in Galland’s Bibl. patr. T. 
IV. It cannot be certainly ascertained, it 
must be allowed, who the emperor was that 
is spoken of in this letter, nor who the bish- 
op Theonas was, by whom it was written. 
It states how Christianity was glorified by 
the persecutions, how its diffusion was pro- 
moted by them, and finally, how peace was 
granted to the church by good princes. Per- 
secutionum procellis velut aurum in fornace 
expurgatum enituit et ejus veritas ac celsi- 
tudo magis semper ac magis splendent, ut 
jam, pace per bonum principem ecclesiis 
concessa, Christianorum opera etiam coram 
infidelibus luceant. By this prince we might 
understand Constantine; but if he were 
intended, the immediately preceding perse- 
cution of Dioclesian would doubtless have 
been more distinctly noticed. If this had 


been written subsequently to the final tri- 
umph of Christianity, which followed the 
Dioclesian persecution, the author assured- 
ly would not have employed so indistinct a 
phraseology as: Quia nos maleficos olim et 
omnibus flagitiis refertos nonnulli priores 
principes putaverunt. On the other hand, 
these words suit well to the times of Dio- 
clesian. Moreover, the situation of the 
emperor, which is here the subject of dis- 
course, appears by no means such as would 
apply to the case of Constantine, especial- 
ly after he had become master of the East. 
The expression, “pacem concedere,” is so 
general, that it might be properly applied 
to the tranquil situation which the Chris- 
tians owed to Dioclesian. 

2 Princeps, nondum Christiane religioni 
adscriptus. 
‘ 8 For the librarian was still a pagan. 

4 Insurgere poterit Christi mentio. Expli- 


144 THE CHRISTIANS UNDER 
to the wise bishop to warn against an intemperate zeal, which, by aim- 
ing at too much at once, might occasion more injury than advantage. 

To Roman statesmen the thought would naturally present itself, that 
that the anci€nt political glory of the emperor stood intimately con- 
nected with the old national worship, and that it was impossible to re- 
store the one without the other. Now, as it was Dioclesian’s wish to 
bring back the ancient splendor of the Roman empire, it might appear 
to him necessary for this purpose, to infuse life into the old religidn now 
fast going to decay, and to destroy that foreign faith which was con- 
stantly extending itself on every side, and threatening to acquire the 
sole dominion. In an inscription belonging to a somewhat later date, 
where the emperor boasts of having suppressed Christianity, it is 
brought as a charge against the Christians, that they were ruining the 
state. In the edict whereby Galerius put an end to the persecution 
of which he was himself the author, he declared that it had been the 
intention of the emperors to reform and correct everything according to 
the ancient laws and constitution of the Roman state.2 We are not to 
believe, therefore, that the cause which held back this emperor from a 
persecution in which, on the grounds that have just been mentioned, he 
might have been induced to engage at a still earlier period, was any 
recognition of human rights and of the limits of the civil power in mat- 
ters of conscience, to which the earlier Roman emperors had been 
strangers. How entirely foreign to the views of Dioclesian was a 
recognition of this kind, is evinced by the principles he avows in a law 
directed against the Manichzean sect, A. D. 296; though it may be 
admitted, that he entertained towards this sect a peculiar aversion, on 
account of its having arisen among his enemies the Persians.? ‘The 
immortal gods have, by their providence, arranged and established what 
is right. Many wise and good men are agreed that this should be 
maintained unaltered. They ought not to be opposed. No new reli- 
gion must presume to censure the old; since it is the greatest of 
crimes, to overturn what has been once established by our ancestors, 
and what has supremacy in the state.”’ Would not the principles here 
avowed, necessarily make Dioclesian also an enemy and persecutor of 
Christianity ? + 

But if, during so long a period, he could never bring himself to the 
resolution of openly becoming such, some counteracting cause must 
have been at work on the other side. Beside the influence of the 
Christians more or less immediately about his person, he may have 
been induced to hesitate by reasons similar to those which, in the work, 





cabitur paulatim ejus sola divinitas. Omnia 
hee cum Christi adjutorio provenire pos- 
sent. 

1 Christiani, qui rem publicam evertebant. 

2 Nos quidem volueramus juxta leges 
veteres et publicam disciplinam Romano- 
rum cuncta corrigere. 

8 This edict, known already to Hilarius, 
author of the Commentary on the Epistles 
of St. Paul, bears every internal mark of 
genuineness; and no motive can be im- 


agined, either in pagan or Christian, for 
fabricating it. The diffusion of that sect, 
at this earlier period, in Africa, which is 
pre-supposed in the edict, is a thing by no 
means impossible. . 

4 Neque reprehendi a nova vetus religio 
deberet. Maximi enim criminis est, re- 
tractare quz semel ab antiquis tractata et 
definita sunt, statum et cursum tenent et 
possident. 





DIOCLESIAN AND GALERIUS. 145 
De mortibus persecutorum, he is said afterwards to have urged against 
the proposition of his son-in-law Galerius, in the conference at Nicomedia, 
soon to be more particularly noticed ; —namely, that the Christians, after 
a long period of time, had at length become a lawfully existing religious 


community ; that they were widely diffused through every part of the 


empire ; that there would be a profuse shedding of blood, and the public 
tranquillity might easily be disturbed ; and finally, that the effusion of 
blood had hitherto served rather to advance Christianity than to procure 
its subversion. Anxious as Dioclesian might be to raise up the old 
Roman religion, yet assuredly he would never have overcome these 
scruples, if he had not been hurried on by some more powerful influence. 

The pagans could not but see, that the time when their ancient cere- 
monies must cease and the hated Christian become predominant, was 
fast approaching ; and they must have expended every effort to prevent 
the decisive crisis. The pagan party, to which belonged statesmen, 
priests, selfstyled philosophers, such as Hierocles,! needed only a pow- 
erful instrument to carry their schemes into execution. Such a one 
they found in Dioclesian’s son-in-law, the Czesar, Caius Galerius Max- 
imian. ‘This prince had raised himself from obscurity by his warlike 
talents. Educated in the blind superstition of paganism, he was 
devoted to his religion, and moreover made great account of sacrifices 
and divinations. Whenever he performed these ceremonies in time of 
war, where Christian officers were present, the latter were used to sign 
themselves with the cross, the symbol of Christ’s victory over the king- 
dom of darkness, in order to protect themselves against the influence 
of those hostile (demoniacal) powers, whose agency, as they supposed, 
was visibly manifested in the pagan worship. 

Now as the Christians saw in paganism, not a barely subjective 
notion, a work of human imagination or fraud, but a real outward 
power, hostile to Christianity ;? so the pagans beheld, after their manner, 
in Christianity, such a power in relation to the operations and appear- 
ances of their own gods; and the pagan priests might say: the sign 
of the cross, hateful to the gods, keeps them from being present and 
from manifesting themselves at the sacrifices and other rites consecrated 
to their service.® 


1 Not the author of the Commentary on 
the Golden Verses. 

2 When the triumph of Christianity was 
already decided, and paganism no longer 
presented itself, as so formidable a power 
in life, to the Christian consciousness; 
namely, in the fourth century, — another 
view of the matter could be admitted, and 
Eusebius of Czsarea could say, that the 
pagan art of divination ought to be traced, 
not to the influence of the gods, nor even 
to demons, but to human fraud, which was 
sufficient to account for the whole. After 
having spoken of the deceptive arts of pa- 
gan priests and magicians, exposed in the 
times of the Emperor Constantine, he says: 
Ταῦτα δῆ τις καὶ πλείω τούτων ἔτι συνά- 
yor, εἴποι ἄν μὴ ϑεοὶς εἶναι, μηδὲ μὴν δαί- 

VOL. I. 


μονας τοὺς τῶν κατὰ πολεῖς χρηστηρίων 
αἰτίους, πλώνην δὲ καὶ ἀπάτην ἀνδρῶν γοη- 
τῶν. Ἐυ560. Preparat. evangel. |. ΤΥ. ο. 2. 

8 ΠΡῊΪ5 is the view of the matter which 
presents itself to us, particularly when we 
compare the following passages: Lactant. 
Institut. 1. [V. c. 27; de mortibus persecuto- 
rum, c. 10; and Euseb. vit. Constantin. 1. 11. 
c. 50. In the passage first mentioned\.it is 
said: Cum Diis suis immolant, si assistat 
aliquis signatam frontem gerens, sacra nul- 
lo modo litant. Nec responsa potest con- 
sultus reddere vates. Et hee sepe causa 
precipua justitiam persequendi malis regi- 
bus fuit. Aruspices conquerentes, profa- 
nos homines sacris interesse, egerunt prin- 
cipes suos in furorem. ‘True,.it might be 
said, the Christians had only transferred. 


146 UNDER DIOCLESIAN AND GALERIUS. 

There were, up to this time, many Christians connected with the mil- 
itary service, both in the higher and lower ranks; and they as yet had 
never been compelled to do any thing contrary to their conscience. 
This is evident, not only from Eusebius’ narrative, but from a particu- 
lar incident worthy of being noticed, which took place in 295.1 At 
Teveste, in Numidia, a young man, Maximilanus, was brought before 
the proconsul, as a proper subject for military duty. Immediately as 
he came up, and was about to be measured, to see if his size tallied 
with the standard of the service, he exclaimed, ‘‘I cannot serve as a 
soldier ; I cannot do what is wrong; I am a Christian.” The proconsul 
took no notice of these words, but calmly ordered him to be measured. 
Being found of the standard height, said the proconsul to him, without 
noticing his confession of Christianity, ‘‘ Take the badge of the service,” 
and be a soldier.’’ The young man replied, ‘I shall take no such 
badge ; I wear already the badge of Christ, my God.’? Hereupon said 
the proconsul, who was a pagan, with a sarcastic threat, ‘‘ I shall pres- 
ently send you to your Christ.’ ‘‘ Would you but do that,”’ said the 
youth, “‘ you would confer on me the highest honor.”” Without further 
remark, the proconsul directed the leaden badge of the service to be 
hung round his neck. The young man resisted, and in the ardor of 
his youthful faith, exclaimed, ‘‘I accept not the badge of the service 
of this world, and if you hang it about me, I ghall break it off, for it is 
useless. I cannot wear this lead on my neck, after having once received 
the saving token of my Lord, Jesus Christ, whom you know not, but 
who has suffered for our salvation.”” The proconsul endeavored to ex- 
plain to him, that he might be a soldier and a Christian at the same 
time ; that, in truth, Christians were to be found, performing military 
service without scruple, in the body guard of all the four Czesars, Dio- 
clesian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. But 
as the youth of one and twenty years could not consent to yield up his 
own conviction to the example of others, he was sentenced to death ;° 


their own subjective point of view to the 
pagans, and the legend respecting the ori- 
gin of this persecution had thus arisen ; but 
we have no good reason whatever to call in 
question this explanation, derived from the 
very life of the times, and which answers 
to the views mutually conditioning each 
other, of both Christians and pagans, with 
regard to the relation of their respective 
religious positions to one another. Thus 
the Christians appeal to the testimony of 
their adversary, Porphyry, to show that by 
the power of Christianity the influence of 
those demoniacal powers in paganism was 
hindered ; for Porphyry complains, that a 
ea in some city or other, could not 

e arrested, because the appearance and 
healing influence of Esculapius was scared 
away by the worship of Jesus. Porphyry’s 
language, in his book against Christianity, 
is as follows: Nuvi δὲ ϑαυμάζουσιν, εἰ το- 
σούτων ἐτῶν κατείληφε τὴν πόλιν ἡ νόσος, 
"Ασκληπίου μὲν ἐπιδημίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων 
ϑεῶν μηκέτ᾽ οὔσης. ᾿Ιησοῦ γὰρ τιμωμένου 


οὐδεμιᾶς τις ϑεῶν δημοσίας ὀφελείας ἤσϑετο. 
Euseb. Preparat. evangel. 1. V. ο. 1. 

1 The time can be definitely determined, 
since the mention of the consuls in the 
actis Maximiliani, a report drawn up by an 
eye witness, furnishes a certain chronolog- 
ical datum. 

2 Signaculum militia. 

3 He received his sentence to death with 
an expression of thanks to God. To the 
Christians around, he said, when he was 
led away from the midst of them to execu- 
tion, “ My dearest brethren, strive with all 
your power, that you may attain to the 
vision of the Lord, and that he may bestow 
on you also such a crown.” And he begged 
his father, — who would not persuade him 
to do contrary to his conscience, —re- 
garding him with a joyful face, to present 
the new garment which he caused to be 


_made for him on his entrance into the mili- 


tary service, to the soldier who was to exe- 
cute the sentence of death on him. 


THE DIOCLESIAN PERSECUTION. 147 


yet, in the sentence, nothing was said of his Christianity, but only his 
refusal to do military service assigned, as the reason for his punish- 
ment.!_ Here, then, is good evidence, that the soldiers also could still 
openly profess Christianity, and that, if they only did their duty in other 
respects, they were not compelled to take any part in the pagan cere- 
monies. 

Only a few years elapsed, however, after this occurrence, when the 
case was altered. Religious and political motives induced Galerius, in 
the first place, to remove from the army all that refused to sacrifice. 
It was easy for him to bring it about, that an order should be sent to 
the army, requiring every soldier to jomm m the sacrificial rites. Per- 
haps the celebration of the third lustrum since the elevation of Maxi- 
mianus Herculius to the dignity of Cesar and Augustus,? was chosen 
as a befitting occasion for issuing such an order to the army ;— it be- 
ing a festival usually celebrated with sacrifices and sacrificial banquets, 
in which all the soldiers were required to take a part. Many gave in 
their commissions,’ and soldiers of all ranks, from the highest to the low- 
est, quitted the service, that they might remain steadfast to their faith. 
Only a few were sentenced to death,—perhaps none except where 
some peculiar circumstances of the case furnished a pretext, at least in 
appearance, not only for dismissing them from the service as Christians, 
but also for punishing them as guilty of treason. Such as were not 
careful to express in moderate language and behavior their honest 
indignation at the unrighteous demand, might easily be represented, 
according to the military code, as refractory subjects. We have an 
illustration of this in the case of Marcellus the centurion, who was con- 
nected with the army at Tingis, (now Tangiers,) m Africa. 

While the legion was celebrating the festival im honor of the Cesar, 
after the pagan fashion, with sacrifices and banquetings, the centurion 
Marcellus rose up from the soldier’s table, and throwing down his staff 
of office, his belt and arms, exclaimed, ‘‘ From this moment I cease to 
serve your emperor as a soldier. I despise the worship of your gods 
of wood and stone, which are deaf and dumb idols. Since the service 
involves the obligation of sacrificmg to the gods and to the emperors, 
I throw down my staff and belt, renounce the standards, and am a 
soldier no longer.”’* The two facts were now put together, that Mar- 
cellus had publicly cast off the badges of the service, and that he had 
indulged, before all the people, in abusive language towards the gods 
and the emperors. For this he was condemned to death. 

These were the first premonitory signs of the persecution. Diocle- 
sian, for several years, could not be induced to proceed any farther. 
At length, in the winter of the year 303, Galerius came to Nicomedia, 
in Bithynia, on a visit to his aged and infirm father-in-law, who was 
already meditating to retire from the government. On this occasion 
Galerius employed every art of persuasion, seconded by many zealous 


1 Ko quod indevoto animo sacramentum 8 As Eusebius relates, ]. VIII. c. 4. 


militiz recusaverit, gladio animadyerti pla- 4 Ecce, projicio vitem et cingulum, re- 
enit. nuntio signis et militare recuso. 


2 Dies natalis Cesaris. 


148 THE DIOCLESIAN 

pagans among the state officers, to bring about a general persecution 
of the Christians. Dioclesian finally yielded; and one of the great 
pagan festivals, the Terminalia, which occurred on the 22d of Febru- 
ary, was selected for the onslaught. At the first dawn of day, the 
magnificent church in that city, then the imperial residence, was broken 
open, the copies of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole 
church abandoned to plunder and then to destruction. The next day, 
was published an edict, to the following effect: ‘‘ All assembling of the 
Christians, for the purpose of religious worship, was forbidden; the 
Christian churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all 
manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of 
honor and rank, must either renounce their faith or be degraded; in 
judicial proceedings, the torture might be used against ‘all Christians, 
of whatsoever rank; those belonging to the lower walks of private life, 
were to be divested of their rights as citizens and freemen; Christian 
slaves were to be incapable of receiving their freedom, so long as they 
remained Christians.” ΤῸ what extent Christians in humble life were 
to lose the enjoyment of their rights, was not clearly defined, but free 
scope left for applying the law to particular cases. It is rendered cer- 
tain, by the edict in which the emperor Constantine afterwards annulled 
all the consequences which resulted from this persecution in the Hast, 
that in some instances free born Christians were made slaves, and put 
to the lowest and most degrading servile employments, for which they 
were the least suited by their former habits of life. 

A Christian of noble rank suffered himself to be hurried, by his 
inconsiderate zeal, into a violation of that precept of the gospel which 
enjoins respect towards all in authority. He openly tore down the 
edict, and rending it contemptuously, exclaimed, ‘‘ Victories announced 
again over the Goths and Sarmatians! The emperor treats the Chris- 
tians, his own subjects, no better than the conquered Goths and Sarma- 
tians.”” Welcome was the occasion thus furnished by the, delinquent 
himself, for condemning him to death, not as a Christian, but as a vio- 
lator of the imperial majesty. 

The impression produced by this edict must have been the more ter- 


1 Euseb. vit. Constantin. 1. IT. ο. 32, et seq. 
To arrive at the fullest knowledge possible 
of what this edict contained, it is necessary 
to compare the two incomplete and inaccu- 
rate reports of it in Eusebius, (hist. eccles. 
1. VIII. c. 2,) and in the book de Mortib., 
as also the translation of Rufinus. The 
prohibition of assemblies for religious wor- 
ship is not expressly mentioned, indeed, in 
any one of these places; but from the na- 
ture of the case, it is tacitly implied by the 
edict itself. But it is clear, also, from the 
credible and official records of the first pe- 
riod of the persecutions in Proconsular Af- 
rica, that such a prohibition was positively 
expressed. ‘The most obscure is the pas- 
sage in Eusebius, respecting the true mean- 
ing of which there has been no little dis- 
pute: Τοὺς ἐν οἰκετίαις εἰ ἔτι ἐπιμένοιεν ἐν 


τῇ τοῦ Χριστιανισμοῦ προϑέσει, ἐλευϑερίας 
στερεῖσϑαι. By ἐν οἰκετίαις, nothing else 
can be understood, according to the usage 
of the language, than men of the laboring 
class, slaves. To bring meaning into the 
passage, therefore, we must look round for 
some other interpretation of the word ἐλευ- 
ϑερία than that which first presents itself. By 
the phrase, “deprived of their freedom,” 
might be understood, “thrown into chains 
and imprisoned.” See above, p. 139, the 
edict of Valerian against the Ceesarianos. 
It is the safest course, however, to follow 
Rufinus, who might have seen the original 
edict: “Si quis servorum permansisset 
Christianus, libertatem consequi non pos- 
set.” If this is right, the translation of 
Eusebius, it must be admitted, was very 
defective. 


PERSECUTION. 149 

rific, inasmuch as it became known, in many of the provinces, near the 

time of the Easter festival, and in several districts on the very day of 

Easter! It is quite evident that the plan now was, to extirpate Chris- 
tianity from the root. There was something novel in the undertaking 
to deprive the Christians of their religious writings. It differed from 

the mode of proceeding in the former persecutions, when it was hoped 

to suppress the sect by removing away their teachers and guides. . The 

importance of these documents, as a means of preserving and propa- 
gating the Christian faith, must now have been understood. And there 

can be no doubt that the destruction of every copy of the Bible, had 
such a thing been possible, would have proved more effectual than the 

removal of those living witnesses of the faith, whose example served 
only to call forth a still greater‘number to supply their place. On the 

other hand, could the plan have been carried out, to destroy every ex- 
isting copy of the scriptures, the very source would have been cut off, 
from which true Christianity and the life of the church was ever 
freshly springing with unconquerable vigor. Let preachers of the gos- 
pel, bishops and clergy, be executed; it was all to no purpose, so long 
as this book, by which new teachers could always be formed, remained 
in the hands of the Christians. The transmission of Christianity was 
not, in itself, it is true, inseparably and necessarily connected with the 
letter of the scriptures. Written, not on tables of stone, but on the liv- 
ing tablets of the heart, the divine doctrine, once lodged in the human 
soul, could preserve and propagate itself through its own divine power. 
But exposed to those manifold sources of corruption in human nature, 
Christianity, without the well-spring of scripture from which it could 
ever be restored back to its purity, would, as all history teaches, have 
been soon overwhelmed, and have become no longer recognizable under 
the load of falsehoods and corruptions. Yet how was it possible for 
the arbitrary human will to succeed in actually executing this cun- 
ningly devised means for the suppression of Christianity ? How could 
the arm of despotism, though disregarding all private rights, yet reach 
so far as to grasp and destroy every existing copy, not only of those 
scriptures which were deposited in the churches, but also m so many 
private dwellings? The blind policy of the kingdom of lies 1s ever 
true to its character, in imagining that nothing can escape its investi- 
gation, and that, by fire and sword, it can destroy what is protected by 


1 Eusebius and Rufinus place the publi- 
cation of the edict in the month of March, 
which harmonizes well with its first publi- 
cation at the imperial residence, Nicomedia. 
In Egypt, according to Coptic accounts, it 
was published on the first of Parmuthi, i.e. 
by Ideler’s tables, the 27th of March ;— 
which also harmonizes with the rest. See 
Zoéga Catalog. codd. Copt. Rome, 1810, 
f. 25, of the fragments of the Coptic acta 
Martyrum, published by Georgi, Rome, 
1793, Prefat. 109, where Georgi propo- 
ses an unnecessary emendation, and other 
passazes. When these Coptic accounts, 
however, which contain a good deal that is 

* 


fabulous, represent the persecution as fol- 
lowing immediately after the victory over 
the Persians, to express Dioclesian’s thanks 
to the gods for the success of his arms, this 
must be an anachronism; unless the first per- 
secution among the soldiers was confound- 
ed with this second one. What is stated in 
these Coptic records, about the cause of the 
persecution, — viz. that a Christian _metro- 
politan had released the son of the Persian 
King, Sapor, who had been committed to 
him for safe keeping, hardly admits of being 
reconciled in any way with the history as 
known to us. - 


150 THE DIOCLESIAN 

a higher power and necessity. The infatuated zeal for the preserva- 
tion of the old religion proceeded to such length with many, that they 
would fain have seen burnt with the holy scriptures of the Christians, 
some of the noblest monuments of their own ancient literature; that 
they were for having every thing destroyed which could be used by 
Christians as a testimony against paganism, and as a means of transi- 
tion to their own faith. They called for a law, ordering the destruc- 
tion of all the writings of antiquity which did such good service for the 
Christians.! It may be easily conceived that, where individuals of this 
stamp, or men who would sooner do too much than too little to gain the 
emperor’s favor, were found among the governors and provincial mag- 
istrates, there would exist already, in the executing of this first edict 
for the surrender of the scriptures and the suspension of all assemblies 
for religious worship, an occasion for the exercise of every species of 
oppression and cruelty towards the Christians, — especially as by this 
same edict, Christians of all ranks and conditions were lable to the 
torture in judicial investigations. 

But there were, also, magistrates of an entirely different temper, 
who endeavored to soften, as far as possible, the rigor of these measures, 
and executed them with as much lenity as they could, without a man- 
ifest infraction of the imperial edict. They very willingly allowed 
themselves to be deceived; or even suggested, means of evading the 
edict, by an apparent comphance with its requisitions. Mensurius, 
bishop of Carthage, had taken the precaution to remove all manuscripts 
of the Bible from the church at Carthage to his own house, as a place 
of greater security, leaving behind only the writings of heretics. When 
the search-officers arrived, they seized the latter, askmg no further 
questions. These, too, were religious writings of the Christians, — and 
nothing was said in the edict as to what sacred writings were intended, 
nor of what Christian party. But certain senators at Carthage took 
pains to expose the artifice to the proconsul Annubenus, and advised 
him to cause search to be made in the house of the bishop, where the 
whole would be found. But the proconsul,— who, it should seem, 
therefore, was willing to be deceived, — declined to follow the advice.? 
When Secundus, a Numidian bishop, refused to surrender the sacred 
scriptures, the officers of police demanded if he would not give them 
then some useless fragments, or any thing he pleased.? Such, very proba- 
bly, may have been the meaning, also, of the proconsul’s legate, when. 
he repeatedly put the question to the Numidian bishop Felix, ‘“ Why 
do you not give up your useless writings ?”* So the question of the 


1 This is said by the North-African writer, 
Arnobius, who in these times composed in 
defence of Christianity, his diputationes 
adversus gentes. Lib. III. c. 7: Cum alios 
audiam mussitare indignanter et dicere: 
oportere, per Senatum aboleantur ut hac 
scripta, quibus Christiana religio compro- 
betur et vetustatis opprimatur auctoritas. 
Arnobius remarks, in objection to this pro- 
posal: Intercipere scripta et publicatam 
velle submergere lectionem, non est Deos 


defendere, sed veritatis testificationem ti- 
mere. ᾿ 

2 Augustin. brevicul. collat. ὁ. Donatistis, 
ἃ. III. c. 13. Optat. Milev., ed. du Pin, 
p. 174. 

8 Aliqua ἔκβολα aut quodcunque. 

4 Quare scripturas non tradis supervacu- 
as, doubtless with intentional ambiguity, so 
that the words might be understood in the 
sense, that all the sacred writings of the 
Christians were useless. 


) 


PERSECUTION. 151 


pretorian prefect to Felix, the African bishop, “ Why do you not sur- 
render the sacred writings ἢ τ ΟἹ perhaps you have none ;” was evi- 
dently shaped with a view to suggest the desired reply.’ 

This critical and trying period brought to light both good and evil 
in the great body of Christians. The weak faith, the false zeal of en- 
thusiastically excited feelings, and the true mean of genuine, evangeli- 
cal good sense, were both discernible in the different modes of behavior. 
Some yielded to the fear of torture and death, and gave up their copies 
of the Bible, which were immediately committed to the flames in the 
public market-place. These, who passed by the name of Traditores, 
were excluded from the fellowship of the church. Others — and exam- 
ples of this class we find particularly in North Africa, where a certain 
leaning to enthusiasm belonged to the native temperament of the peo- 
ple — challenged the pagan magistrates to do their office, and courted 
martyrdom with a fanatic zeal. Such persons declared, without being 
asked, that they were Christians, that they had copies of the sacred 
scriptures, but that they would surrender them on no account; or they. 
disdainfully spurned those means of evasion which were offered to them 
by humane magistrates. They refused to comply with the suggestions 
of those who were desirous of executing the imperial ordinance only in 
form, and who would have them surrender other writings instead of the 
Bible. They imagined that they ought to follow the example of Elea- 
zer, 2 Maccab. 6, who would not even seem to eat of the swine’s 
flesh. There were others again, who, oppressed with debts, or con- 
scious of grave transgressions, either wanted to rid themselves of a life 
that was burdensome to them in an honorable and seemingly pious 
manner, or sought in martyrdom an expiation of their sins; or who 
were ambitious of the honor which would be paid them by the brethren 
in the cells of their prison, or greedy of the gifts which they might 
hope to receive there.2— Among the bishops themselves, there were in- 
dividuals who applauded every mode of confessing the faith, and gave 
countenance to that fanatic zeal by which they were seized themselves. 
Others endeavored to unite, to steadfastness in the faith, Christian pru- 
dence and sobriety, — and at the head of these stood the Bishop Men- 
surius, of Carthage. He would not consent to it, that such persons as 
had themselves invited the pagan magistrates to do their worst, in the 
way above mentioned, should be honored as martyrs. In these oppo- 
site tendencies of the religious spirit here manifested, we may discern 
the germ of those divisions which broke out in the church of North 
Africa, after peace from without had been once more restored. 

Let us now proceed as before, to contemplate in detail, some exam- 
ples, derived from authentic sources, of the power of Christian faith 
and the intrepidity of Christian courage. In an inland town of Numi- 
dia, a band of Christians, — among whom was a lad in the tenderest 


1 See the acta Felicis in Ruinart. tionis vel carere vellent onerosa multis 

2 Vid. Augustin. brevicul. collat. c. Do- debitis vita, vel purgare se putarent et quasi 
natistis, ἃ, III. c. 13, T. IX. opp. ed. Bene- abluere facinora sua, vel certe adquirere 
dictin. f.568: Quidam facinorosi argueban- pecuniam et in custodia deliciis perfrui. 
tur et fisci debitores, qui occasione persecu- De obsequio Christianorum. 


152 THE DIOCLESIAN 


years, — were seized in the house of a church-reader, where they had 
assembled under the direction of a presbyter, for the purpose of read- 
ing the scriptures and celebrating the communion. They were brought 
to Carthage, to be arraigned before the tribunal of the proconsul, sing- 
ing hymns to the praise of God all the way. Several of them were 
put to the torture, for the purpose of drawing confessions from the rest. 
One of them exclaimed, in the midst of his sufferings, “‘ Ye are wrong, 
unhappy men; you lacerate the mnocent. We are no murderers, — 
we have never defrauded any man.—O God, have pity! I thank 
thee, O Lord, — give me power to suffer in thy name. Deliver thy 
servants out of the prison of this world —I thank thee, and yet am 
unable to thank thee,— to glory! I thank the God of the kingdom. 
It appears, —the eternal, the imperishable kingdom! Lord, Christ, 
we are Christians, we are thy servants; thou art our hope.” While 
he thus prayed, the proconsul said to him, ‘‘ You should have obeyed 
the law of the emperor.” He replied, with a strong spirit, though im 
a weak and exhausted body, ‘I reverence only that law of God which 
1 have learned. For this law, I am willing to die. In this law, 1 am 
made perfect. There is no other.” In the midst of his tortures, 
another cried out, ‘“‘ Help, O Christ! I pray thee, have compassion, — 
preserve my soul, that it fall not nto shame. O give me power to suf- 
fer.’ ΤῸ the reader in whose house the assembly was held, said the 
proconsul, “‘ You ought not to have received them.” He replied, under 
the rack, “‘I could not do otherwise than receive my brethren.” “ But 
the emperor’s command,” said the proconsul, “‘ should have been of 
more consequence to you.” ‘‘ God,” he replied, “‘is greater than the 
emperor.” ‘Have you in your house,” demanded the proconsul, 
‘‘any sacred writings?” ‘‘ Such have 1,᾽ he replied, “but they are 
in my heart.”” Among the other prisoners was a Christian maiden, 
named Victoria, whose father and brother were still pagans. The 
brother, Fortunatianus, had come for the purpose of persuading her to 
renounce her religion, and thus procuring her release. When she 
steadfastly declared that she was a Christian, her brother pretended 
that she was not in her right mind. But said she, “ This ἐδ my mind, 
and I have never altered it.”” The proconsul asked her if she would 
not go with her brother. ‘ No,” she replied, “ for I am a Christian, 
and they are my brethren who obey God’s commands.”’ As to the lad, 
Hilarianus, the proconsul supposed he would be easily mtimidated b 
threats ; but even in the child, the power of God proved mighty ; ‘‘ Do 
what you please,” he replied; “1 am a Christian.” 

The persecution once begun, it was impossible to stop half-way. The 
first measures failing of their object, it became necessary to go farther. 
The first step against the Christians was the most difficult ; the second 
did not linger. Certain occurrences, moreover, had happened, which 


1The sources are the Acta Saturnini, form; but with an introduction, running 
Dativi et aliorum in Africa. Baluz Miscell. remarks, and a conclusion, written by some 
T. II. Ruinart, in the above cited collec- Donatist. Yet the acta proconsularia, which 
tion of Du Pin. It is true, the report has form the ground-work, may still be easily 
not been preserved in its simple, original recognized. | 





PERSECUTION. 153 


placed the Christians in a more unfavorable light, or which at least 
could easily be turned to that account. A fire broke out in the impe- 
rial palace of Nicomedia: it was quite natural to ascribe such an 
occurrence to the desire of revenge in the Christians, — and the accu- 
sation may have had its good grounds, without involving in the disgrace 
the whole Christian church of that period. Among so large a number 
of Christians, there might perhaps have been some who allowed them- 
selves to be urged on by passion, which they excused to themselves 
under the plea of religion, to forget thus far what manner of spirit be- 
came them as disciples of Christ. Certain it is, however, that this 
charge against the Christians could never be substantiated. The sen- 
sitive author of ‘God’s Judgments on the Persecutors,’’ maintains that 
the fire was kindled by Galerius himself, to give him an opportunity of 
accusing the Christians, —a statement that cannot be received on such 
authority alone. The emperor Constantine ascribes the fire to light- 
ning, and looks upon it as a judgment of God. The truth is, as Kuse- 
bius candidly admits, the real cause was never ascertained, — enough 
that the Christians were accused of conspiring against the emperors, 
and multitudes of them thrown into prison, without discrimination of 
those who were or were not liable to suspicion. The most cruel tor- 
tures were resorted to, for the purpose of extorting a confession ; but 
in vain. Many were burned to death, beheaded or drowned. It is 
true, that fourteen days after, a second fire broke out, which, however, 
was extinguished without damage, so that the supposition becomes cer- 
tainly more probable that it was the work of an incendiary.! 

Some disturbances which, soon after this event, arose in Armenia 
and Syria, afforded new occasion of political jealousy against the Chris- 
tians. It was intimated that the clergy, as the heads of the party, 
were particularly liable to suspicion; and under this pretext, the edict 
was issued, which directed that all of the clerical order should be seized 
and thrown in chains. Thus in a short time the prisons were filled 
‘ with persons of this class. It is seen on various occasions, how strong 
was the inclination to fasten upon the Christians charges of a political 
character ; nor were the Christians always careful to avoid every even 
seeming ground for such charges as their enemies were seeking to bring 
against them. A young Christian from Egypt, who had been appre- 
hended at Ceesarea in Palestine, being asked of what country he was, 
by the Roman proconsul, replied, “1 am of Jerusalem, which lies tow- 
ards the rising sun, the city of the saints.”” he Roman, who perhaps 
was not aware, in his ignorance, that even such a place existed as the 
earthly Jerusalem, which might be known to him only by its Roman 
name, Avlia Capitolina, — and who was still more ignorant of the heav- 
enly Jerusalem,—immediately concluded that the Christians had 
founded somewhere in the Kast a city, which they intended to make 
the central point of a general insurrection. The matter appeared to 


1Lactantins (de mortib.) relates this. familiar with the particulars of these events 
It is mentioned by no other author. But than others. Yet it is possible he may have 
tantius, who probably resided himself been deceived by some rumor then current 

at that time at Nicomedia, would be more in the city. 


154 THE DIOCLESIAN PERSECUTION. 


him one of grave importance, and he plied the young man with a great 
many questions under the torture.!_ Procopius, a presbyter of Pales- 
tine, when called upon to sacrifice, declared that he knew of only one 
God, to whom men were bound to bring such offermgs as he would 
accept. Being then required to offer his hbation to the four sove- 
reigns of the empire, the two Augusti, and the two Ceesars, he replied, 
— doubtless, to show that men are bound to acknowledge but one God 
as their Lord, —with the Homeric verse, ‘“‘ The government of many is 
not good ; let there be one ruler, one king.” It seems, however, that 
it was construed into a political offence, as if he meant to censure the 
existing Tetrarchy.? 

All the prisons being now filled with Christians of the spiritual order, 
a new edict appeared, commanding that such of the prisoners as were 
willing to sacrifice, should be set free, and the rest, by every means, 
compelled to offer. This was followed at last, in 304, by a fourth and 
still more rigorous edict, which extended the same order to the whole 
body of Christians. In the cities, where the edict was most strictly 
executed, public proclamation was made through the streets, that men, 
women and children, should all repair to the temples. Every individ- 
ual was summoned by name from lists previously made out; at the city 
gates all were subjected to rigid examination, and such as were found 
to be Christians immediately secured. At Alexandria, pagans them- 
selves concealed the persecuted Christians in their houses, and many 
of them chose rather to sacrifice their property and liberty, than to be- 
tray those who had taken refuge with them.> Sentence of death, it is 
true, was not formally pronounced on the refractory ; but we may well 
suppose, that an edict which authorized the employment of every 
means to compel the Christians to sacrifice, would, still more than an 
unconditional decree of death to confessors, expose them to every cru- 
elty which the fanaticism of a governor, or his desire of courting the 
imperial favor, might dispose him to inflict. Each one doubtless felt 
sure of never being called to account for any excesses he might be 
guilty of against the Christians. Already did the persecutors fondly 
imagine that they should triumph over the fall of Christianity. Already 
was added to the other honorary titles of the Augusti, the glory of hay- 
ing extinguished the Christian superstition and restored the worship of 
the gods. ‘‘ Amplificato per orientem et occidentem imperio Romano, 
et nomine Christianorum deleto, qui rempublicam evertebant. Super- 
stitione Christiana ubique deleta et cultu Deorum propagato.” Yet 
at the very time they were thus triumphing, the circumstances were 
already prepared by Providence, which were destined to work an entire 
change in the situation of the Christians. 

One of the four regents, Constantius Chlorus, who presided as Ceesar 
over the government of Gaul, Britain and Spain, possessed naturally 
a mild and humane disposition, averse to persecutions. He was more- 


1 Euseb. de martyrib. Palestine, c. 9. 41, 6. 6. 8. 

2 Οὐκ ἀγαϑὸν πὰ ρμαρεσατο εἷς κοίρανος 5 Athanas. Hist. Arianor. ad Monachos, 
ἔστω, εἷς βασιλεύς. Alias 11. 204. § 64. 

8 Kuseb. de martyrib. Palest. c. 1. 


LAST OUTBREAK OF PERSECUTION. 155 


over, though not himself a decided Christian, yet evidently a friend to 
Christianity and its professors ---- whether it was, as Eusebius affirms, 
that he really perceived the vanity of paganism, and without being a 
Christian was an upright monotheist, — or whether, as is more probable, 
he was, like Alexander Severus, an eclectic in his religion. Those 
Christians about his person who continued steadfast in their faith, he 
treated with special regard and confidence ; it bemg a common remark 
with him, that one who has proved unfaithful to his God, would be still 
less likely to remain faithful to his prince. Yet what Eusebius relates 
about his method of putting their constancy to the proof, wears but 
little appearance of probability. As he could not, while a Ceesar, show 
an open disregard to the edict that had been issued by the August, 
he suffered the work of destroying the churches to proceed far enough 
to save appearances. In Gaul, where he usually resided, the Christians 
enjoyed perfect liberty and quiet, while the persecutions raged in other 
provinces. In Spain, he may not have been able to effect so much; 
but it is certain, that in no one of his provinces was the persecution of 
the same character as in other districts of the empire. ‘The influence 
of this emperor, so favorable to the Christians, was still more efficient, 
when, in 305, Dioclesian and Herculius abdicated the sovereignty, 
and he was elevated, in conjunction with Galerius, to the dignity of 
Augustus. 

On the other hand, there now entered the line of the Czesars, a man 
who, in blind heathenish superstition and cruelty, perfectly resembled 
the emperor Galerius, who nominated him to that station. ‘This was 
Caius Galerius Valerius Maximinus. It is natural to suppose, that im 
the provinces committed to his care, — Syria, with the adjacent parts of 
the Roman empire, and Egypt, —the persecutions would be renewed 
with increased violence. At times, it is true, men grew weary of their 
own rage, when they saw that their efforts were to no purpose. The 
imperial edict flagged in its execution, the persecution slept, and the 
Christians enjoyed a temporary respite; but when their enemies per- 
ceived that they recovered breath, maddened to think they had not 
succeeded in extinguishing Christianity and restormg Paganism to its 
ancient splendor, their fury broke out afresh, and a new storm, more 
violent than ever, arose. ‘Thus, at length, in the year 308, and about 
the eighth year of the persecution, after much effusion of blood in the 
states of Maximinus, from the time of his accession, a season of tran- 
quillity had commenced. The Christians who had been condemned to 
labor in the mines, were treated with greater lenity and forbearance. 
But, all at once, the Christians of these provinces were startled out of 
their transient repose by a furious stdrm. A new and more rigorous 
command was addressed by the emperor to all the officers of his gov- 
ernment, from the highest to the lowest, both in the civil and in the 
military service, directing that the fallen temples of the gods should 
be restored, that all free men and women, all slaves, and even little 

1 So say the work De mortib. perscutor. very account, they demanded Gallic bishops 


5. 16, and a letter of the Donatists to the for their judges. Optat. Milev. de schis- 
Emperor Constantine, in which, on this mate, Donatistar. l. 1. c. 22. 


156 EDICT OF TOLERATION. 

children, should sacrifice, and partake of what was offered at heathen 
altars. All provisions in the market were to be sprinkled with the 
water or the wine which had been used in the sacrifices, that the Chris- 
tians might thus be forced into contact with idolatrous offerings. To 
such length did fanaticism and despotic power proceed! New tortures 
and a fresh effusion of blood ensued. 

Again there was a respite, which lasted till the beginning of the 
year 310. Christians confined to the mmes in Palestine were allowed 
to meet together for worship, but the governor of the province, observ- 
ing this in one of his visitations, reported it to the emperor. The 
prisoners were now kept apart and put to severe labor. Thirty-nine 
confessors, who after much suffermg were enjoying a season of rest, 
were beheaded at once. It was the last blood that flowed in this 
persecution, tranquillity having for some time been already restored to 
the Christians in the West. 

The instigator of the persecution himself, the emperor Galerius, 
softened by a severe and painful disease, the consequence of his ex- 
cesses, had perhaps been led to think that the God of the Christians 
might, after all, be a powerful being, whose anger punished him, and 
whose favor he must endeavor to conciliate. At any rate, he could 
hardly fail to be struck with the fact, that all his bloody and violent 
proceedings had inflicted no material harm on Christianity. So, in the 
year 311, the remarkable edict appeared which put an end to the last 
sanguinary conflict of the Christian Church in the Roman empire. _ 

It declared, that it had been the intention of the emperors to reclaim 
the Christians to the religion of their fathers, in departing from which, 
they had invented laws according to their own fancy, and given birth 
to a multitude of sects,—a reproach frequently thrown against the 
Christians of this age.t But as the majority of the Christians, in spite 
of every measure to the contrary, persevered in their opinions, and it 
had now become evident, that they could not worship their own Deity, 
and at the same time pay due homage to the gods, the emperors had 
resolved to extend to them their wonted clemency. ‘They might once 
more be Christians, and would be allowed to hold their assemblies, 
provided only they did nothing contrary to the good order of the Roman 
state, (ita ut ne quid contra disciplinam agant;)? ‘‘let them now, there- 
fore, after experiencing this proof of our indulgence, pray to their God 
for our prosperity, for the well-being of the state, and for their own; 
that the state may still continue to be, in all respects, well maintained, 
and they themselves may be enabled to live quietly in their own homes.” 


1“ Behold, since you have left the unity 
of ancient tradition, the authority of the 
fathers, you have been led entirely by your 
own caprice, and have fallen from one in- 
novation into another; hence the multitude 
of your sects.” The Latin words of the 
decree, — Siquidem quadam ratione tanta 
eosdem Christianos voluntas (such caprice 
ἐϑελοϑρησκεία,) invasisset ct tanta stultitia 


occupasset, ut non illa veterum instituta 
sequerentur, que forsitan primi parentes 
eorundem constituerant; sed pro arbitrio 
suo atque ut hisdem erat libitum, ita sibi- 
met leges facerent, quas observarent et per 
diversa vanos populos congregarent. 

2The emperor had probably explained 
himself more distinctly on this point, in 8 
rescript which has not come down to us. 


/ 


WRITINGS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. Δ 57 


Attacks on Christianity. Defence of Christianity against these 

writings. 

While the ancient world, in order to maintain itself on its own reli- 
gious foundation, was endeavoring to suppress Christianity by force, 
the culture of the age enlisted itself in the same cause and entered 
the contest with its writings. Intellectual weapons were combined with 
outward violence in attacking the new principle which had begun to 
reveal its power in human life. In these written assaults of Chris- 
tianity, the relation of the religious and moral principles of the then 
existing world, and of its different intellectual tendencies — as set forth 
by us in the introduction — to this new principle which was now enter- 
ing into the life of humanity, may be easily recognized. If He whose 
external appearance was the perfectly unsullied mirror of his divine 
life, still did not fail to distinguish, in the hostile judgments passed 
upon his own person, the sins against the Son of Man from those 
against the Holy Ghost, much more should we feel it incumbent on us 
to institute a like distinction between the judgments of misapprehension 
and of calumny passed upon Christianity, where its divine life exhibited 
itself under circumstances and forms exposing it to such various debas- 
ing mixtures. In the ferment which Christianity produced on its first 
appearance, many impure elements necessarily became mixed with it, 
which were destined to be expelled durimg the purifying process of its 
development. The crisis brought on by Christianity, which was to 
introduce a genuine healthfulness of the spiritual life, must needs call 
forth also some considerable degree of morbid action, as a necessary 
means of arriving at that ultimate healthy condition. Much that 
savored of a jealous and narrowly exclusive spirit, would naturally be 
engendered by that opposition to the world, in which the new faith must 
first display itself before it could furnish the world with the principle 
of its own renovation. Now in order to judge rightly of these impure 
admixtures in their relation to the essence of Christianity, and to discern 
the higher element lying at the ground of them, it was necessary that 
Christianity itself should be studied and understood in its essential 
character. Whoever contemplated these phenomena from some out- 
ward position, and by the very peculiarity of this point of view found 
himself opposed to Christianity, would easily confound these accidents 
attending the process of its development, with the essential thing itself, 
and from his knowledge of the former, imagine that he comprehended 
the latter. This remark we shall have to apply to everything which 
wears the form of opposition to Christianity in these centuries. 

Thus Lucian, — of whose peculiar bent on religious matters we have 
spoken before, — fixing on certain accidental marks by which his atten- 
tion had been caught, could place Christianity in the same class with 
the various appearances of fanaticism and boastful jugglery which he 
made the butt of his ridicule. When he heard of men who were said 
to possess the power of curing demoniacs, and of healing other diseases, 
he placed them down on the same list with the common vagabond exor- 
cists and magicians. He has most to say about the Christians, in a 

VoL. 1. 4 


158 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 

work where, in his own peculiar style, he has described the life and 
self-procured death of the Cynic philosopher, Peregrinus Proteus. This 
personage, according to Lucian’s account, was one of those notorious 
hypocrites, who understood the art of concealing their vanity and 
wickedness under the Cynic guise, and of enchaining the multitude by 
various other fraudulent tricks. Yet it may be a question, how far this 
picture, drawn by satire, answers to the truth, or whether it contains 
any at all— especially as we have a description of this individual by 
another contemporary,! which would lead us to form an altogether 
different view of his character; unless we choose to assume that this 
other contemporary suffered himself to be imposed upon by a hypo- 
critical show of moral earnestness and zeal. This Peregrinus then, as 
we are told, jomed himself for a while with the Christians, and being 
imprisoned for confessing Christianity, acquired among them the highest 
consideration. All which account may be a pure invention of Lucian 
for the purpose of connecting his hero with the Christians, that he 
might have a good opportunity for satirizing the latter. 

The importance which was given, from the Christian pomt of view, 
to the individual, personal existence, as destined, in its entireness, for 
endless duration; the lively confidence of faith in an eternal life and 
resurrection ; the opposition to the whole previously existing world into 
which Christianity caused its followers to enter; the hearty brotherly 
love which bound them to each other;—all these Lucian acknowledges 
as effects which had proceeded from the man who was crucified in 
Palestine. But without troubling himself to seek for profounder rea- 
sons to account for effects so great, and, as he himself admits, so 
abiding, he throws them into the same class with all the other kinds of 
fanaticism which he ridicules. ‘They still worship,” says he of the 
Christians, ‘‘ that great man who was crucified in Palestine, because it 
was he by whom the initiation into these new mysteries was introduced 
into human life. These poor creatures have persuaded themselves that 
they are all immortal, and shall live for ever. For this reason they 
despise death itself, and many even court it. But agai, their first law- 
giver has persuaded them to believe that, as soon as they have broken 
loose from the prevailing customs and denied the gods of Greece, 


1 Aulus Gellius, (in his Noctes Attic, 
1. XII. c. 11,) tells us that while residing at 
Athens, he visited this Peregrinus, who 
lived in a hut without the city. He calls 
him virum gravem et constantem. He cites 
from his mouth the maxim: wickedness 
ought to be shunned, not from fear of pun- 
ishment or disgrace, but only from love of 
goodness; virum sapientem non _ peccatu- 
rum, etiamsi peccasse eum dii atque homi- 
nes ignoraturi forent. If the purely moral 
effort which these words express, was real- 
ly his own, it is not difficult to see how he 
might thus be induced to attach himself to 
Christianity ; while at the same time, he 
soon fell away from it, because he could not 
bring himself to believe the facts which it 
announced. Yet we do not hold this to be 


probable, for the following reason, if there 
were no other, viz. we believe, that if any 
thing of this kind had happened, some trace 
or other of such an occurrence would have 
been preserved in the religious traditions of 
this period. 

2 We find no good reason for supposing 
that Paul is intended by this expression ; 
but we must conceive of the same person, 
whom he characterizes as the ἀνεσκολοπισ- 
μένος σοφιστῆς, and of whose laws he is 
speaking, — the sole founder of Christiani- 
ty. We recognize, also, the allusion to 
what Christ himself had said respecting 
brotherly love. In this particular descrip- 
tion by Lucian, we do not remark a single 
element which could be considered as be- 
longing peculiarly to the Apostle Paul. 


i 


LUCIAN — ARRIAN. 159 


reverencing instead of these their crucified teacher, and living after 
his laws, they stand to each other in the relation of brethren. Thus 
they are led to despise everything alike, to consider everything else 
as profane, adopting these notions without any sufficient grounds of 
evidence.” ! Under the example of Peregrinus, he gives a lively des- 
eription of the sympathy displayed by the Christians for those confessors 
who were languishing in prison. ‘‘ When he was incarcerated,” says 
Lucian, “the Christians, who regarded it as a great calamity, spared 
no expense and no sacrifice to procure his liberation. Finding this to 
be impossible, they were exceeding careful, that he should in all 
respects be well provided for. And from the early dawn, old women, 
widows and orphans might be seen waiting at the doors of his prison ; 
the more respectable among these, having bribed the keepers, slept near 
him in the dungeon. Then various dishes were brought in; and 
religious discourses were delivered in his presence. Hven from cities 
in Asia Minor deputies from the Christian communities were sent to 
assist in protecting and consoling him. They show incredible despatch 
in a public concern of this sort. In a brief space they give away all.” 

Again, Lucian accuses the Christians as an ignorant, uncultivated 
set, of excessive credulity ; whence it happened that their charitable 
disposition was in many ways imposed upon. ‘If a magician, an 
impostor, who is apt at his trade, comes among them, having to deal 
with an ignorant class of people, he can shortly make himself rich.” 
He describes the Christians as men “ who thought it the greatest sin 
to take a morsel of food which, in their opinion, was forbidden, and 
who would rather do anything than this.” Peregrinus was excluded 
from their community, “‘ because he had offended even against their 
laws, for he had been seen to eat something or other which is forbidden 
among them.” It is possible that Lucian had in mind here the example 
of Jewish Christian communities ; or, perhaps, the very punctilious and 
superstitious observance of the regulations adopted by the apostolic 
council at Jerusalem, (Acts xv.) which prevailed after the suppression 
of the more liberal spirit of St. Paul, may have given occasion to such 
a judgment. At all events, we cannot fail to see how, in this case, 
the contracted views of believers led to a misapprehension as to the 
essential character of their religion. 

The stoic Arrian, who lived at a somewhat earlier period than 
Lucian, judged of the Christians—as the emperor Marcus Aurelius 
had done before — strictly according to the relation of the stoic philoso- 
phy to Christianity. In his work, which aims to elucidate the principles 
of his master Epictetus,’ he starts the question, ‘‘ Whether by insight 
of reason into the laws which govern the system of the universe it 
might not be possible to acquire the same intrepidity in view of death, 
which the Galilzeans attained to by mad fanaticism and custom.” 


1”Avev τινὸς ἀκριβοῦς πίστεως. referring to extracts read from the sacred 

2 Ecclesiastics visited him, and gave re- Scriptures. By the “ἐν τέλει, who re- 
ay discourses in the cell, where he was mained with him during the night, may 

mfined;— unless the words “ λόγοι iepot doubtless be meant also Ecclesiastics. 
αὐτῶν ἐλέγοντο," are to be understood as 8 Diatrib. 1. IV. ς. 7. 


7 


160 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 

It may easily be understood, from what we have said respecting the 
relation of the Mew Platonism to the religious stage of development in 
the ancient world, and to Christianity, that while on one hand it might 
serve as a transition-pomt to the Christian faith, and a source from 
whence to borrow the scientific form to be used im the explanation and 
defence of Christian truth; so on the other, it would be the school 
from which the most numerous as well as the most formidable antago- 
nists of the same religion would proceed. Perhaps the first man who 
felt sufficiently interested in the subject to attack Christianity in an 
express work, was from this school; viz. Celsus, who under the govern- 
ment of Marcus Aurelius, when it was attempted to extirpate Chris- 
tianity by the sword, attacked it at the same time with the weapons of 
his witty and acute intellect. He wrote against the Christians a work 
in two books, entitled ‘* The true doctrine.” 1 

Origen himself, however, started the conjecture, that this Celsus 
was no other than the person otherwise known as Celsus the Epicurean, 
Lucian’s contemporary and friend. Still it is plain, from the uncer- 
tainty with which he expresses himself, that he was led to this conjec- 
ture, not by any evidence of historical tradition, but only by the identity 
of the name; and that he was thrown into doubt again by the internal 
evidence presented in the work itself. Now smce it is by no means 
impossible, that two authors of the same name should write at the same 
period — especially when the name is not an unusual one — the infer- 
ence from the identity of names must be extremely uncertain, unless 


supported by some agreement also in the way of thinking. 
Lucian was induced by the last mentioned Celsus to publish his life 


1 Λόγος ἀληϑήῆς, Orig. c. Cels. 1. I. ο. 4. 
Several learned writers have supposed it 
might be inferred from Origen’s language, 
(ce. Cels. 1. LV. c. 36,) that besides the work 
just mentioned, which, as to its essential 
contents may be restored from the fragments 
preserved in Origen’s reply, Celsus wrote 
another work, in two books, against Chris- 
tianity. But we cannot think that the in- 
terpretation of the passage which lies at 
the basis of their theory, is the correct one. 
The passage is this: Ὁ ᾿Επικούρειος Κέλ- 
σος, εἴγε οὗτός ἐστι, καὶ κατὰ Χριστιανῶν 
ἄλλα δύο βίθλια συντάξας. I cannot un- 
derstand ἄλλα, in this connection, as refer- 
ring to other works against Christianity, 
besides the one of which alone Origen uni- 
formly speaks, and which it is his business 
to refute; but I understand by it other 
works than those known to belong to Cel- 
sus, in which he betrays his Epicureanism 
without any attempt at concealment. “ The 
Epicurean Celsus, if indeed,—so I con- 
sider myself warranted by the Greek usus 
loquendi of this period to understand the 
word εἴγε, while at the same time I ac- 
knowledge the original difference between 
εἴγε and εἴπερ, ---- ἰῇ indeed he is the same 
with the one who wrote two other books 
against the Christians.” By the other 


books, in this case, none can be meant but 
that one work which Origen undertook to 
refute. Precisely this was the point in ques- 
tion, whether the Epicurean could be the 
author of that work. Whether the same in- 
dividual had composed two other works be- 
sides, against Christianity, was a question 
that did not belong here. Had it been 
Origen’s intention to designate two books 
distinct from that work, he would have ex- 
pressed himself somewhat as follows: ‘OQ 
καὶ ταῦτα τὰ βίβλια Kat ἄλλα Ovo, ete. 
Moreover, the prefixing the words, κατὰ 
Χριστιανῶν, confirms my interpretation. 
And if Celsus had written another addi- 
tional work against the Christians, two 
cases only can be supposed. Hither Origen 
had read this work also, or else he had 
merely been informed that Celsus had writ- 
ten such a work, without having seen it 
himself. In the first case, he would not 
have failed to take some notice, in this con- 
troversy, of what Celsus had said in his 
other work against the Christians. In the 
second case, he would, at least, not have 
omitted to declare distinctly, that the other 
work of Celsus had never come under his 
eye, as he does in fact observe where he is 
speaking of a writing of Celsus, which we 
shall have occasion to mention hereafter. 


s 


CELSUS. 161 


of the magician Alexander of Abonoteichus, a work which he dedicated 
to that friend. This fact would correspond with the views expressed 
in the work of Celsus against Christianity. For the antagonist of 
Christianity places it in the same class with all phenomena belonging to 
the art of magic, and compares it with the latter when he attempts to 
account for its origin and diffusion. He might naturally wish, also, 
to know more about the great magician who had made so much noise 
in his day, with a view to avail himself of this knowledge im behalf of 
his own scheme of enlightenment, which would throw all religious phe- 
nomena, transcending the ordinary standard, mto the same category. 
This Celsus had written a book, as Origen also was aware, against 
pretended enchantments,! and which was intended to counteract the 
fraudulent tricks of those vagrant Goetz. Itis described by Lucian as 
a work well adapted to lead men back to sober thought.2, Now it might 
very easily happen, that on these principles, the same zeal against 
fanaticism would induce Celsus to write against those who endeavored 
to deceive the multitude by their pretended art of magic, and against 
the Christians who insisted on their own miraculous gifts. Celsus does, 
in fact, compare, in one place, the miracles of Christ with the works of 
magicians who learned their art from the Egyptians, and for a few 
oboli exhibited them in the open market-place, pretending to expel evil 
spirits from men, to drive away diseases by a breath, to call up the 
souls of heroes, to charm into their presence costly viands, to make 
dead things move as if they were alive ; and he asks, ‘‘Shall we, be- 
cause they do such things, consider them as sons of God — or shall we 
say these are the tricks of wicked and pitiable men?” Origen was 
doubtless wrong in supposing that in these words Celsus conceded the 
reality of magic; and that the only way therefore, of reconciling this 
concession with the attack on magic by the same Celsus, if he were the 
same, was to assume that, to subserve a particular end, he here pre- 
tended te believe what he did not actually believe. For Celsus might. 
express himself thus, even though he looked upon those magicians as 
no better than jugglers, skilful in deceiving the senses by a certain 
sleight of hand ;* and the same writer, in his work against the magicians, 
may have undertaken to show how such deceptions were brought about. 
Yet it must be admitted, that in another passage of the work against 
the Christians, Celsus expresses himself as though he considered magic 
to be an art possessed of a certain power, though held by him in no great 
account.® He says he had heard it from Dionysius, an Egyptian musi- 
cian, that magic exercised an influence over uncultivated and profligate 
men, but not over those who had received a philosophical education. 
This view of magic may be easily traced back to a common opinion 
among the Platonists of that period, who supposed that by taking 


1 Κατὰ μάγων. καὶ δυναμένοις σωφρονίζειν τοὺς ἐντυγχά- 
2 He says in his tract, dedicated to this νοντας. 
Celsus, and entitled, ᾿Αλέξανδρος or Pevdo- 8 Orig. c. Cels. 1. I. δ᾽ 28. 
μάντις, (ὃ 12.) addressing himself to Cel- 4 Μέχρι φαντασίας φαινόμενα τοιαῦτα. 
sus: Οἷς κατὰ μάγων συνέγραψας, καλλίοσ- 5. Cels. 1. VI. ὁ. 41. 
Tole Te Gua Kal ὠφελιμωτάτοις συγγράμμασι 


14* 


162 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 

advantage of certain attractive and repulsive powers in nature — certain 
magnetic influences—it would be possible to exercise a great control 
over such as were still fettered by the bonds of nature, though not over 
those who had risen to freedom, and lived in the divine element which 
is exalted above all natural forces. With this the assertion first quoted 
from Celsus may be easily reconciled, that magic, as practised in 
Egypt, its proper home,! so influenced men at a subordinate stage 
of culture, that sights, and affections of whatever kind, might be 
produced in them at pleasure. It may be questioned, however, whether 
Lucian’s friend would have conceded as much as this to magic.. 

Lucian praises the mild temper and the moderation of his friend. 
But in Celsus’ work against the Christians we see no marks of such 
qualities as these ; but we feel that we have to do with a man of vehe- 
ment passions, a man altogether incapable of allowimg the cause which 
he attacks, to be right on any side whatever. At the same time, we 
cannot be certain, that Lucian’s opinion of his friend was according to 
truth. Besides, there are those who find no difficulty in preserving 
their temper until certain topics are introduced, when they flash out 
at once into fire and flames. And especially on religious matters, 
nothing is more common than for men of acute minds, who have en- 
trenched themselves in some negative position of the understanding and 
feel jealous of every eccentric appearance in this province, to lose all 
self-possession whenever powerful phenomena of the religious life are 
presented to their notice. The heat with which Celsus attacks Chris- 
tianity betrays his own oppressive sense of the power with which it 
was extending itself on all sides. 

There can be no doubt, that the Celsus who was Lucian’s friend, 
favored for the most part the school of Epicurus. But in the work 
against Christianity, very little is to be found which indicates a ten- 
dency to this way of thinking, and even this little vanishes under a 
more careful examination. On the other hand, the marks of an entirely 
opposite system are everywhere apparent. 

In this book we certainly perceive a mind which would not consent 
to surrender itself to the system of any other individual; we find our- 
selves in contact with a man who, by combining the ideas predominant 
in the general philosophical consciousness of his time, the popular 
ideas — so to speak —of that period, had framed a system of his own, 
of which he felt rather proud, and which, after he had appeared as a 
polemic in his work against the Christians, it was his intention to unfold 
in another performance, under a more positive form. In this second 
work, he meant to show how it would be necessary for those to live, 


arts by which he performed his pretended 


1 And so the possession of the art of Ι 
miracles, and contrived to attain to such 


magic was ascribed. by those who acknowl- 


edged its reality, particularly to the Egyp- 
tian priests. Moreover, Celsus (1. Ic. 28) 
brings forward the story, borrowed perhaps 
from the Jews, that Jesus, on account of his 
poverty, was obliged in Egypt to let him- 
self out for wages, and there learned the 


eminence as to be worshipped as a divine 
being. Ὅτι οὗτος διὰ πενίαν εἰς Αἴγυπτον 
μισϑαρνῆσας κἀκεῖ δυνάμεων τίνων TeLpa- 
ϑεὶς, ἐφ᾽ αἷς Αἰγύπτιοι σεμνύνονται, ἐπανῆλ- 
Sev, ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσι μέγα φρονῶν καὶ δι 
αὐτὰς ϑεὸν αὑτὸν ἀνηγόρευσεν. 


- 


CELSUS. 163 


who were willing and able to follow him. Whether this plan was ever 
executed, we are not informed.! 

But in this system, the main ideas are borrowed from Platonism. 
Among these we reckon the idea of the Absolute, the ὄν, to which the 
contemplative spirit of the philosopher alone could soar ;—the distinc- 
tion between the highest, primal Being or Essence, and his self-mani- 
festation in the Universe — between the Highest, who reposes in being, 
and the second god, who reveals himself in becoming ; — the world, 
as the Son of the Supreme God ; — the idea of the celestial luminaries 
as divine essences, of the higher intelligences animating those heavenly 
bodies, of the gods appearing visible in the phenomenal world,? as 
opposed to the invisible, hidden deities presiding over the several parts 
of the world —the national gods to whom the different portions of the 
world are subject, and to whom men are bound to render due homage, 
by acknowledging this dependence grounded on the nature of the 
earthly life ; the idea that the imperishable element in human nature, 
the spirit alone, derives its origin from God; that this element, possess- 
ing an affinity to God, exists in the human soul; the hypothesis of a 
power struggling against the divine and formative principle in the 
world, of the ὕλη as the source of evil; hence of evil im this world as 
something necessary. From this ὕλη are derived the evil spirits, the 
powers that struggle against the divine, against reason, 

These ideas, scattered through his work, betray not the Epicurean 
certainly, but one who had appropriated nearly all he possessed from 
the current ideas of the New Platonic philosophy of religion. Though 
we cannot but suppose that Celsus, in opposing the Christian mode of 
thinking, and for the purpose of bantering the Christians, said many 
things which he did not seriously mean; yet assuredly we have no 
reason to suppose that the tinge of Platonism which appears every- 
where through the surface, was assumed merely out of pretence. And 
however strong we may be inclined to suppose the tendency to eclecti- 
cism was at this particular period of time, still we cannot consider it to 
be natural or probable that Epicurean views would be blended with so 
predominating an element of New Platonism. But whoever this Celsus 
may have been, he is for us an important individual, being, in fact, the 
original representative of a kind of intellect which has presented itself 
over and over again in the various attacks made on Christianity: wit 
and acuteness, without earnest purpose or depth of research ; a worldly 
understanding that glances merely on the surface, and delights in hunt- 
ing up difficulties and contradictions. His objections against Chris- 
tianity serve one important end. They present, in the clearest manner, 
the opposition between the Christian standing ground and that of the 
ancient world; and, in general, the relation which revealed religion 
will ever be found to hold to the ground assumed by natural reason. 


1 Origen, at the conclusion of his work, These words, too, clearly prove, that Origen 
begs of his friend Ambrosius, that if Cel- had no knowledge of a second work of 
sus had actually executed this plan, he Celsus against Christianity. 
would procure for him this work also, that 2 Θεοὲ φανεροί. 
he might take measures for its refutation. 


164 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 


Thus many of his objections and strictures became testimonies for the 
truth. 

How the divine foolishness of the gospel, the faith whereby the 
highest truth was to be made the common property of all mankind, 
must needs appear to the twilight wisdom, and aristocratic culture of 
the ancient world, may be seen in those remarks of Celsus, where he 
objects to the Christians,! that they refused to give reasons for what 
they believed, but were ever repeating, “ Do not examine, only believe ; 
thy faith will make thee blessed. Wisdom is a bad thing im life, fool- 
ishness is to be preferred.” He makes the Christians say, ‘ Let no 
educated, no wise man approach; but whoever is ignorant, unculti- 
vated, —whoever is like a child, let him come and be comforted.’ 
This objection was, in part, called forth by the divine paradox of the 
gospel itself; but in part, there was alsoa one-sided tendency among 
the Christians themselves to set up faith as something opposed to 
culture and scientific inquiry, —a course which led to the misappre- 
hension of Christianity itself, and to accusations which had no other 
ground than this misapprehension. Along with this class of objections 
we find another of the directly opposite character, showmg how much 
the religion which was thus accused of demanding and encouraging 
implicit faith, claimed and excited intellectual inquiry, called into 
requisition the powers of thought. We refer to the objection drawn 
from the multitude of conflicting sects among the Christians. ‘In 
the outset,” says he,° ‘‘ when the Christians were few in number, they 
may, perhaps, have agreed among themselves. But as their numbers 
increased, they separated into parties, mutually attacking and refuting 
each other, and retaining nothing in common but their name, if indeed ᾿ 
they did that.”’® He accuses them of calumniating each other, and of 
refusing to yield up a single point for the sake of unanimity.’ 

In objecting to Christianity the many oppositions of human opinion 
which it called forth, Celsus testifies against himself. How could a reli- 
gion of bare faith, a religion that called the unenlightened and repelled 
the wise of this world, give birth to such a multitude of heresies? If 
he had not been so superficial an observer, he could not have failed to 
be struck with this contradiction; and in endeavoring to resolve it, must 
have had his attention directed to that peculiarity, by which Christian- 
ity is so clearly distinguished from all preceding phenomena in the 


— 


1A similar objection to Judaism and 
Christianity is made also by Galen, that 
celebrated physician of the second and third 
centuries, —a man incapable of rising to 
the higher fields of thought. From the po- 
sition at which he contemplates the world, 
on one particular side of it, and by the 
mere understanding, he observes: Ἵνα μὴ 
τις εὐθὺς Kar ἀρχὰς ὡς εἰς Μωῦσοῦ καὶ 
Χριστοῦ διατριβὴν ἀφιγμένος νόμων ἀναπο- 
δείκτων ἀκουῇ. De different. puls. 1. I. 
c 4. 

21.1.5. 9. 

8Τ,. III. ο. 44: Δῆλοί εἰσιν, ὅτι μόνους 
τοὺς ἠλιϑίους καὶ ἀγεννεῖς καὶ ἀναισϑήῆτους 


καὶ ἀνδράποδα καὶ γύναια καὶ παιδάρια πεί- 
Sew ἐϑέλουσί τε καὶ δύνανται. 

1 Clement of Alexandria observes, that 
pagans and Jews were used to bring this 
objection against Christianity ; μὴ δεῖν πισ- 
τεύειν διὰ τὴν διαφωνίαν τῶν αἱρέσεων. 
Strom. 1. VII. f. 753. Ed Paris, 1641. 

5 L. III. ο. 10, and the following. 

6 Στάσεις ἰδίας ἔχειν ἕκαστοι ϑέλουσι, 
σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐλέγχουσιν, ἑνός, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ἔτι 
κοινωνοῦντες, εἴγε κοινωνοῦσιν ἔτι, τοῦ ὀνό- 
ματος. ; 
7L. V.c. 63: Βλασφημοῦσι δὲ εἰς ἀλλή- 
λους οὗτοι πάνδεινα ῥητὰ καὶ ἄῤῥητα καὶ 
οὐκ ἂν εἴξαιεν οὐδὲ καϑ᾽ ὁτιοῦν εἰς ὁμόνοιαν. 


. 


CELSUS. 165 
intellectual world. Celsus was of the opinion, that these oppositions 
of knowledge, so hotly conflicting with each other, would bring about 
the dissolution of Christianity. But history has decided against him ; 
it has shown how the indwelling power of unity in Christianity could 
overcome these oppositions, and make them subservient to its own ends. 
Celsus then, as we see, was aware of the fact, that many different 
sects existed among the Christians. But he did not give himself the 
pains, which a lover of justice and of truth would have done, to distin- 
guish what was grounded in the original Christian doctrie, and what 
had been added by these sects; what was acknowledged as true doc- 
trine by the great body of Christians, and what was adopted only by 
this or that particular party. He was somewhat deeply read in the 
religious records of the Christians, and had heard a great deal repeated 
which was derived from them. But the spirit in which he had read 
and heard all this, was not one that prepared him to receive, or made 
him capable of understanding it; but one which, keeping him on the 
alert for opportunities of ridicule and misrepresentation, must find these 
opportunities. He threw the religious writings, as he had done the 
religious parties of the Christians, into one class, without examining 
either into the origin of them or into their character. Whatever he 
could lay hold of, belonging to the most opposite’parties, — to those 
fanatical spiritualists, the Gnostics, and to those gross anthropomorph- 
ists, the Chiliasts, — which served to present Christianity on_ different 
sides in the most unfavorable light, was eagerly welcomed by him. 
Sometimes he objects to the Christians that they had nothing in com- 
mon with all other religions, — neither temples, images nor altars; at 
others, — opposing an abstract knowledge of God to the religion that 
had its birth in historical facts,— he calls them a miserable sense- 
bound, sense-loving race,! who would acknowledge nothing but that 
which was palpable to the outward senses. He preaches to them, 
that men should close their senses and turn away from all sensible 
things, so as to have the intuition of God through the eye of the mind. 
On the watch for every weak spot which the Christians might expose, 
and which he could take advantage of in assailing their faith, the pains 
taken by many to work into form the traditions relating to the history 
of Christ did not escape his notice. ‘‘ Many of the faithful,” says he, 
ἐς who have come, as it were, out of the fit of intoxication to their sober 
senses, alter the evangelical narrative from the shape in which it was 
first recorded, in three, four, manifold ways, that they may have where- 
with to deny objections.”? He brings this to prove the position, that 
the more prudent and discreet among the Christians could not help 


1 Δειλὸν καὶ φιλοσώματον γένος. L, VII. 
ς, 36. Παντελῶς τῇ σαρκὶ ἐνδεδεμένοι καὶ 
μηδὲν καϑαρὸν βλέποντες. LL. ο. ο. 42. 

2 The remarkable words of Celsus, (1. IT. 
6. 27,) are: Τινὰς τῶν πιστευόντων ὡς ἐκ 
μέϑης ἥκοντας εἰς τὸ ἐφεστάναι αὑτοῖς με- 
ταχαράττειν ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γραφῆς τὸ εὐαγ- 
γέλιον τριχῆ καὶ τετραχῆ καὶ πολλαχῆ καὶ 
μεταπλάττειν, iv’ ἔχοιεν πρὸς τοὺς ἐλέγχους 
_ ἀρνεῖσϑαι. Origen supposes that what Cel- 


sus says can apply only to the Gnostics, 
who allowed themselves in the practice of 
altering the evangelical records to suit their 
peculiar doctrines. Celsus, however, could 
hardly have in view this class of men, but 
more probably referred to those who, by 
their criticism of the text, springing out of 
some apologetical interest, were for remov- 
ing what might prove offensive to the sen- 
sus communis. 


166 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 


feeling the insuperable difficulties in those accounts, and. therefore felt 
themselves called upon to remove these difficulties by their emenda- 
tions. But even this is still a witness in favor of the inward power with 
which these facts had found their way into the religious consciousness ; 
since notwithstanding the stones of stumbling that offered themselves 
to the common understanding, still, when these accounts came to be 
spread among the cultivated, they could win conviction on their side. 

In like manner Celsus bears witness, against his will, of the distin- 
guishing peculiarity of the gospel, and at the same time of that which 
lay at the very ground of his own want of susceptibility to its power, 
when he imagines he can ridicule Christianity, because it invites sin- 
ners only to participate in the kingdom of God, and excludes such as 
are wholly without sin. ‘‘ They who invite us,” says he,! “to become 
initiated into other religious mysteries, begin by proclaiming ‘ Let him 
approach who 15 free from all stains, who is conscious of no wickedness, 
who has lived a good and upright life ;” — and this they proclaim who 
promise purification from sins. But let us hear who it is these Chris- 
tians call: ‘ Whoever is a sinner,’ say they, ‘ whoever is foolish, unlet- 
tered, in a word, whoever is wretched, him will the kingdom of God 
receive.” And then he asks, “" But how? Was not Christ sent in 
behalf of those who are sinless ?”?2 As Celsus was wanting in a just sense 
of the nature of sin, and hence could express surprise that Christ did 
not announce himself as sent particularly in behalf of the simless, so 
too he was without a presentiment of the soul-transforming power which 
Christianity carries with it, of that mystery of an entire moral renova- 
tion of the nature estranged from God, which Christ sets forth in his 
conversation with Nicodemus. He had no conception of the fact, that 
by the power of divine love, a change could be produced, beginning 
from within and working outwards, which no fear of punishment could 
ever effect from without. His words bearing on this subject are well 
deserving of notice.? ‘It is manifest to every one, that it lies within 
no man’s power to produce an entire change in a person to whom 
sin has become a second nature, even by punishment, to say nothing 
of mercy ; for to effect a complete change of nature is the most diffi- 
cult of things; but the sinless are the safer companions in life.” 

It is evident, that with the habit of thinking which expresses itself in 
the passages already cited, Celsus would be incapable of understanding 
another point which belongs to the characteristic marks of the Chris- 
tian position as distinguished from that of antiquity, namely, the nature 
of humility. In virtue of his Platonism, he did, indeed, see that the 
ταπεινότης, Which, from the ordinary ethical position of antiquity, was 
looked upon only as something wrong and evil, might also be a virtue; 
and hence he refers to the passage in Plato’s fourth book of the Laws, 
which has already been cited on page 19. But instead of recogniz- 
ing in this something typical and prophetic in relation to Christianity, 
he derives the Christian idea of humility froma misunderstanding of 

1 Lib. III. ο. 59. 8 Οὐδεὶς ἂν οὐδὲ κολάζων πάντῃ μεταβά- 


2 Τί δὲ ; τοῖς ἀναμαρτῆτοις οὐκ ἐπέμφϑη , λοι, μήτι γε ἐλεῶν. 1,,. IIL. ο. 65. 
L. ¢. ¢. 62. , 


CELSUS. 167 
that Platonic sentiment.1 The true nature of humility was a matter 
too foreign to his own way of thinking and apprehension, to make it 
easy for him to understand the Christian life on this particular side. 
Thus, in those carricatures of humility which came under his observa- 
tion in exceedingly imperfect exhibitions of the Christian life, he was 
unable to discern the truth at bottom; and he seized on such morbid 
offshoots, to represent the essence of Christian humility itself as a mor- 
bid thing ; —as if, according to the doctrine of the Christians, the hum- 
ble man was a cteature “for ever on his knees, or rolling in the dust, 
a man who dressed meanly and sprinkled himself with ashes.’’? 

It may appear strange, that Celsus, who taunts the Christians for 
their selfabasement before God, should accuse them at the same time 
of the directly contrary error, immoderate pride, a foolish self-exaltation 
towards God. But as he had no proper conception of true humility, 
so neither had he any just conception of true loftiness, — both being 
intimately connected together in the Christian consciousness, according 
to the words of Christ, who makes the humiliation of self the condition 
of man’s exaltation. At the position held by the natural man, these 
appear as incompatible opposites; but they find their resolution in 
Christianity. Hence Celsus must necessarily mistake the Christian 
ground of standing on both sides. Hence he could attack it on both 
these opposite aspects. He ridicules the Christians for presuming to 
ascribe to themselves, to man, compared with the rest of creation, such 
worth and dignity in the sight of God, as they did, when they taught 
that God had created all things on man’s account, and when they rep- 
resented man as the end of the creation and of the government of the 
world. The importance which Christianity attached to personal exist- 
ence, struck hing as singular and strange. It appeared to him, in 
accordance with the prevailing view of the ancient world, that the τη: 
versal whole was the only end worthy of the divine mind ; and that man 
was of account only as an integrant part of this whole, subjected to. 
those unchangeable laws of its evolution which operate with iron neces- 
sity. ‘‘ It is not for man,” says he, “‘ that every thing has been given ; 
but every thing grows and decays for the sustentation of the whole.’’ ὃ 
How little capable he was of understanding, indeed, the great idea, 
that all things have been created for man, is evident from the form 
of some of his objections. ‘“ Although it might be said that trees, 
plants, herbs grow for the sake of man, yet might it not be said with 
the same propriety that they grow also for the wildest animals?” 4 And 
comparing these latter with man, he observes®°—“ We with great labor 
and care are scarcely able to support ourselves; but for the brutes 
every thing grows spontaneously, without any sowing and ploughing of 


1 Τ]αράκουσμα τῶν Πλάτωνος λόγων. LL. 
VE 


to the ignorance of those who propose to 
c. 15. 
2L. Vi.c. 15. Origen justly replies, “If 


do what is right, but fail for want of knowl- 
edge.” 


there are some who, through ignorance and 
the want of a right understanding of the 
true doctrine of humility, do this, the 
Christian system is not therefore to be ac- 
cused; but it must be charitably imputed 


3"Exaota τῆς τοῦ ὅλου σωτηρίας εἵνεκα 
γίνεταί τε καὶ ἀπόλλυται. 1, LV. ο. 69. 

ἈΤωδ, 8,15. 

δῚ, c. 6. 76. 


168 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 
theirs.”” In his passionate opposition to what Christianity teaches 
respecting the worth of human nature, he goes so far as to exalt the 
brutes at man’s expense.’ ‘If you say, God .has given you the power 
to capture the brutes and make them subservient to your ends, we will 
say, that before cities, arts, trades and weapons had existence, men 
were torn by wild beasts, not they taken by men.” Instead of mark- 
ing how in the brutes nature is striving upward to man, he adduces the 
bees and the ants as examples to show, that even the order of civil soci- 
ety is no prerogative of man.?. What the Christians taught concerning 
a particular providence, and concerning God’s care for the well-being 
of individuals, appeared, therefore, to him as vain arrogance, as an alto- 
gether anthropomorphite notion. “It is not for man,” he asserts,? “ any 
more than for lions or eagles, that every thing in the world has been 
created ; but it is im order that the world, as the work of God, might 
present a complete and perfect whole. God provides only for the whole ; 
and this-his providence never deserts. And this world never becomes 
any worse. God does not return fo it after a long interval. He is as 
little angry with man as he is with apes or flies.” Like a consistent 
Platonist, Celsus rejects every thing teleological in the creation and 
government of the world. A redemption, according to his doctrine, is 
wholly out of the question. For in this world, evil is a necessary thing. 
It has no origin, and will have no end. It remains constantly as it is, 
just as the nature of the universe generally remains eternally the same.* 
‘The ‘vay is the source, whence what we term evil ever springs afresh. 
By this Platonic principle, a redemption, triumphing over evil, is ex- 
cluded. Celsus conceives the evolution of the universe as a circle con- 
stantly repeating itself according to precisely the same laws. With 
such notions of God’s relation to the world, and to 
with such mistaken views of the worth and significance of personal 
existence, he could bring against the Christian view of God’s govern- 
ment of the world, and of his method of salvation, and especially of the 
work of redemption, the objection so often repeated im after times, 
‘that the universe has been provided, once for all, with all the powers 
necessary for its preservation and for developing itself after the same 
laws ; that God has not, like a human architect, so executed his work, 
that at some future period it would need repair.° 

Characteristic of the man, is the way in which Celsus treats the 
history of Christ. In part, he follows the stories set in circulation by 
the Jews; in part, other spurious or mistaken traditions, and partly, the 
evangelical narratives, which, because he possessed no single collective 
intuition of Christ’s person, he could not understand in their true 


an in particular, - 


1To avoid the mistake of many, who 
have supposed they found, in what Celsus 
here says, a token of his leaning much rath- 
er to the side of Epicureanism than Platon- 
ism in his mode of thinking, it should be 
duly considered, that passion and obstinacy 
lead him here to push every thing to the 
extreme, and that even according to the 
New Platonic principles, a soul bearing 


some affinity to that of man, but only 
checked in its development by the con- 
straint of the ὕλη, was supposed to exist in 
brute animals, 

21s. €.°G, a 

°L. TV..¢. 99. 

4 L. c. ο. 62, and the following. 

5 Οὔτε τῷ ϑεῷ καινοτέρας dei διορϑώσεως, 
L...c. Ὁ, 69. 


CELSUS. 169 
significance! Wherever he thinks the evangelical narratives can be 
made to answer his purpose, he considers their authority to be unim- 
peachable ; but when they refuse to lend themselves to his polemical 
interest, he denies their truth.2 The Jew whom he introduces as an 
opponent of Christianity, is made to say, that he had many true things 
to state in relation to Christ’s history, and altogether different from 
those reported by his disciples, but he purposely kept them back.® 
Yet Celsus, whose perfect hatred of Christianity led him to collect 
together everything that could be said with the least show of probability 
against it, would not have failed, certainly, to avail himself of such 
accounts, if.they were really within his reach. We must consider this, 
therefore, with Origen, as one of those rhetorical tricks of which Celsus 
set the example for later antagonists of Christianity. : 

Accordingly, he assails the position that Christ was wholly free from 
sin ;* yet without producing a single action of Christ to show the contrary. 

Among other stories, he lays hold of the wholly unfounded tradition 
respecting the uncomliness of Christ’s person,’ to represent it as incon- 
sistent with the supposition that Christ partook of the divine nature 
beyond all other men.® 

In respect to the resurrection of Christ, it did not occur to him to 
deny the reality of his death; but he denied the truth of the accounts 
concerning his reappearance after he had risen. Without entering into 
any careful examination of these accounts, he leaves it optional, either 
to suppose them pure inventions, or cases of optical delusion — visions 
belonging to the same class with the apparition of ghosts.’ The objec- 
tions which Celsus urges against the reality of Christ’s miracles and 
of his resurrection, harmonize perfectly with his ignorance of the true 
significancy of these facts. ‘¢ Why did Christ perform no miracle when 
challenged to do so by the Jews in the temple?”® “If he really 
intended to manifest his divine power, he ought to have shown himself 
to those who condemned him, and generally to all.” ® How he is com- 
pelled, from overlooking the connection of the divine with the human 
in history, to testify against himself, appears once more in a very 
remarkable manner, where he says, ‘‘ How is it, that a man, who was 
incensed with the Jews, should destroy them all at a stroke and send 
up their city in flames !—so utterly nothing were they before him ; — 
but the Great God, angry and threatening, sends his own son, as they 
say, and he must suffer all this.” Ὁ 

Thus, to the man who was incapable of understanding the true import 
of Christ’s appearance, the course of history generally, the signs of 


1 Origen aptly characterizes the sources 
of information of which Celsus availed 
himself: Εἶτ’ ἐκ παραπουσμάτων, εἴτε καὶ 
ἐξ ἀναγνωσμάτων, εἴτ᾽ ἐκ διηγημάτων Ἶου- 
δαϊκῶν. Τί, 11. ο. 10. 

ΤΟ, 6,.84. 

8 L.c.c. 13. 

4 Μηδὲ ἀνεπίληπτον γεγονέναι τὸν Ἰη- 
σοῦν. 1,. ο. ο. 41 and 42. 

5 Which tradition had grown out of the 
idea, — pushed to the extreme, —of Christ’s 

VOL. I. ΕΣ 


ff 


appearance in the form of a servant, and 

the literal interpretation of Isaiah.53. 
θ᾽Αμήχανον, ὅτῳ ϑεῖόν τι πλέον TOV’ ἄλ- 

λων προςῆν μηδὲν ἄλλου διαφέρειν: τοῦτο 

δὲ οὐδὲν ἄλλου διέφερεν, ἄλλ᾽ ὥς φασι μι- 

κρὸν καὶ δυσειδὲς καὶ ἀγεννὲς ἦν. L. IV. 

0} 70. 

Pie ihc. 555. VIL. c. 35. 

ΘΠ ΠΣ ΟΣ: 

9Ὶ, II. c. 63 and 67. 

0 τ, IV. c. 73. 


170 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 


the times, must also be unintelligible. He could not perceive that 
men whose anger had been excited against the Jewish people, served 
as instruments of the divine justice to inflict the penalty which that 
people had brought upon themselves by the accumulated measure of 
their guilt. 

From the same school of Platonism proceeded, in the latter half of 
the third century, another opponent of Christianity, — one in whom we 
recognize a man of noble spirit united with profound intellectual attain- 
ments, altogether the reverse of Celsus. Porphyry, a Phoenician by 
birth, was a man of the Hast, in whom the Oriental basis of character 
had been completely fused with the elements of Grecian culture. The 
- account which comes from the church historian Socrates,! that he had 
originally been a Christian, and only became embittered against Chris- 
tianity on account of the ill treatment he had suffered from some of 
his fellow-believers, resembles, too much to deserve any credit, one of 
the common stories by which men endeavored to account, from outward 
causes, for an opposition grounded in the inward bent of the mind itself. 
In all that belongs to Porphyry, no trace can be discovered of his hav- 
Ing once been a Christian; for, assuredly, those ideas of his which are, 
or rather which seem to be, related to Christianity, cannot rightly be 
considered as any evidence of this sort. In part, those ideas sprung 
naturally out of that part of Platonism which may claim some relation- 
ship with Christian doctrines, and which was more distinctly brought 
out by the effort to refine paganism and hold it up in opposition to 
Christianity ; and in part, they showed the power exerted by Christianity 
even over those minds that were opposed to it; as, for instance, when 
Porphyry describes the triad of Christian principles, Faith, Love, and 
Hope, — though not apprehended according to the profound meaning 
of St. Paul—as the foundation of genuine piety.2 If Porphyry had 
not been a disciple of Plotinus, it is possible that by the fusion of 
Oriental Theosophy with Christianity he might have become a Gnostic. 
That speculative direction, opposed to the Oriental Gnosticism, which 
he received from Plotinus, the union of a Theosophy based on Plato- 
nism with the spiritualized polytheistic system, rendered hini a violent 
enemy of Christianity, which could not be forced to accommodate itself 
to his eclectic theory. 

Porphyry, in the letter to his wife, calls it the noblest fruit of piety 
to worship God after the manner of one’s country.? Christianity, then, 
would be hateful to him, if on no other grounds, because it was a religion 
that conflicted with the national worship. As it was his wish that such 
a worship should be maintained as could not otherwise be reduced to 
harmony with the fundamental ideas of his philosophical religion than 
by artificial interpretations, unintelligible to the multitude, he was 
necessarily betrayed into many self-contradictions. He was, as we 
have seen, a zealous advocate of image-worship; and in encouraging 


17, Il. c. 23, Sw περὶ Seod: πίστις, ἀλήϑεια, ἔρως, ἐλπίς. 

2 In his letter to his wife, Marcella, which 8 Ep. ad Marcellam, ed. Mai. c. 18, where 
was published by Mai, in Milan, 1816,(c. perhaps the reading should be: Τιμᾷν τὸ 
24:) Τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα μάλιστα κεκρατύν- ϑεῖον κατὰ τὰ πάτρια. 


PORPHYRY. 171 
this, he countenanced at the same time the old superstitions, since the 
people associated with these images their ancient notions. And yet 
he writes to his wife: “ Zhat man ts not so much of an Atheist who 
neglects to worship the images of the gods, as he who transfers to God 
the opinions of the multitude.” 

He wrote a work against Christianity, in which he endeavored to de- 
tect contradictions in the sacred scriptures, — contradictions between the 
Apostles — especially between the Apostles Peter and Paul.’ Doubt- 
less he may have adroitly availed himself, in this work, of the weak 
spots presented, not by the matter itself which he was attacking, but 
by the manner in which men had set forth and defended it; as, for 
example, when he was led by those harmonists who regarded the New 
Testament only as a rigid unity, to point out the discrepancies existing 
in the same, — of which, as we may suppose, he would be sure to make 
a false use; when, as Celsus had done before him,” he seized upon the 
artificial, allegorical interpretations, resorted to for the purpose of so 
explaining the Old Testament as to show that every part of it was 
equally divine and that every Christian doctrine might be found in it, 
and turned them into an argument to prove that the Old Testament 
admitted of no worthy sense to the natural and simple apprehension. 
Not without good reason could he say of such explanations, that men 
had contrived to dazzle and bewilder the judgment by pompous show.?® 
Yet what he could assert with so much justice against this artificial 
interpretation of the Old Testament, fell back with no less weight 
against himself and the school to which he belonged, who took the same 
unwarrantable liberties in interpreting the Greek religion and its fables. 

There is another work of Porphyry’s, respecting which our informa- 
tion is more accurate, where too he has spoken against Christianity, and 
may have intended, indirectly at least, to present some check to its 
progress, —a system of Theology such as could be drawn up from the 
ancient, pretended responses of the Oracles. He aimed in this way, 
as we have already observed in the Introduction, to supply the craving 
now awakened for religious instruction on the basis of some divine 
authority that could be relied on —an interest by which many were led 
along to Christianity. Now, among the responses of the Oracles, some 
are to be found which relate to Christ and Christianity, —an evidence 
of the power of the Christian religion, which had so early infused its 
influence into the spiritual atmosphere, and already pressed itself upon 
the heathens from all that surrounded them. Hence many were at a 
loss to know how they should act with regard to it, and sought for 


1 Where he has recourse to the fallacious 
argument grounded on the well-known in- 
cident at Antioch, Gal. 2. 

2 See c. Cels. 1. I. c. 17; 1. IV. ¢. 48. 

8 The words of Porphyry, which very 
aptly characterize this sort of self-delusion 


in many respects very interesting work, 
considerable fragments have been preserv- 
ed in the twelve sermonib. curat. affect. of 
Theodoretus, in Augustine’s work de Civi- 
tate Dei, after a Latin version, in which 
Augustine had read it; and especially in 


in the interpretation of the records of re- 
ligion, are as follows: Διὰ τοῦ τύφου τὸ 
κριτικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς καταγοητεύσαντες. Eu- 
seb. hist. eccles. 1. VI. ο. 19. 

* Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, of which, 


that great literary store-house, the Prepa- 
rat. Evang. and Demonstrat. Evangel. of 
Eusebius. Maii has published a new frag~ 
ment in connection with the letter to Mar- 
cella. 


172 WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 


a 
advice from the Oracles or from the priests who spoke in their name. 
The responses given in answer to these applications differed in tone and 
import, according to the different modes of thinking of the priests who 
gave them. It was a case of frequent occurrence, in the first centuries, 
that the women became zealous Christians, while their husbands remained 
wholly devoted to Paganism. In a case of this sort, a man inquired 
of Apollo what god he should propitiate in order to bring back his wife 
from Christianity. The pretended Apollo, who knew doubtless the 
force of conviction among the. Christians, gave for a response, ‘ that he 
might sooner write on the flowing stream, or fly on the empty air, than 
change the mind of his wife after she had once become impure and 
godless. Leave her, then, to lament her deceased God.” Apollo 
appears, next, justifying the judges who had condemned Jesus to death 
as a revolter against Judaism: “for the Jews acknowledged God, at 
least more than the Christians,’ (the common judgment of the pagans. 
See the preceding history.) 

Many of the pagans were led to suppose from what they had heard 
concerning Christ, that he might be worshipped as a god along with the 
other gods, and they consulted the Oracle on this point. It is notice- 
able that the priests, who composed the response in this case, were 
cautious against saying anything disrespectful of Christ himself. The 
answer was, ‘‘ He who is wise, knows that the soul rises immortal from 
the body; but the soul of that man is preéminent in piety.”° When 
they inquired further, why Christ had suffered death, it was responded, 
‘<'To be subjected to the weaker sufferings is always the lot of the body, 
but the soul of the pious rises to the fields of heaven.”* Here Por- 
phyry himself takes occasion to explain that Christ, therefore, must not 


1 Maii infers from this place, altogether 


4 Σῶμα μὲν adpavéow βασάνοις αἰεὶ προ- 
without reason, that Porphyry’s Marcella 


βέβληται: 


was a Christian. Porphyry undoubtedly 
cites here the question of another, as he does 
frequently in this work. The letter to 
Marcella contains no evidence whatever 
that she was a Christian, but rather proves 
the contrary. 

2 Augustin. de civitate Dei, 1. XIX. ο. 23. 
The strength of religious conviction among 
Jews and Christians became proverbial, as 
we see from the words of the celebrated 
physician Galen, where he is speaking of 
the great difficulty of bringing about any 
change in the opinions of those who are de- 
voted to particular schools of medicine or 
philosophy, and makes use of the following 
comparison: Θᾶττον ὧν τις τοὺς ἀπὸ Moi- 
σοῦ καὶ. Χριστοῦ μεταδιδάξειεν, ἢ κ, τ. A. 
De different. pulsuum, ]. III. ο. 8, ed. Char- 
ter, T. VIII. f. 68. 

8 “Ὅτι μὲν ἀϑανάτη ψυχὴ μετὰ σῶμα προβαΐί- 
vet, 

γιγνώσκει σοφίῃ τετιμημένος, ἀλλά γε 

υχή 

ἀνέρος εὐσεβίῃ προφερεστάτη ἐστὶν éxei- 

νου. 
Euseb, Demonstrat. evang. 1. III. p. 184, 


ψυχὴ δ᾽ εὐσεβέων εἰς οὐράνιον πέδον ἵζει. 
It may be, that Porphyry was occasionally 
deceived by spurious oracles, that had been 
interpolated either by Alexandrian Jews, or 
other and older pagan Platonicians. It is 
quite possible also, that oracles of this de- 
scription had been interpolated by some oth- 
er more rightly thinking pagan, under the 
name of the god or the goddess ; — though 
it may be very well conceived, and indeed 
is more natural to suppose, that these ora- 
cles were actually given on the occasions 
specified. But assuredly the suspicion is 
altogether unfounded, that they were in- 
vented by some Christian, for Christians 
would certainly have never been able to 
make up their minds to say so litile of Christ. 
The example being once given of such pa- 
gan oracles in relation to Christ, Christians 
might then be led, no doubt, to irtvent oth- 
ers. In the oracular response cited by 
Lactantius, (institut. 1. VI. ο. 13) the words 
concerning Christ, ϑνητὸς ἐῆν κατὰ oap- 
κα, σοφὸς τερατώδεσιν ἔργοις, and several 
others, betray their Christian author. 


 —— 


a HIEROCLES. 173 
be calumniated ; they only should be pitied who worship him as God. 
«That pious soul, which had ascended to heaven, had by a certain 
fatality become an occasion of error to those souls which were destined 
to have no share in the gifts of the gods and in the knowledge of the 
eternal Zeus.” πῃ 

‘The list of authors who wrote against Christianity is closed by Hiero- 
cles, president of Bithynia, and afterwards prefect of Alexandria. 
The time which this writer chose for making his attack, was the last 
which any man of noble and generous feelings would have been disposed 
to choose, that of the Dioclesian persecution. And it was particularly 
unbecoming in Hierocles to obtrude himself on the Christians in the 
character of a teacher, as he was himself one of the instigators of the 
persecution, and a principal instrument in carrying it into effect. Yet 
he assumed the air of one who was actuated by an impartial love of 
the truth, and who wrote with the kindest feelings towards the Chris- 
tians, entitling his performance, ‘‘ Words to the Christians, from a lover 
of truth.” In this work, he repeats over a great deal that had been 
said already by Celsus and Porphyry. He indulges himself in retail- 
ing the most abominable falsehoods about the history of Christ. In 
particular, for the purpose of at once glorifying the old religion and 
attacking the Christian faith, he made use of a comparison of which 
probably he has no claim to be considered the original inventor. To 
give the declining religion of paganism a new impulse in its resistance 
to the overwhelming power of Christianity, it was necessary to direct 
men’s attention to those heroes of the old religion who could be set up, 
it was imagined, in opposition to him on whom alone the faith of the 
Christians reposed. Thus the lives of the ancient sages,—of Py- 
thagoras, for example, as exhibited by the New-Platonic philosopher, 
Jamblichus, — were colored over with a tinge of the miraculous, if not 
purposely for an object of this sort, at least under the influence of such 
a tendency, which reigned supreme in the religious consciousness of the 
pagans. But men did not wish to go back for the pictures of such 
heroes of the faith to hoary antiquity, they wanted to find them nearer 
home. The appearance of men who had occasioned unusual excitement 
in the public mind, of such men, for example, as Apollonius of Tyana, 
were made available against Christianity in two different ways. One 
class, who were in the habit of referring all eccentric phenomena of 
the religious spirit alike to fanaticism or fraud —as Lucian, who places 
‘Apollonius of T'yana on the same level with Alexander of Abonoteichus, 
— would avail themselves of this comparison to account also for the 
appearance and effects of Christianity. Others, again, would oppose 
Apollonius, as a prophet and worker of miracles among the Greeks, to 
the founder of the new religion. This was the course adopted by 
Hierocles. He wanted to deprive the miracles of Christ of their force 
of evidence, by the miracles of this Apollonius. He considered éVery 
fable which the rhetorical Philostratus, ages after the alleged events, 
had drawn from unauthentic sources, or out of his own imagination, to 


1 Λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χριστιανούς. 
15* 


174 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS. , 


be entirely worthy of credit; as, for example, that Apollonius under- 
stood the language of brutes; while the apostles, uneducated, lying 
men,— jugglers, as Hierocles abusively called them without attempting 





to prove it, —are declared to have stated nothing but falsehoods. ‘ You bod 





hold Christ to be God,” said he, “‘ because he is reported to have made _ 
a few blind men see, and to have performed some other works of the 
like kind; and yet the Greeks hold an Apollonius, who was the author _ 
of so many miracles, not to be a god, but only a man particularly 
beloved of the gods.” Such was the peculiar method of argument 
adopted by Hierocles.1 

In this very life of Apollonius, used by Hierocles, and composed by 
the rhetorician Philostratus the elder, a favorite of Julia Domna the 
wife of Septimius Severus, some have supposed they discovered a side 
aim against Christianity. But there is no single passage of the work 
which furnishes any evidence that such was its design, while opportuni- 
ties were not wanting to introduce in some way or other remarks hostile 
to Christianity, as, for instance, where he speaks of the Jews. On the 
other hand, he mentions the divine vengeance inflicted on Jerusalem, 
of which the Roman arms were only the instrument,” in such a way as 
would be favorable to the Christian interest, and might be supposed, 
indeed, to indicate that he was unconsciously influenced by the prevail- 
ing mode of contemplating that event among the Christians. Yet the 
remarks on the preceding page are not wholly inapplicable to the case 
of Philostratus. Whether it sprang from a conscious design, or from 
an involuntary interest, the effort is apparent to give dignity to his 
hero as a counter-picture to Christ; and m doing this we need not 
suppose he was influenced by any polemic aim against the Christian 
faith, but only by a wish to set forth the splendor of the Greek religion 
in rivalship with Christianity.? It may be that the miracles of Christ, 
of which he had informed himself, furnished the occasion for many 
scattered embellishments of his own invention, although no reference 
of this kind is to be found so distinct and palpable as to leave this 
beyond question. 

These attacks on the Christian church were met, from the time of 
the Emperor Hadrian and onwards, by men who stood up for the de- 
fence of Christianity and of the Christians. We reserve it for another 
portion of our history to speak more in detail of these apologists and of 
their writmgs. Here we shall simply remark that these apologies were 
of two different forms, and had two distinct objects m view. One class 
of them were expositions of Christian doctrine, designed for the use 
of enlightened Pagans generally; the other class had a more official 
character, as the authors advocated the cause of the Christians before 
emperors, or before the proconsuls and presidents of the provinces. 


1 $e, respecting him, Lactant. 1. V. ο. 2; 3 As Dr. Baur also supposes, in his Essay 
de mortib. persecutor. c. 16. Kuseb. adv. on Apollonios of Tyana, (in the Tiibinger 
Hierocl. Zeitschrift fiir Theologie, Jahrg. 1832, 4tes 

21,. VI. c. 29, he makes Titus say, in Heft, also separately printed,) although I 
reference to the destruction of Jerusalem: cannot allow that all the references to the 
Μὴ αὐτὸς ταῦτα εἰργάσϑαι, ϑεῷ δὲ ὁργὴν history of Christ which Baur finds in this 
φήναντι ἐπιδεδωκέναι τὰς ἑαυτοῦ χεῖρας. book, are sufficiently proved. 


t THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS. 175 
‘As they could not obtain a personal hearing, it was necessary for them 
to speak through their writings. The supposition that the forms of 
address to the emperors, to the senate, and the governors, were mere 
rapery, after the fashion of the declamations practised in the Pagan 
etorical schools, is certainly inconsistent with the situation and temper 
‘the Christians of this time. It is far more natural to suppose that 
the authors of such writings were seeking to correct the judgment of 
the civil authorities respecting Christianity and its adherents. We 
cannot wonder, however, that these apologies seldom or never produced 
their desired effect on the authorities of the state; for the latter would 
hardly give themselves the time, or find themselves in a suitable mood, 
to examine with calmness what these apologists had to advance. Even 
master-pieces of apologetic art, which these productions, written from the 
fullness of conviction, certainly were not, could, in this case, have effected 
nothing ; for there was no possible way in which they could recommend 
Christianity so as to meet the politico-religious views of Roman states- 
men. In relation to the fundamental position of a Roman, it was of no 
avail, though they bore witness, with the force of inspiration, of those 
truths, the more general recognition of which was certainly owing, in 
the first place, to the revolution in the opinions of mankind brought 
about by ‘Christianity ; ; though they appealed to the universal rights, 
belonging to man by his creation; though they assumed as a point which 
every man must concede, that religion is a matter of free conviction 
and feeling, that belief cannot be forced, that God cannot be served 
with the worship of conStraint. ‘It belongs to the human rights and 
natural power of each individual,” says Tertullian, ‘“‘to worship the 
God in whom he believes ; it is not the part of religion to force religion ; 
it must be embraced voluntarily, not imposed by constraint, as sacrifices 
are required only from the willing heart. Although, then, you compel 
us to sacrifice, you will still gain nothing for your gods.”’! But by the 
principle of the laws of the Roman empire, which here came imme- 
diately into consideration, there was no question respecting the znward 
religion, but only respecting the outward fulfilment of the laws, the 
observance of the ““ Roman ceremonies.”” ‘There was nothing here 
that taught any distinction between men and citizens. The apologists 
might appeal to the blameless lives of the Christians, they might chal- 
lenge the magistrates to subject them to the severest judicial examina- 
tions, and punish the guilty, but this could avail nothing. The more 
intelligent had long since ceased to believe those fantastic reports of 
the populace. Like Pliny, they could not accuse the Christians, as a 
body, of any moral delinquency. But yet the Christian life appeared 
to them incompatible with the ‘‘ Roman manners,” and Christianity a 
feverish fanaticism dangerous to the good order of the Roman state. 

It was a sound and healthy feeling that induced the apologists of 
Christianity to assume the existence of a prophetic element, not in 








1 Humani juris et naturalis potestatis est suscipi debeat, non vi, cum et hostie ab 
unicuique, quod putaverit, colere, nec alii animo libenti expostulentur. Ad Scapu- 
obest aut prodest alterius religio. Sed nec lam,c. 2. 
religionis est, cogere religionem, que sponte 


176 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS. 


% 
Judaism alone but also in Paganism, and to make appeal to this, as 
the apostle Paul, at Athens, in proclaimimg the God of revelation, 
appealed to the presentiment of the unknown God in the immediate 
consciousness of mankind, and to those forms in which this consciousness 
had been expressed by the words of inspired poets. Christianity, in 
truth, is the end to which all development of the religious consciousness 
must tend, and of which, therefore, it cannot do otherwise than offer a 
prophetic testimony. Thus there dwells an element of prophecy not 
barely in revealed religion, unfolding itself beneath the fostermg care 
of the divine vintager (John xv.) as it struggles onward from Judaism 
to its complete disclosure in Christianity, but also in religion as it grows 
wild! on the soil of paganism, which by nature must strive unconsciously 
towards the same end. But though the apologists had a well-grounded 
right to search through those stages of culture from which they them- 
selves had passed over to Christianity, in quest of such points of agree- 
ment, —for which purpose they made copious collections from the 
ancient philosophers and poets,— yet they were too closely involved in 
the very process of development to be able mghtly to understand the 
earlier culture, as well in that part of it which was opposed to Chris- 
tianity as in that which was in relationship with it and led to it. Very 
easily might it happen that they would be led involuntarily to transfer 
their Christian mode of apprehension to their’ earlier positions, and 
allow themselves to be deceived by mere appearances of resemblance. 
Add to this, that Alexandrian Jews and pagan Platonists may have 
already introduced many forgeries under the farnous names of antiquity, 
which could serve as testimonies in behalf of the religious truths taken 
for granted by Christianity in opposition to pagan Polytheism. And 
at a time when all critical skill, as well as all interest in critical inquiries, 
were alike wanting, it would be easy for men who were seeking, under 
the influence of a purely religious interest, after the testimonies of the 
ancients, for such a use, to allow themselves to be imposed upon by 
spurious and interpolated matter. This happened not seldom with the 
Christian apologists. 

Thus, for instance, there were interpolated writings of this description 
passing under the name of that mythic personage of antiquity, the Gre- 
cian Hermes (Trismegistus) or the Egyptian Thoth; also under the 
names of the Persian Hystaspes, (Gushtasp) and of the Sibyls, so 
celebrated in the Greek and Roman legends, which were used in good 
faith by the apologists. Whatever truth at bottom might be lymg in 
those time-old legends of the Sibylline prophecies,” of which the pro 


11 here make use of an expression, 
coined for this purpose by Schelling, a man 
endowed above all others with the gift of 


power in nature-religion, is characteristical- 
ly distinguished from the supernatural pro- 
phetic element of revealed religion. Thus 


finding its right word for the expression of 
the idea,—to mark the notion of nature- 
religion in its relation to the religion of 
revelation. In like manner, Clement of 
Alexandria styles the Hellenic philosophy, 
in its relation to Christianity, the ἀγριέλαιος. 
Strom. VI. f. 672. 

2 The prophetic element, as a natural 


we find the character of the former ex- 
pressed in aneient verses, cited under the 
name of the Sibyl, in Plutarch de Pythiz 
oraculis, c. 9: ‘Qe οὐδὲ ἀποϑανοῦσα λήξει 
μαντικῆς, ἀλλ᾽ αὕτη μὲν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ περί- 
εἰσι τὸ καλούμενον φαινόμενον γενομένῃ 
πρόσωπον, τῷ δὲ ἀέρι τὸ πνεῦμα συγκραϑὲν 
ἐν φῆμαις ἀεὶ φορήσεται καὶ κληδόσιν, ἐκ δὲ 


TERTULLIAN. 177 
found Heraclitus, five hundred years before Christ, had said, “ their 
unadorned, earnest words, spoken with inspired mouth, reached through 
a thousand years,’’! the consciousness of such a prophetic element in 
Paganism, that which in these predictions was supposed to refer to the 
fates of cities and nations, and more particularly to a last and golden 
age of the world,? gave occasion to divers interpretations taken from 
Jewish and Christian points of view; and as it had been the practice 
from very early times, with both pagans and Jews, to interpolate spu- 
rious verses, accommodated to their respective religious views and 
principles, under the name of Sibylline prophecies,® so Christian fiction, 
from the very first century after Christ, added its own quota to the 
rest. When Celsus reproached the Christians with interpolating many 
scandalous things into the Sibylline writings, Origen in his reply could 
appeal to the fact that the more ancient Sibylline writings were full of 
interpolations. With this use of the so called Sibylline prophecies, all 
Christians, however, were not satisfied. Celsus mentions, among other 
Christian sects, the Sibyllists,> and Origen accounts for it by supposing 
that Celsus might some time or other have heard how this name of 
reproach had been applied to those who quoted the Sibyl as a prophet- 
ess, by other Christians who did not approve of this practice. ‘This, 
however, is not to be so understood as to imply that those opponents 
of the Sibylline prophecies had ascertained, on grounds of criticism, 
the spuriousness of these writings,® and for this reason refused to coun- 
tenance such a fraud for pious purposes; more probably, they revolted 
a priori, at the very supposition that anything of the nature of a pro- 
phetic power existed among the heathen. 

While, by others, the testimonies, genuine and interpolated, derived 
from their own literature, were employed against the Pagans, Tertullian 
chose a different course. Inclined to perceive in all culture, science 
and art, the falsification of original truth, he preferred to appeal to 
the involuntary utterances of the immediate, original voice of God in 
nature. He adduced, as evidence for Christian truth against Poly- 
theism, the spontaneous expressions of an irrepressible, immediate, 
religious consciousness in common life, —the testimony of the soul, 
which he held to be Christian by nature,’ — the testimony of the simple, 
uncultivated, ignorant soul, previous to all cultivation.? In his apology 
before the pagans he makes appeal to this witness of the soul, ‘“ which, 
though confined in the prison of the body, though led astray by wrong 


τοῦ σώματος μεταβαλόντος ἐν τῇ γῇ πόας 
καὶ ὕλης ἀναφυομένης, βοσκήσεται ταύτην 
ἱερὰ ϑρέμματα χρόας τε παντοδαπὰς ἴσχον- 
Ta καὶ μορφὰς καὶ ποιότητας ἐπὶ τῶν σπλάγ- 
χνων, ἀφ᾽’ ὧν αἱ προδηλώσεις ἀνϑρώποις 
τοῦ μέλλοντος. 

1 Σίβυλλα μαινομένῳ στόματι ἀγέλαστα 
καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα καὶ ἀμύριστα φϑεγγομένη 
χιλίων ἐτῶν ἐξικνεῖται τῇ φωνῇ διὰ τὸν 
ϑεόν. Plutarch. de Pythix oraculis, c. 6. 

2 Ultima Cumzi carminis extas ; vid. Vir- 
gil, IV. Eclog. 

8 Varro, in his great archzological work, 
treated, already in his time, of the different 


constituent parts of the Sibylline books, 
and of the interpolated verses. See Dio- 
nysius of Halicarn. Archeol. 1. IV. ο. 62. 

11, VII. ο. 56: Ὅτι παρενέγραψαν εἰς 
τὰ ἐκείνης πολλὰ καὶ βλάσφημα 

ὅτῷ, Coan.’ ὙΠ enél. 

6 Testimonium anime naturaliter Chris- 
tian. Apologet. c. 17. 

7 De testimonio anime, c. 1: Te simpli- 
cem et rudem et impolitam et idioticam 
compello, qualem habent, qui te solam ha- 
bent, illam ipsam de compito, de trivio,de - 
textrino totam. 

ὃ Apologet. ς. 17. 


178 THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS. 

training, though enfeebled by the desires and passions, yet when it 
comes to itself, as out of a fit of intoxication, as out of a sleep, out 
of a disease, and ‘when conscious of its healthful condition, calls God 
by this name alone, because it is the proper name of the true God. 
Great God — good God—and what God gives,—these are common 
expressions with all. It adjures also this God as its judge, in such 
expressions as these: — God is my witness — to God I commit my cause 
— God will requite me. Finally, in using these expressions, it looks, 
not to the Capitol, but upward to heaven; for it knows the seat of 
the living God — from Him and from thence it descended.” ! _ 


1 Que, licet carcere corporis pressa, licet 
institutionibus pravis circumscripta, licet 
libidinibus ac concupiscentiis evigorata, li- 
cet falsis Diis exancillata, cum tamen re- 
sipiscit, ut ex crapula, ut ex somno, ut ex 
aliqua valetudine, et sanitatem suam pati- 
tur, Deum nominat, hoc solo nomine, quia 
proprio Dei veri. Deus magnus, Deus bo- 


nus, et quod Deus dederit, omnium vox 
est. Judicem quoque contestatur illum, 
Deus videt, et Deo commendo, et Deus mihi 
reddet. Denique, pronuntians hec, non ad 
Capitolium, sed ad coelum respicit. Novit 
enim sedem Dei vivi, ab illo et inde de- 
scendit. 


SECTION SECOND. 


HISTORY OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION, OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE, AND 
OF SCHISMS IN THE CHURCH. 


I. History oF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


1. Of the Constitution of Church Communities generally. 


In considering the history of the formation of the Christian church 
constitution, two different epochs must be carefully distinguished: The 
first epoch of its formation, as it sprang immediately, in the Apostolic 
age, out of the peculiar essence of Christianity, — that essential char- 
acter of Christianity whereby it is wholly distinguished, as well from 
the Old Testament position, as from all previous forms of religious com- 
munity ; and secondly, the epoch in which this original form of fellow- 
ship among Christians became gradually changed under various foreign 
influences, reaching down to the end of this period of the history. We 
speak first, then, of the foundation laid for the constitution of Christian 
communities in the Apostolic age. 


A. The first foundation for the constitution of Christian communt- 
ties in the Apostolic age. 


What Moses expressed as a wish,! that the Spirit of God might rest 
upon all, and all might be prophets, is a prediction of that which was 
to be realized through Christ. By him was instituted a fellowship of 
divine life, which, proceeding from the equal and equally immediate re- 
lation of all to the one God, as the divine source of life to all, removed 
those boundaries within which, at the Old Testament position, the devel- 
opment of the higher life was still confined; and hence the fellowship 
thus derived, essentially distinguishes itself from the constitution of all 
previously existing religious societies. There could be no longer a 
priestly or prophetic office, constituted to serve as a medium for the 
propagation and development of the kingdom of God, on which office 
the religious consciousness of the community was to be dependent. 
Such a guild of priests as existed in the previous systems of religion, 
empowered to guide other men, who remained, as it were, in a state of 
religious pupilage; having the exclusive care of providing for their 
religious wants, and serving as mediators, by whom all other men must 
first be placed in connection with God and divine things; such a 
priestly caste could find no place within Christianity. In removing out 
of the way that which separated men from God, in communicating to 


1 Numbers, 11: 29. 


180 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


all the same fellowship with God, Christ also remoyed the barrier which 
had hitherto divided men from one another. Ch¥ist, the Prophet and 
High Priest for entire humanity, was the end of the prophetic office 
and of the priesthood. There was now the same High Priest and Medi- 
ator for all, through whom all, become reconciled and united with God, 
are themselves made a priestly and spiritual race; one heavenly King, 
Guide and Teacher, through whom all are taught of God; one faith, 
one hope, one Spirit which should quicken all; one oracle in the hearts 
of all, the voice of the Spirit proceedmg from the Father ;— all were 
to be citizens of one heavenly kingdom, with whose heavenly powers, 
even while strangers in the world, they should be already furnished. 
When the Apostles applied the Old Testament idea of the priesthood 
to Christianity, this was done invariably for the simple purpose of show- 
ing that no such visible, particular priesthood could find place in the 
new community ; that since free access to God and to heaven had been, 
once for all, opened to believers by one High Priest, even Christ, they 
had, by virtue of their union to him, become themselves a spiritual peo- 
ple, consecrated to God; their calling being none other than to dedi- 
cate their entire life to God as a thank-offering for the grace of redemp- 
tion, to publish abroad the power and grace of him who had called 
them out of the kmgdom of darkness into his marvellous light, to make 
their life one continual priesthood, one spiritual worship springing from 
the temper of faith working by love, one continuous testimony for their 
Saviour (compare 1 Pet. i. 9, Rom. xi. 1, and the spirit and whole 
train of thought running through the epistle to the Hebrews.) So, too, 
the advancement of God’s kingdom in general and in particular, the 
diffusion of Christianity among the heathens and the good of each par- 
ticular community, was now to be, not the duty of one select class of 
Christians alone, but the most immediate concern of each individual. 
Every one, from the position assigned him by the invisible Head of the 
church, should codperate in promoting this object by the special gifts 
which God had bestowed on him, — gifts grounded im his peculiar na- 
ture, but that nature renewed and ennobled by the Holy Spirit. There 
was no distinction here of spiritual and secular; but all, as Christians, 
should, in their inner life, in temper and disposition, be dead to the un- 
godlike, to the world, and in so far separate from the world, —men 
animated by the Spirit of God and not by the spirit of the world. The 
individual predominant capabilities of Christians, sanctified, made godly 
by this Spirit and appropriated as organs for its activity, should be 
transformed to charismata, gifts of grace. It was thus, therefore, the 
Apostle Paul began his exposition of spiritual gifts, addressed to the 
Corinthian church, (1 Corinth. xi.) ‘* Once, when ye were heathens, 
and suffered yourselves to be led blindfold by your priests to dumb 
idols, ye were as dead and dumb as they. Now that through Christ ye 
serve the living God, ye no longer have such guides, drawing you along 
blindfold by leading-strings. Ye have yourselves for a guide the Spirit 
of God, that enlightens you. Ye no longer dumbly follow; He 
speaks out of you; there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” 


EQUALITY OF BELIEVERS— DIFFERENT CHARISMATA. 181 


The essence of the Christian community rested on this: that no one 
individual should be the chosen, preéminent organ of the Holy Spirit 
for the guidance of the whole; but all were to codperate,—each at his 
particular position, and with the gifts bestowed on him, one supplying 
what might be wanted by another, — for the advancement of the Chris- 
tian life and of the common end. In this view of it, the New Testa- 
ment idea of the charisma becomes important; the charisma, by which 
is designated the individuality and diversity in the operations of the 
Spirit that quickens all, as contradistinguished from that which in 
all is the same; the peculiar kind and manner or form of the activity 
of that common principle, so far as it 1s conditioned by the peculiar nat- 
ural characteristics of each individual. Just as the unity of that higher 
Spirit must reveal itself in the manifoldness of the charismata, so must 
all these peculiarities, quickened by the same Spirit, serve as organs, 
mutually helping each other for one common end, the edification of the 
church. We understand edification here, according to the general and 
original sense of the term in the writings of St. Paul, as referring to 
the advancement and development, from its common ground, of the 
entire life of the church-community. The edification of the church, 
in this sense, was the common work of all. Even edification by the 
word was not assigned exclusively to one individual; but every man 
who felt the inward call to it, might give utterance to the word in the 
assembled church. Referring to the same end, there were likewise 
different gifts, grounded in the diversity of peculiar natures, quickened 
by the Holy Spirit; according as, for example, the productive, (proph- 
ecy,) or the receptive, (interpretation, the διερμηνεία,) or the critical 
faculty, (proving of spirits ;) according as the capacity for feeling and 
intuition, or that of sober reflective thought predominated ; according 
as the Divine, in its overwhelming force, had the preponderance, and 
the Human, in its independent development, gave place to it; or a har- 
monious codperation of both the Divine and the Human prevailed ; 
according as the momentaneous and sudden seizure of inspiration had 
the ascendency, or what was: contained in the Christian consciousness 
became unfolded through a process of thought quickened by the Holy 
Spirit, (where again there were manifold gradations, from an ecstatie 
elevation of mimd down to the uniform, discreet and cautious unfold- 
ing of the understanding, speaking with tongues, prophecy, the 
ordinary gift of teaching,) in fine, according as the prevailing ten- 
dency was to the theoretical or to the practical, (the Gnosis or the 
Sophia.) 

Since Christianity did not destroy any of the natural distinctions 
grounded in the laws of the original creation, but sanctified and enno- 
bled them; for our Saviour’s words, that he came not to destroy but 
to fulfil, apply also to the natural world; so, although the dividing 
wall between man and woman, in respect to the higher life, was 
‘removed by Christ, and in him man and woman become one, yet Chris- 
tianity would have the woman remain true to the particular sphere and 
destination assigned her by nature. Women were excluded from taking 


VOL. I. 16 


182 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


any public part in the transactions of the church assemblies ; 
they were referred to their appropriate sphere of activity within the 
bosom of the family, or some corresponding place in the administration 
of church affairs. The Apostle Paul, (1 Cor. xiv. 34,) interdicts the 
female part of the church alone from publicly speaking in the assem- 
blies; which makes it evident again, that no other exception existed to 
the universality of this right among the Christians. But this last men- 
tioned exception continued to be made, after the same manner, in suc- 
ceeding times. Even the enthusiastic Montanists recognized it ; only 
maintaining that the extraordinary operations of the divine Spirit were 
not bound by this rule. In proof of this, they referred to the case of 
the prophecying women, mentioned in 1 Corinth. xi. 5; but incorrectly, 
since the Apostle simply speaks here of a practice that prevailed im the 
Corinthian church, without approving that practice, but with a design 
of correcting it in a later part of the epistle. This will be evident on 
comparing 1 Corinth. xi. 5, with xiv. 34.! 

As the inner fellowship of divine life introduced by Christianity 
strove, however, from the beginning, to exhibit itself m an outward 
fellowship, it must necessarily appropriate to itself some determinate 
form, answering to its own essence, a form in which this union could 
appear and shape itself as a spiritual body ; because without such form 
no association, for whatever purpose, can have actual bemg and sub- 
sistence. ΤῸ this end, a certain organization was necessary; a cer- 
tain relative superordination and subordination of the different members, 
according to the different positions assigned them in reference to the 
whole ; a certain guidance and direction of the common concerns, 
and therefore separation of organs destined for that particular end. 
And this stands in no manner of contradiction with what we asserted 
respecting the essential character of Christianity and the fellowship 
grounded therein, and respecting the mutual relations of Christians to 
each other. On the contrary, the natural relation of members to one 
another points already to such an organic form in the constitution of 
the community as a necessary thmg. For, as there were individualities 
of character predominantly productive, and others of a more receptive 
bent; as there were those preeminently calculated to guide and rule ; 
and, as the Christian life shaped itself after the form of these natural 
peculiarities, which it ennobled—the natural talent being elevated to 
a charisma—the result was, that some members of the community 
would come to be possessed of the gift which is designated in the epistles 
of St. Paul as the χώρισμα κυβερνήσεως (governments. ) This mutual rela- 
tion of gifts, grounded in the natural talents of individuals, pointed to 
a corresponding position of the several members of the community in 
their relation to one another. The χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως required a corres- 


1 The Hilary, who wrote commentaries practice of the church. Primum omnes 


on the epistles of St. Paul, is remarkable docebant et omnes baptizabant, ut cresceret 


for the freedom from prejudice with which plebs et multiplicaretur, omnibus inter initia 
he contemplates Christian antiquity. In concessum est, et evangelizare et baptizare 
speaking of these matters also, he correct- et scripturas explorare. Hilar. in epist. 
ly distinguishes the earlier from the later Ephes. c. IV. v. 12. 


ITS ORGANIZATION —NOT MONARCHICAL. 183 


ponding office, the fitness for which had been conferred by that gift, in 
the organization of the church. This was a whole, composed of equal 
members, all the members being but organs of the community, as this 
was the body quickened by the Spirit of Christ. All these members, 
as organs of the whole and of the one Spirit which gave it life, were to 
codperate, each in his appropriate place, for the common end; and 
some of the members acted in this organization of parts as the preémi- 
nently guiding ones. But it could hardly work itself out in a natural 
way from the essence of the Christian life and of Christian fellowship, 
that this guidance should be placed in the hands of only one individual. 
The monarchical form of government was not suited to the Christian 
community of spirit. 

The preponderance of one individual at the head of the whole might 
too easily operate as a check on the free development of the life of 
the church, and the free codperation of the different organs, in whom 
the consciousness of mutual independence must ever be kept alive. 
The individual on whom everything depended, might acquire too great 
an importance for the whole; and so become the centre, round which 
all would gather, so as to obscure the sense of their common relation to 
that only One, who should be the centre for all. The Apostles stood 
to the collective body of Christians in a relation which corresponded 
only to their peculiar position in the development of the church, and 
which, for that very reason, could not be transferred to another office ; 
since they alone were to be the bearers of Christ’s word and spirit for 
all ages; the chosen witnesses of his personal appearance and ministry, 
of his resurrection to a new and more glorious state of being; the ne- 
cessary intermediate lmks by which the whole church was connected 
with Christ. This was a relation of dependence and subordination, 
grounded in the nature of the historical development, which could not 
be repeated. And these apostles themselves, to whom this position in 
the guidance of the church belonged, how far were they from any 
thought of exercising a constraining preponderance in its affairs, to lord 
it over the faith, of which the foundation had once been laid, and which 
was-now to develop itself with freedom, and give shape to everything 
by its own inherent power alone! How much respect they showed for 
the free development of the collective body! They endeavored to gain 
the free codperation of the communities in all the affairs which con- 
cerned those communities—a point on which we shall speak more 
particularly hereafter. Peter and John place themselves in their 
epistles in the same class with other presiding officers of the communi- 
ties, instead of claiming a place above them as general rulers of the 
church. How difficult it might be to find in the communities an indi- 
vidual uniting in himself all the qualifications for guiding the affairs of 
the body, and who alone possessed the confidence of all! How much 
easier to find in every community several fathers of families, whose 
peculiarities together might supply the deficiencies of each as an indi- 
vidual, one of whom might enjoy the most confidence in this, and the 
other in that class of the community, and who together therefore might 
be qualified for such a function. Monarchy in spiritual things does 


184 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


not harmonize with the spirit of Christianity ; for this points everywhere 
to the feeling of a mutual need of help, to the necessity and to the 
great advantage as well of common counsel as of common prayer. 
Where two or three are assembled in the name of the Lord, he prom- 
ises to be in the midst of them. 

Besides, Christianity freely appropriated to its own use such already 
existing forms as were adapted to its spirit and essential character. 
Now in the Jewish synagogue, and in all the sects that sprung out of 
Judaism, there existed a form of government which was not monarchical, 
but aristocratic ; consisting of a council of elders, 0°22.1, πρεσβύτεροι, who 
had the guidance of all affairs belonging to the common interest. ΤῸ 
this form, Christianity, which unfolded itself out of Judaism, would most 
naturally attach itself. The same polity, moreover, would appear most 
natural, in whatever part of the Roman empire communities were 
founded among the pagans, for men had long been used to see the 
affairs of state administered by a senate, by the assembly of decuriones. 
It is an evidence of the relationship between the ecclesiastical and civil 
administration, that at a somewhat later period, the clergy were denom- 
inated ordo, the guiding senate of the community; since ordo stands 
preéminently for the ordo senatorum. 

The guidance of the communities was accordingly everywhere en- 
trusted to a counsel of elders. It was not nécessary that these should 
be the oldest in years, though some respect doubtless was had to age. 
But ave here was a designation of worth, as in the Latin “ senatus.” 
and in the Greek ‘‘yepovoia.”’? Besides the usual name πρεσβύτεροι, 
given to these heads of the community, there were also many others, 
denoting their appropriate sphere of action, as ποιμένες, shepherds ; 
70299 ἡγούμενοι, προεστῶτες τῶν ἀδελφῶν. The founding of communities 
among the pagans led to another name, more conformed to the Gre- 
cian mode of designating such relations, than the appellations above 
cited, which clearly show their Jewish origin. This name was ἐπίσκοποι, 
borrowed from the city form of government among the Greeks,! and 
applied to the presiding officers of the Christian communities, as over- 
seers of the whole, leaders of the community. 

That the name ἐπίσκοποι or bishops, was altogether synonymous with 
that of Presbyters, is clearly evident from those passages of scripture, 
where both appellations are used interchangeably. Acts 20, comp. 
v. 17 with v. 28; Hp. to Titus, ὁ. 1, v. 5 with v. 7 and from those 
where the office of deacon is named immediately after that of bishop, | 
so that between these two church offices there could not still be a third 
intervening one. Hp. to Philipp. 1: 1; 1 Tim. 3: 1 and 8. ‘This 
interchange in the use of the two appellations shows that they were 
perfectly identical. Even were the name bishop orginally nothg - 
more than the distinctive title of a president of this church-senate, of 
a Primus inter pares, yet even in this case such interchange would be 
quite inadmissible. Likewise in the letter which Clemens, the disciple 
of Paul, writes in the name of the Roman church, the deacons are 


1 See on this point, my Hist. of the Planting, &c., Vol. I. p. 198. 


PRESBYTERS AND BISHOPS. 185 
named immediately after the bishops, as the presiding officers of the 
communities. 

But we here go on the supposition, that in each town, from the be- 
ginning onward, one simgle community formed itself under the guidance 
of a senate of elders. Are we warranted to suppose this? An oppo- 
site hypothesis has been proposed by several writers im more recent 
times.* It is held, according to this view, that there were not single 
churches formed from the beginning, especially m the larger towns; 
but as Christianity was introduced from many different quarters and 
by different preachers, s¢ngle, small communities must have been 
founded, independent of one another, which remained separate, and 
held their assemblies at different places. Not till later, then, would 
one community be formed from the coming together of these several 
conyenticles. Of such separate conventicles preceding the formation 
of one community, indications are supposed to be found in those pas- 
sages of St. Paul’s epistles, where one person, with the church assem- 
bling in his house, is greeted. Coloss. 4: 15; 1 Corinth. 16: 19; 
Rom. 16: 5—14, 15; Philem. 2. Each of these small communi- 
ties is supposed to have had its own presiding officer, and in this sense 
the monarchical was the original form of government in the constitution 
of the church. According to one view, the contentions of these little 
bands and their presiding officers with one another, first caused the 
want to be felt of greater unity and closer connection under a common 
head; by which the gradual formation of the episcopal government of 
the church would be promoted. According to the other view, the 
name ἐπίσκοποι designated originally the function of these local presi- 
dents, and the name presbyters, the collegial union of these several 
presidents of communities. 

Such an atomic theory, however, corresponds, certainly, least of all, to 
the essence of Christianity, of the Christian community of Spirit, which 
tended everywhere to fellowship and unity, and conveyed with it the 
consciousness of all belonging together to one body. Everywhere in 
the epistles of the New Testament, Christians of the same city appear 
as members associated together to form one ἐκκλησία. This unity 
never represents itself as something whichis yet to take place, but as 
the original form, having its ground from the beginning in the essence 
of the Christian consciousness; and the party divisions which threat- 
ened to dissolve this unity, appear rather as a morbid affection which 
had crept in later, as in the Corinthian church. And if portions of 
the church sometimes formed separate assemblies in the houses of such 
individuals as possessed local conveniences for the purpose, or who 
were eminently qualified to edify those who assembled in their dwell- 


1 See Cap. 42. 

2 Dr. Kist of Leyden; see his Essay on 
the Origin of the Episcopal Power in the 
Christian Church, translated from the Dutch 
in Illgen’s Zeitschrift fiir die historische 
Theologie, Bd. II., 2tes Stiick, S. 48, —and 


16* 


Dr. von Baur, in his Treatise on the Pas- 
toral Letters. 

3 Comp. what I have said in objection to 
this theory, in my History of the Planting, 
&e., p. 49 and 199; also Rothe, in his work 
Uber die Anfange der Christlichen Kirche, 
p- 197, and onward. 


186 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


ings, by the preaching of the word ;! yet this was something which 
did not occur till later, when the communities that were already regu- 
larly organized became more numerous; and those who met in such 
assemblies did not, by so doing, separate therfiselves from the great 
whole of the community which subsisted under that guiding senate. 
Of course the distinction, which has its sole ground in the theory above 
mentioned, between bishops and presbyters, vanishes; and all we can 
admit is, that the latter was particularly the name of dignity, the 
former the name designating the function, or particular sphere of 
activity. Ἀ 

These presbyters or bishops then, as we may call the same function- 
aries considered under different points of view, had the general super- 
intendence of the communities, the direction of all affairs pertaining to 
the common interest; but the office of teaching was not committed ex- 
clusively to them; for, as we have remarked above, all Christians, 
originally, had the right of pouring out their hearts before the brethren, 
and of speaking for their edification, in the public assemblies. It does 
not follow, however, from this, that all the members of a community 
were fitted for the ordinary and regular office of teaching ; a distinc- 
tion is to be made between a gift of teaching, such as, like every other 
cultivated talent, stood constantly at the command of him that once 
possessed it, and those effusions proceeding from the inspiration of the 
moment,? which were connected with insulated and transient states 
of elevated feeling, such as, in especial manner, belonged to the charac- 
teristic features of that primitive time of extraordinary mental excite- 
ment from above, when the divine life was first enterimg within the 
limits of the earthly world, and sudden transitions in conversion must 
more frequently occur. On such transient awakenings and excitements 
of the religious consciousness alone, the care necessary to preserve, 
propagate and advance religious knowledge, and to defend the genuine, 
pure, apostolic doctrine against the various corrupting tendencies — 
already threatening to come in— of Jewish or Pagan modes of think- 
ing, could not be made to depend. Christianity claimed for its service 
the faculties of knowledge, no less than those of feeling. Where one of 
these two faculties predominated to the exclusion of the other, disturb- 
ances of the Christian consciousness and life always ensued. That 
healthy and harmonious development, by virtue of which all exclusive 
preponderance of single charismata would be precluded, was one of the 
characteristic features of the apostolic period. Hence the watchful 
counteraction of the Apostle Paul, wherever he noticed any exclusive 
tendency of this kind which threatened to interfere with the harmoni- 


1.Comp. my Hist. of the Planting, etc., 
p- 208. 

2 As prophecy, speaking with tongues. 
T will take this occasion to point out a pas- 
sage in Irenzeus, which serves to confirm 
what I have so often advanced, that by the 
gift of tongues, was designated something 
that differed only in degree, not in kind, 
from the prophetic gift,—an inspiration 


raised to a higher grade, and suppressing 
more entirely the ordinary consciousness. 
The passage in Acts, 10: 46, relating to 
the gift of tongues, Irenzeus, III. 12, 15, 
explains thus: while the Holy Ghost rested 
on them, they poured out their feelings in 
the manner of prophecy. Τοῦ πνεύματος 
Tov ἁγίου ἐπαναπαύοντος αὐτοῖς, προφητεύ- 
οντας αὐτοὺς ἀκηκόει. 


ne ee © el Li AR GT ¢ =), eo =f? -"-" +f 


OFFICE OF TEACHING. 187 


ous and healthy development of the Christian life-—as we sce in his 
first epistle to the Corinthians. Care was to be taken, therefore, that 
along with those utterances of extraordinary inspiration, to be connected 
with no particular function, there should never fail to be in the commu- 
nities such as were qualified to satisfy the need of knowledge, men 
capable of unfolding and of defending for them Christian truth: the 
function denoted by the λόγος γνώσεως and the χάρισμα διδασκαλίας. This 
latter presupposed a certain previous cultivation of the understanding, 
a power of clear and discriminating thought, a certain gift of communi- 
cation ; all which, if once present, when quickened by the agency of 
the Holy Spirit, became a charisma of this kind. Such as possessed 
this charisma, were on that account fitted to take care for the continual 
preservation of sound doctrine in the community and for the establish- 
ment and furtherance of Christian knowledge, without excluding the 
codperation of the rest, who were at liberty to assist, each from his own 
position, and according to the particular gift which might belong to 
him. Hence, in the apostolic age, the gift of teaching, χάρισμα διδασκαλίας, 
and the order of teachers, διδάσκαλοι, who were distinguished by this 
gift, are represented as constituting an entirely distinct function and 
order. All the members of a community might, at particular seasons, 
feel the impulse to address the assembled brethren, or to break forth 
before them in acts of invocation or praise to their God; but only a 
few possessed that χάρισμα διδασκαλίας, and were διδάσκαλοι. 

It is clear of itself, however, that this faculty of teaching is a thing 
quite distinct from the talent for administering the outward concerns 
of the community, the χάρισμα κυβερνήσεως, which was particularly required 
for the office of assessor in the church council, the office of presbyter 
or bishop. ‘These gifts, so different in their kind, could not always be 
united in the same individual. In the early apostolic church, to which 
all arbitrary and idle distinctions of ranks were so alien, and where 
every office was considered simply with reference to the end it was to 
subserve and circumscribed by an inner necessity, the function of 
teaching and that of church government, the function of a διδάσκαλος 
and that of a ποιμήν, as also the gifts requisite for both,! were hence 
also originally distinguished and held separate from each other.? 

In the unfolding of these relations, it is necessary to distinguish 
different steps, or stages; and we should not be warranted in assuming, 
as the original form, every thing which we find in the later portions of 
the apostolic times. The historic progress itself must have introduced 
many changes ; and it would be a mistake if we supposed that every 
arrangement in the communities when St. Paul wrote his last epistles 
remained the same as when he sent the first. Thus, with regard to the 
ministration of doctrine, the following gradations are to be distinguished 
in the progressive development.? 1. It occurred naturally that mdi- 
viduals, qualified for it by previous cultivation of mind, were, by virtue 


1 The χάρισμα διδασκαλίας and the χάρισ- pose of seeing the distinction between the 
μα κυβερνήσεως. διδάσκων and the προεστώς. 

2 Comp. for instance, Rom. 12: 7, 8, and 8 See my Hist. of the Planting, &c., p. 210, 
the passages already noticed, for the pur- 


188 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


of this qualification, particularly called to the regular dispensation of 
doctrine. 2. Such persons were commonly ordained and set apart as 
teachers of the church. 3. The functions of church-teacher and of 
elder became more closely connected with each other. It must have 
been held a salutary thing, tending to the good order and quiet of the 
communities, that among their presiding officers there should be also 
those who possessed the talent for administering the office of teaching. 
If in some cases, as in Paul’s farewell address to the elders of the 
Church of Ephesus, the care of maintaining pure doctrine was com- 
mitted to the presbyters generally, yet it by no means follows that it 
belonged to them to administer the office of teaching in the more 
restricted sense; for the Apostle may be speaking here simply of one 
among the general cares of church government. But when, in the 
epistle to Titus, it is required of a bishop, that he should not only 
himself hold fast the genuine, pure doctrine of the gospel, but also be 
able to establish others in it, and confute its adversaries, it is certainly 
implied that the bishop must possess also the gift of teaching. Indeed 
under many circumstances of the church, such as those, for example, 
which are alluded to in the above mentioned epistle, this would be 
highly desirable on account of the threatening danger from the spread 
of erroneous doctrmes, which was to be met by the paternal authority 
of elders of the community, supported by their oral teaching. So, 
too, in the first epistle to Timothy (5:17), those of the presbyters 
who, to the talent for government, κυβέρνησις, could unite also that of 
teaching, διδασκαλία, are counted worthy of double honor; and the 
prominence given here to each may be regarded as another proof that 
the two were not necessarily and always united. 

Besides these, we find only one other church office in the Apostolic 
age, that of deacons. The duties of this office were from the beginning 
simply external, as it was instituted in the first place, according to 
Acts vi, to assist in the distribution of alms. The care of providing 
for the poor and sick of the communities, to which many other external 
duties were afterwards added, devolved particularly on this office. 
Besides the deacons, there were appointed also deaconesses, for the 
female portion of the communities, because the free access of men to 
the female sex, especially in the East, where custom demanded so care- 
ful a separation of the sexes, might excite suspicion and give offence. 
If the women, in conformity with their natural destination, were excluded 
from the offices of teaching and church government, yet the peculiar 


qualifications of the sex were now claimed, in this way, as peculiar | 


gifts for the service of the communities. By means of such deacon- 
esses the gospel could be introduced into the bosom of families, where, 
owing to the customs of the East, no man could gain admittance.! 
They were also bound, as Christian wives and mothers of tried expe- 
rience in all the relations of their sex, to assist the younger women of 
the communities with their counsel and encouragement.” 


1 As a proof, see the words of Clement γυναικωνῖτιν ἀδιαβλήτως παρεισεδύετο ἡ 
of Alexandria, (St. 1. IIL. p. 448,) respect- τοῦ κυρίου διδασκαλία. 
ing Christian women: Ai ὧν καί εἰς τν = Tertull. de virginib. velandis, c. 9: Ut 


DEACONS — DEACONESSES — ELECTORS. 189 
As regards the election to these church offices, we are in want of 
sufficient information to enable us to decide how it was managed in the 
early Apostolic times. Indeed, it is quite possible that the method of 
procedure differed under different circumstances. As in the institution 
of deacons the apostles left the choice to the communities themselves, 
and as the same was the case in the choice of deputies to attend the 
apostles in the name of the communities (1 Corinth. vin: 19), we might 
argue that a similar course would be pursued in fillimg other offices of 
the church. Yet it may be that in many cases the apostles themselves, 
where they could not as yet have sufficient confidence in the spirit of 
the first new communities, conferred the important office of presbyters 
on such as in their own judgment, under the light of the Divine Spirit, 
appeared to be the fittest persons. Z'her choice would, moreover, 
deserve in the highest degree the confidence of the communities (comp. 
Acts xiv: 23; Titusi: 5); although when St. Paul empowers Titus to 
set presiding officers over the communities who possessed the requisite 
qualifications, this cirewmstance decides nothing as to the mode of choice, 
nor is a choice by the community itself thereby necessarily excluded. 
The regular course seems to have been this: the church offices were 
entrusted in preference to the first converts of the communities, pro- 
vided that in other respects they possessed the requisite qualifications. 
(1 Corinth. vi: 15).1_ Clement of Rome cites the following rule, as 
one which had been handed down from the apostles, relative to the 
appointment to church offices; “that they should be filled, according 
to the judgment of approved men, with the consent of the whole com- 
munity.” It may have been the general practice for the presbyters 
themselves, in case of a vacancy, to propose another to the community 
in place of the person deceased, and leave it to the whole body either to 
approve or decline their selection for reasons assigned.2, Where asking 
for the assent of the community had not yet become a mere formality, 
this mode of filling church offices had the salutary effect of causing the 
votes of the majority to be guided by those capable of judging, and of 
suppressing divisions; while at the same time no one was obtruded on 
the community who would not be welcome to their hearts. . 
Again, as regards the relation in which these presbyters stood to th 
communities, they were not designed to exercise absolute authority, but 
to act as presiding officers and guides of an ecclesiastical republic ; to 
conduct all things with the codperation of the communities as their 
ministers, and not their masters. So the apostles regarded this relation 
when they addressed their epistles, which treat not barely of matters 
of doctrine but of things relating to the life and discipline of the 
church, not to the presiding officers of the communities alone, but to 
the entire communities. In the instance where the Apostle Paul pro- 


experimentis omnium affectuum structe, 
facile norint cateras et consilio et solatio 
juvare; et ut nihilominus ea decucurrerint, 
per ἊΝ femina probari potest. 

1 50 also Clement of Rome, (cap. 42,) 
says of the Apostles: Κατὰ χώραν καὶ πό- 
λειὶς κηρύσσοντες καϑέστανον τὰς ἀπαρχὰς 


αὐτῶν, δοκιμάσαντες τῷ πνεύματι εἰς ἐπισ- 
κόπους καὶ διακόνους μελλόντων πιστεύειν. 

2 Clement, Cap. 44: Τοὺς κατασταϑέντας 
ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστύώλων ἢ μεταξὺ ὑφ᾽ ἑτέρων 
ἐλλογίμων ἀνδρῶν, συνευδοκησώσης τῆς ἐκ- 
κλησίας πάσης. 


190 CHANGES OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION. 

nounces a sentence of excommunication from the fellowship of the 
church, he conceives himself united in spirit with the whole community 
(1 Corinth. ν. 4), assuming that regularly, in a matter of such common 
concern, the participation of the whole community was required. 


B. Changes in the Constitution of the Christian Church after the 
age of the Apostles. 


The changes which the Constitution of the Christian Church under- 
went during this period, related especially to the three following partic- 
ulars; 1. the distinction of bishops from presbyters, and the gradual 
development of the monarchico-episcopal church government; 2. the 
distinction of the clergy from the laity, and the formation of a sacer- 
dotal caste, as opposed to the evangelical idea of the priesthood; 3. 
the multiplication of church offices. 

As to the first of these particulars, we are in want, it is true, of exact 
and full information respecting the manner in which the change took 
place in single cases; but a comprehensive view on grounds of analogy 
will set the matter in a very clear light. Since the presbyters consti- 
tuted a deliberative assembly, it would of course soon become the prac- 
tice for one of their number to preside over the rest. This might be 
so arranged as to take place by some law of rotation, so that the 
presidency would thus pass in turn from one to the other. Possibly, 
in many places, such was the original arrangement. Yet we find no 
trace, at least in history, of anything of this kind. But neither, as 
we have already observed, do we, on the other hand, meet with any 
vestige of a fact which would lead us to infer that the presidency over 
the presbyterial college was originally distinguished by a special name. 
However the case may have been, then, as to this point, what we find 
existing in the second century enables us to infer, respecting the pre- 
ceding times, that soon after the Apostolic age the standing office of 
president of the presbytery must have been formed; which president, 
as having preéminently the oversight over all, was designated by the 
special name of ᾿Επίσκοπος, and thus distinguished from the other pres- 
byters. Thus the name came at length to be applied exclusively to 
this presbyter, while the name presbyter continued at first to be common 
to all; for the bishops, as presiding presbyters, had no official character 


other than that of the presbyters 
inter pares.} 


1 Many of the later fathers still have a 
right understanding of this process of the 
matter. Hilar. in ep. I. ad Timoth. ec. 3: 
Omnis episcopus presbyter, non tamen om- 
nis presbyter episcopus; hic enim episco- 
pus est, qui inter presbyteros primus est. 
Jerome, (146, ad Evangel.) says that it had 
been the practice in the Alexandrian church, 
until the times of the bishops Hierocles and 
Dionysius, in the middle of the third cen- 
tury, for the presbyters to choose one of 
their own number as a president, and call 
him bishop. And so also there may be 
some foundation of truth in the account of 


generally. They were only Primi 


Eutychius, though it may not be wholly 
true, and must be chronologically false. 
This person, who was patriarch of Alex- 
andria in the first half of the tenth century, 
relates, that in the Alexandrian church, up 
to the time of the bishop Alexander, in the 
beginning of the fourth century, the follow- 
ing arrangement had existed: there was a 
college of twelve presbyters, one of whom 
presided over the rest as bishop, and these 
presbyters always chose their bishop out of 
their own number, and the other eleven or- 
dained him. 


BiSHOPS RAISED ABOVE PRESBYTERS. 191 

The aristocratic constitution will ever find it easy, by various gradual 
changes, to pass over to the monarchical; and circumstances where 
the need becomes felt of guidance by the energy and authority of an 
individual, will have an influence beyond all things else to bring about 
such a change. It may have been circumstances of this kind, which, 
near the times dividing the first and second centuries, tended to give 
preponderance to a president of the council of elders, and to assign 
him his distinctive title, as the general overseer. Already, in the latter 
part of the age of St. Paul, we shall see many things different from 
what they had been originally ; and so it cannot appear strange if other 
changes came to be introduced into the constitution of the communities, 
by the altered circumstances of the times immediately succeeding those 
of St. Paul or St. John. Then ensued those strongly marked oppo- 
sitions and schisms, those dangers with which the corruptions engen- 
dered by manifold foreign elements threatened primitive Christianity." 
It was these dangers that had called the Apostle John to Asia Mimor, 
and induced him to make this country the seat of his labors. Amidst 
circumstances so embarrassing, amidst conflicts so severe from within 
and from without — for then came forth the first edict of Trajan against 
the Christians — the authority of individual men, distinguished for piety, 
firmness and activity, would make itself particularly availing, and would 
be augmented by a necessity become generally apparent. Thus the 
predominant influence of individuals, who, as moderators over the col- 
lege of presbyters, were denominated bishops, might spring of itself 
out of the circumstances of the times in which the Christian communi- 
ties were multiplied, without any necessity of supposing an intentional 
remodelling of the earlier constitution of the church. In favor of this 
view is also the manner in which we find the names “ presbyter”? and 
“‘ bishop” interchanged for each other until far into the second century. 
It may be; that as the labors of the Apostle John in Asia Minor had 
a great influence generally on the succeeding development of the church, 
such an influence proceeded also from the course he pursued in this mat- 
ter, that he was induced by the circumstances of the times to entrust 
to certain individual presbyters in particular, who had made themselves 
worthy of his special confidence, the care of maintaining pure doctrine, 
of warding off those threatening dangers, and of keeping an oversight 
over the whole life of the church amidst those scatterings of the chaff. 
The tradition current at the end of the second century, respecting 
individuals who had been placed at the head of communities by the 
Apostle John and ordained by him as bishops, may have been thence 
derived. This would be the truth lying at the bottom in this report, 
and there would be no necessity of inferring from this circumstance 
that an episcopate was designedly founded by this apostle. 


without any preconceived design, an evi- 


1 These I have more fully unfolded in 
dent purpose. As the tradition of Ignati- 


my History of the Planting, &c., Vol. 11. 


2 There is no evidence to establish any 
such supposition ; for to indefinite traditions 
the force of evidence cannot be ascribed. 
In the so called epistles of Ignatius, I per- 
ceive, besides that which took its shape 


us’ journey to Rome, where he was to be 
thrown to the wild beasts, appears to me, 
for reasons already alleged, extremely lia- 
ble to suspicion ; so his letters, which pre- 
suppose the truth of this story, inspire me 


192 CHANGES OF THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION. 

This relation of the bishops to the presbyters, we may observe all 
along to the end of the second century. It is hence that Irenzeus 
sometimes uses the names “ bishop” and “ presbyter” as wholly synony- 
mous, and at others, distinguishes the bishops, as presiding officers, 
from the presbyters.1_ Tertullian also calls the presiding officers of the 
Christian communities by the common name of Seniores, including 
under this title both bishops and presbyters ;? though elsewhere in the 
writings of this father, the distinction between bishops and presbyters 
is already decidedly drawn. [ἢ many respects, Tertullian may be con- 
sidered as standing on the boundary line between an old and a new era 
in the Christian church. 

The novel and violent conflicts, internal and external, which the 
church had to encounter in these and the next succeeding times, might 
contribute anew to foster the monarchical element in the constitution of 
the church. Yet as late as the third century, the presbyters still main- 
tained their own footing, as a college of counsellors, at the side of the 
bishops, and the latter could undertake nothing of importance without 
calling to their assistance the deliberative assembly of presbyters.® 
When Cyprian, bishop of the church in Carthage, was separated from 
his community by his flight from persecution, if he had business to 
transact relating to the interests of the church, he mmediately commu- 
nicated it to his presbyters remaining behind in Carthage, and excused 
himself to them whenever he was obliged to decide any matter without 
their assistance. He declares it to be his invariable principle to do 
nothing on his own responsibility and without their advice.t Alluding 
to the original relation of the bishops to the presbyters, he calls them his 
Compresbyteros. Since then, in the constitution of the church, two 
elements met together, —the aristocratic and the monarchical, — it 
could not fail to be the case, that a conflict would ensue between them. 
The bishops considered themselves as invested with supreme power in 
the guidance of the church, and would maintain themselves in this 
authority. ‘The presbyters would not concede to them this authority, 
and would seek to render themselves again more independent. These 
struggles between the presbyterial and episcopal systems belong among 
the most important phenomena connected with the process of the devel- 


with as little confidence in their authentici- 
ty. That a man with death immediately 
before him, could have nothing to say more 
befitting than such things about obedience 
to the bishops, I cannot well conceive; at 
least when I transfer myself to the time 
when these letters profess to have been writ- 
ten. But even supposing the Apostle John 
did institute the order of bishops, for the 
purpose of satisfying a necessity of the 
times, still it would by no means follow, 
that this was a form of church government, 
either necessary or beneficial for all times. 

1 The two names are used synonymous- 
ly, (1. IV. 26,) where the successio episco- 
patus is given to the presbyteris. In 1. III. 
14, he distinguishes them. In the narrative, 
Acts, 20: 17, where Paul sends for the 


presbyters of the churches of Asia Minor, 
Jrenzus reckons among them also the bish- 
ops, in the view that these latter were no 
more than presiding elders; in Mileto con- 
vocatis episcopis et presbyteris. The con- 
fusion spread over the whole subject of the 
succession of the first Romish bishops may 
doubtless be owing to the fact, that these 
names were originally not so distinguished, 
and hence several might bear at the same 
time the titles of bishops or presbyters. 


2 Apologet. c. 39: Preesident probati qui-. 


que seniores. 

8 Presbyterium contrahere. 

4 A primordio episcopatus mei statui, 
nihil sine consilio vestro mea privatim sen- 
tentia gerere. — Sicut honor mutuus poscit, 
in commune tractabimus. Ep. 5. 


eS ο «. ἃ Sis 


Ee νῶν σια, 


RISE OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 193 


opment of church life in the third century. Many presbyters made a 
capricious use of their power, hurtful to good discipline and order 
in the communities. Divisions arose, of which we shall speak more par- 
ticularly hereafter ; and out of these troubles, the authority of the 
bishops, closely united among themselves, came victorious over the pres- 
byters, who opposed them single handed. The energy and activity of a 
Cyprian contributed in no small measure to further this victory; but it 
would both be doing injustice to him, and changing the point of view 
from which the whole matter ought to be contemplated, if we should 
charge him with having labored from the beginning; on a systematic 
plan, to elevate the episcopal order; as it is generally true, in matters 
of this sort, that it hardly lies within the compass of one individual to 
change the relations of a whole period after some scheme for his own 
agegrandizement. Cyprian acted, in this case, rather without being con- 
scious of any plan, in the spirit of a whole party and of a tendency be- 
longing to the entire church in his time. He acted as the representa- 
tive of the episcopal system, whose conflict with the presbyterian church 
policy had its ground and root in the general process of the develop- 
ment of the church. The contentions of the presbyterian parties with 
one another might certainly have proved injurious to discipline and 
good order in the churches; the triumph of the episcopal system un- 
doubtedly promoted their unity, order and tranquillity ; but on the other 
hand, it was unfriendly to the free development of church life, and 
served, not a little, to encourage the formation of a priesthood, foreign 
to the essence of the New Testament development of the kingdom of 
God; while on the other hand, a revolution of sentiment for which the 
way had already been prepared, an altered view of the idea of the 
priesthood, had no small influence on the development of the episcopal 
system. Thus does this change of the original constitution of the 
Christian communities stand intimately connected with another and 
still more radical change, — the formation of a sacerdotal caste in the 
Christian church. Without doubt, many changes in church relations 
might flow of themselves out of the historical course of development, 
without witnessing of any such revolution in the general apprehension 
of Christians, or being at all connected with it. Succeeding the time 
of the first Christian inspiration, of that effusion of the Spirit which 
made all differences of cultivation retreat more into the back-ground, 
came a time when the human element assumed more importance in re- 
lation to the progressive movement of the church. Differences in the 
degree of cultivation and of Christian knowledge became more strongly 
marked ; and it might hence happen, that the guidance of church affairs 
was surrendered more and more to the above mentioned church senate, 
and the edification of the church by the word more and more confined 
to those who made themselves preéminent as teachers. But besides 
what came of itself in the natural course of historical progress, there 
entered in imperceptibly another idea alien to the Christian principle ; 
an idea which could not fail to bring about a revolution of views, des- 
timed to last for ages, and ever to unfold itself in a wider circle from 
the germ which had once been implanted. 
VOL. I. 


194 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


Christianity had sprung to freedom and self-subsistence out of the 
envelope of Judaism, — had stripped off the forms in which it was first 
enwrapt, and within which the new spirit lay at first concealed, until by 
its own inherent power it burst its way through them. ‘This evolution 
belonged more particularly to the Pauline position, from which pro- 
ceeded the form of the church in the pagan world. This principle had 
triumphantly pushed its way through, in the conflict with the Jewish 
elements which opposed themselves to that free development of Chris- 
tianity. In the communities of pagan Christians, the new creation 
stood forth completely unfolded; but the Jewish principle, which had 
been vanquished, pressed in once more’ from another quarter. Human- 
ity was as yet incapable of maintaining itself at that lofty position of pure 
spiritual religion. The Jewish position descended nearer to the mass, 
which needed first to be trained in order to the apprehension of pure 
Christianity, — needed to be disaccustomed from paganism. Out of 
Christianity, now become independent, a principle once more sprang 
forth, akin to the Old Testament position, —a new making outward of 
the kingdom of God, a new law discipline, destined to serve one day 
for the training of rude nations, a new tutorship for the spirit of human- 
ity until it should arrive at the maturity of the manly age in Christ. 
This retrogression of the Christian spirit to a form nearly related to the 
Old Testament position, could not fail, after the fruitful principle had 
once made its appearance, to unfold itself more and more, bringing to 
light, one after another, all the consequences which it involved ; but a 
reaction of the Christian consciousness, striving after freedom, began 
also, which was ever bursting forth anew in an endless variety of ap- 
pearances, until it reached its triumph at the Reformation. 

While the great principle of the New Testament is the unfolding of 
the kingdom of God from within, from the union with Christ, brought 
about after the like zmmedzate manner in all, by faith; the readmission 
of the Old Testament position, in making the kingdom of God outward, 
went on the assumption that an outward mediation was necessary in 
order to the spread of this kingdom in the world. Such a mediation 
was to form for the Christian church a priesthood fashioned after the 
model of that of the Old Testament. The universal priestly character, 
grounded in that common and immediate relation of all to Christ as the 
source of the divine life, was repressed, the idea interposing itself of a 
particular, mediatory priesthood attached to a distinct order. This 
recasting of the Christian spirit in the Old Testament form did not take 
place, it is true, every where uniformly alike. Where some Jewish 
element chiefly predominated, it might very easily grow up out of 
this ; where the Pauline element among the pagan Christians had un- 


1 Thus in the Jewish-Christian apocry- 1. V. c. 24,) the Apostle John is denomina- 


phal writing, called the Testament of the 
twelve Patriarchs, (in the Testament III. 
of Levi, ¢. 8,) it is promised of the Messi- 
ah, that he should found a new priesthood 
among the pagan nations ; ποιῆσει ἱερατεί- 
av νέαν εἰς πώντα τὰ ἔϑνη. Whether in 
the letter of ῬοΙγογαῖοβ, bishop of Ephesus, 
a contemporary of Ireneus, (cited in Euseb. 


ted ἱερεύς τὸ πέταλον πεφορηκώς, as stand- 
ing at the head of the government of the 
church in Asia Minor, may indeed be doubt- 
ed. The phrase might also be used simply 
to designate the highest position of the 
spiritual priesthood in the witnessing of the 
faith. (See Testament. Levi, c. 8: πέτα- 
λον τῆς πίστεως.) 


FORMATION OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 195 


folded itself in opposition to the Jewish, still the Christian spirit, grown 
up to independence, but not being able to maintain itself at this lofty 
position, by virtue of a relationship springing up im itself with the Jew- 
ish position, passed over again to the Jewish. Of such a change which 
had now taken place in the Christian mode of thinking, we have a witness 
as early as Tertullian, when he calls the bishop summus sacerdos,! a 
title certainly not invented by him, but which had been adopted from a 
prevailing mode both of speaking and thinking, in a certain portion at 
least, of the church. This title presupposes that men had begun already 
to compare the presbyters with the priests ; the deacons, or the spiritual 
class generally, with the Levites. And so it becomes manifest, how the 
false comparison of the Christian priesthood with the Jewish must tend 
once more to advance the elevation of the episcopacy over the presby- 
terial office. In general, the more men fell back from the evangelical 
to the Jewish poimt of view, the more must the original, free constitu- 
tion of the communities, grounded in those original Christian views, 
become also changed. We find Cyprian already completely imbued 
with the notions which sprang out of this confounding together of the 
different points of view of the Old and New Testaments. 

In the names by which at first those who administered church offices 
were distinguished from the rest of the community, no trace of this 
confusion might as yet be found. The Latin expression, “ ordo,’”’ de- 
noted simply the guiding senate of the Christian people, (plebs.) See 
above. Into the Greek words κλῆρος, κληρικοῖ, men had introduced, it is 
true, already in the time of Cyprian, the unevangelical sense of per- 
sons preéminently consecrated to God, like the Levites of the Old Tes- 
tament, men employed on the affairs of religion to the exclusion of all 
earthly concerns, and who did not gain their living, like others, by 
worldly employments, but for the very reason that, for the good of 
others, they lived only in intercourse with God, were supported by the 
rest, just as the Levites, when the lands were apportioned, received no 
particular allotment, but were to have God alone for their inheritance, 
and to receive tithes from the rest for the administration of the public 
functions of religion, οἵ εἰσιν ὁ κλῆρος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, OY Gv ὁ κλῆρος ὁ ϑεός ἐστι. See 
Deuteronom. 6. 18. This notion of a peculiar people of God, (a κλῆρος 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ,) applied distinctively to a particular order of men among the 
Christians, is now, we must admit, in this sense, something wholly for- 
eign to the original Christian consciousness ; for according to this, all 
Christians should be a people consecrated to God, a κλῆρος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, and 
all the employments of their earthly calling should in like manner be 
sanctified by the temper in which they are discharged. Their whole 
living and doing, — pointed with one reference to Christ, the great High 
Priest of humanity, striking root in the consciousness of redemption, 
and bearing witness of its effects, — should hence become a consecrated 
thank-offering, and a spiritual worship, (a λογικὴ λατρεία.) This was the 
original, evangelical idea. It may be questioned, however, whether 
that other notion, so much at variance with the primitive Christian idea, 


1 De baptismo, 6. 17. 


196 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 
was from the first actually associated with the appellation κληρικοί ag 
applied to the clergy. If we trace along the history of its usage, it 
becomes much more probable, that this sense was brought into the word 
at some later period, when a change had taken place in the Christian 
mode of thinking, and the original sense was forgotten. The word κλῆρος 
signified originally the place which had been allotted to each one in the 
community by God’s providence, or the choice of the people directed 
by that providence ; hence the church officers were particularly denom- 
inated κλῆροι, and the persons chosen to them, κληρικοί.1 

But although the idea of the priesthood, in the purely evangelical 
sense, grew continually more obscure and was thrust farther into the 
back-ground, in proportion as that unevangelical point of view became 
predominant, yet it was too deeply rooted in the very essence of Chris- 
tianity to be totally suppressed. In the boundary epoch of Tertullian, 
we still find many very significant proofs that there was a reaction of 
the primitive Christian consciousness of the universal priesthood and 
the common rights grounded therein, against the arrogated power of 
that particular priesthood, which had recently begun to form itself on 
the model of the Old Testament. Tertullian, in his work on Baptism, 
written before he went over to Montanism, distinguishes with reference 
to this matter divine right and human order. ‘ In itself considered,”’ 
he says, ‘‘ the laity also have the right to administer the sacraments 
and to teach in the community. The word of God and the sacraments 
were by the grace of God communicated to all, and may therefore be 
communicated by all Christians as instruments of the divine grace. 
But the question here relates not barely to what is permitted in general, 
but also to what is expedient under existing circumstances. We may 
here use the words of St. Paul, ‘all thmgs are lawful for me, but all 
things are not expedient.’ If we look at the order necessary to be 
maintained in the church, the laity are therefore to exercise their 
priestly right of administering the sacraments, only when the time and 
circumstances require 10.᾽ 2 

Sometimes, in their conflict with the clergy, the laity made good their 
original priestly rights, as we learn from those words of Tertullian the 
Montanist, where in a certain case he requires the laity, if they would 
have the same rights with the clergy, to bind themselves to the same Ὁ 


1 Thus it is made clear, how the more re- 
stricted notion of casting lots in these words 
might be lost, though elsewhere the ἀρχαὶ 
κληρωταΐί are opposed to the ἀρχαῖς yetpo- 
τονῆταις. So at first,in Acts, 1:17: κλῆ- 
ρος τῆς διακονίας ; in Irenzeus III. 3: κλη- 
ροῦσϑαι τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν. Clemens Alex. 
quis dives salv. c. 42, employs κλῆρος and 
κληροῦν with reciprocal reference to each 
other. Ignat. ep. Ephes. ¢. 11: κλῆρος "Eg@e- 
ciwv, by which he understands the collec- 
tive body of Christians in that place. It is 


true, the Old Testament relations could be » 


found applied to the Christian church in a 
writer as early as Clemens of Rome, (c. 
40;) but assuredly this epistle, as well as 


that of Ignatius, although not to such a 
degree, had suffered interpolation from a 
hierarchical interest. In other passages of 
the same epistle, we meet, on the contrary, 
with the freer spirit of the original presby- 
terial constitution of the church. How 
simply, without any mixture of hierarchical 
display, is the appointment of bishops or 
presbyters. and of deacons, spoken of in 
the 42d chapter! A disciple of the Apos- 
tle Paul, moreover, is the last person whom 
we should expect to find thus confounding 
together the points of view peculiar to the 
Old and to the New Testaments. 
2 De baptismo, ¢. 17. 


FORMATION OF A SACERDOTAL CASTE. 197 


duties ; and where in a sarcastic tone he says to them:! “ When we 
exalt and inflate ourselves against the clergy, then we are all one, we 
are all priests, since he has made us kings and priests unto God and 
his Father.” Rev. 1: 6. 

Although the office of teaching in the church assemblies was confined 
more and more to the bishops and presbyters, yet we still find many 
traces of that original equality of the spiritual right among all Chris- 
tians. Towards the middle of the third century, two bishops in Pales- 
tine did not hesitate to allow the learned Origen, although he had as 
yet received no ordination, to expound the scriptures before their peo- 
ple ; and when reproved by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was 
strongly inclined to hierarchy, they appealed in their defence to the 
practice of many bishops of the East who invited competent laymen 
even to preach the word.? In the pretended Apostolic Constitutions 
themselves, a work otherwise well tinged with the hierarchical spirit, 
and compiled, indeed, out of a mass of heterogeneous elements, there 
is yet an ordinance under the name of the Apostle Paul to the following 
effect,? “ If any man, though a layman, is skilful in expounding doc- 
trine, and of venerable manners, he may be allowed to teach, for all 
should be taught of God.” 

In the early times, those who took upon them church offices in the 
communities, continued, in all probability, to exercise their former 
trades and occupations, supporting themselves and their families in the 
same manner as before. The communities, composed for the most part 
of poor members, were scarcely in a condition to provide for their 
presbyters and deacons, especially as they had from the first to meet 
so many other expenses, in supporting helpless widows, the poor, the 
sick, and the orphans. It might indeed be, that the presbyters be- 
longed to the richer class in the communities, and this without doubt 
must have been the case quite often, since their office required, besides 
other qualifications, a certain worldly education, such as would more 
likely be found in the higher or middle than in the lower class of the 
people. When it is required of the presbyters, or bishops, (1 Timothy, 
3: 2,) that they should be patterns to other Christians of hospitality also, 
they must have belonged to the better class, of whom the number was 
small in the first communities, — and how could such persons be induced 
to support themselves on the scanty earnings of the poor! The Apostle 
Paul does, indeed, declare the travelling preachers of the gospel to be 
warranted to expect, that those for whose spiritual necessities they 
labored would provide for their bodily wants; but it cannot be hence 
inferred that the case was the same with those who held church offices 
in distinct communities. It would be difficult for the former to unite 
the labors necessary for their own maintenance with the duties of their 
spiritual calling, although the self-denial of a Paul could make this also 
possible. The latter, on the other hand, might at the beginning very 
easily unite the prosecution of their labors for a maintenance with the 
discharge of their official functions in the church, and the simple way 


1 De monogamia, c. 12. 2 Euseb. 1. VI. ο. 19. 51, VIIL c. 32. 
17* 


198 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 

of thinking among primitive Christians would find nothing repulsive in 
such a union; convinced as they were, that every earthly employment 
could and should be sanctified by the temper with which it was pur- 
sued, and knowing that even an apostle had prosecuted a worldly call- 
ing in connection with the preaching of the gospel. But when the 
communities grew larger, and the duties connected with church offices . 
became multiplied ; when especially the office of teaching came to be 
confined chiefly to the presbyters; when the calling of the spiritual 
class, if rightly discharged, required all their time and activity, it was 
often no longer possible for them to provide, at the same time, for their 
own support; —and besides, the wealthier communities were now in ἃ 
condition to maintain them. Of the common fund which was raised 
from the voluntary contributions of each member of the community, at 
each service on the Lord’s day, or, as in the North African church, on 
every first Sunday of the month,! a part was appropriated for the main- 
tenance of the clergy. It was now attempted from design, to separate 
the clergy entirely from all worldly employments; and in the third 
century, they were already strictly forbidden to undertake any such 
business, even a wardship.2, Without doubt, this ordinance might have 
avery good reason, and a very salutary end, namely, to prevent the 
clergy from forgetting their spiritual calling in the business of the 
world. We see from Cyprian’s book de Lapsis,*? how extensively even 
then, during long periods of tranquillity, the spirit of the world had 
found its way among the bishops, who, immersed in secular business, 
neglected their spiritual concerns and the interests of their communi- 
ties. But there was assuredly some other cause also which operated 
to bring about a change of views whereby the administration of a 
church office came to be regarded as something which could not possi- 
bly be united with worldly employments, and the clergy deemed them- 
selves bound to keep aloof from them. 

When the idea of the universal Christian priesthood retired to the 
back-ground, that of the priestly consecration which all Christians 
should make of their entire life, went along with it. As men had dis- 
tinguished, in a way contradictory to the original Christian consciousness, 
a particular priesthood from the universal and ordinary calling of all 
Christians ; so now they set over against each other a spiritual and a 
secular province of life and action; notwithstanding Christ had raised 
the entire earthly life to the dignity of a spiritual life. And from this 
view of the matter, it was deemed necessary to forbid the priestly, 





1The divisiones mensure, as_ salaries 
for the clergy in this church, answer to the 
monthly collections. 

2 Cyprian. ep. 66, to the community at 
Fume. 

8 Also from the Instructiones of his con- 
temporary, Commodianus, c. 69: Redditur 
in culpa pastor szcularia servans, (who 
gives himself up to secular business ;) and 
from Can. 18 of the council of Elvira, (Il- 
liberis,) in the year 305: Episcopi, presby- 
teri et diaconi de locis suis negotiandi causa 


non discedant, nec circumeuntes provincias 
queestuosas nundinas sectentur. Yet even 
here it is still supposed that they may in 
many cases be obliged so to do, “ad victum 
sibi conquirendum,” where, perhaps, though 
they had a salary, they yet received no pay 
in money. But in these cases they were to 
conduct their business by the agency of a 
son, a freed man, or some person hired for 
the purpose, and never beyond the bounds 
of their own province. 


ELECTIONS TO OFFICE. 199 


consecrated clergy, all contact with the world and the things of the 
world. Thus we have here the germ out of which sprang at length 
the whole medieval priesthood and the laws of celibacy. But by this 
outward holding at a distance of secular things, the worldly sense could 
not be charmed away from the clergy, nor the sense for divine things 
awakened in them. ‘This external renunciation of the world might be 
the means of introducing into the heart a spiritual pride, hiding the 
worldly sense under this mask. Cyprian quotes 2 Timoth. 2: 14, as 
warranting the prohibition given in the above mentioned letter... But 
he could not remain ignorant of what, at this particular time, when the 
universal Christian calling was commonly regarded as a militia Christi, 
must have immediately suggested itself to every one, that these words 
applied to all Christians, who, as soldiers of Christ, were bound to per- 
form their duty faithfully, and to guard against every foreign and 
worldly thing which might hinder them in their warfare. Acknowledg- 
ing and presupposing this himself, he concludes, ‘‘ Since this is said of 
all Christians, how much more should they keep themselves clear of 
being involved in worldly matters, who, engrossed with divine and spirit- 
ual things, ought never to turn aside from the church, nor have time 
for earthly and secular employments.” The clergy, then, were, in fol- 
lowing that apostolic rule, only to shine forth as patterns for all others, 
by avoiding what was foreign ‘to their vocation, what might turn them 
from the faithful discharge of it. But still that false opposition be- 
tween the worldly and the spiritual, which we have before described, 
found here also a point of attachment. 

In respect to the election to church offices, the ancient principle was 
still adhered to, that the consent of the community was necessary to the 
validity of every such election, and each one was at liberty to offer 
reasons against it. The emperor Alexander Severus was aware of this 
regulation in the Christian church, and referred to it when he was 
wishing to introduce a similar practice in the appointment to civil 
offices in the provinces.2, When the bishop Cyprian of Carthage, while 
separated from his community by the persecution, proceeded to nomi- 
nate to church offices, individuals about his person, who had distin- 
guished themselves in the trials of the time, he excused this arbitrary 
procedure, to which necessity compelled him, both to the laity and to 
the clergy, writing to them as follows:* ‘ We are used to call you to- 
gether for counsel whenever any are to be consecrated to sacred offices, 
and to weigh the character and claims of each candidate in common 
deliberation.” 

The same principle was also observed in the appointment to the 
episcopal office. It was in the third century a prevailing custom, 
which Cyprian therefore derived from apostolic tradition, for the bishops 


1 Ep. 66. fortunz hominum committerentur et capita. 
2 Δ]. Lamprid. vit. c. 45: Grave esse, From which language it is also apparent, 
cum id Christiani et Judai, (a customary how far the man who so expressed_himself, 
form then of choosing presiding officers was from doing homage to the Christian 
even among the Jews.) facerent in predi- church. 
candis sacerdotibus, qui ordinandi sunt, non 3 Ep. 33. 
fieri in provinciarum rectoribus, quibus et : 


200 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 

of the province, im connection with the clergy, to proceed to fill the 
vacant church in the presence of the community, who were witnesses 
of the conduct of each individual on whom the choice might fall, and 
could therefore give the safest testimony of his character. Cyprian 
conceded to the community the right of choosing worthy bishops, or of 
rejecting unworthy ones.!_ This conceded right of approving or reject- 
ing, was not a mere formality. Sometimes it happened, that before the 
usual arrangements for an election could be made, a bishop was pro- 
claimed by the voice of the community. Thus there might possibly be 
a difference between the will of the community and that of the majority 
of the clergy, — the source of many divisions. 

In other concerns of the community also, the participation of the 
laity was not yet wholly excluded. Cyprian declared that it had been 
his resolution, from the commencement of his episcopal administration, 
to do nothing without the consent of the community. An affair of 
this kind which belonged to the general interests of the community, 
was the restoration to the fellowship of the church of a fallen brother ; 
and the examination connected with this proceeding was to be conducted — 
with the assistance of the whole community of Christians; for in Cy- 
prian’s judgment, this respect was due to the faith of those who had 
stood firm through the trials of persecution. Besides, there were 
individuals, not belonging to the clerical order, who still, on account of 
the respect which they personally enjoyed, had obtained an influence 
over the management of church affairs, which even the clergy found it 
difficult to oppose. Such were those heroes of the faith, the confessors, 
who in the face of tortures and death, or under the actual suffering of 
torture, had laid down their testimony before pagan magistrates. We 
shall hereafter, in speaking of the schisms of the church, have occasion 
to consider more particularly the extent of their influence. 

The third, less important change in the constitution of the church 
related to the multiplication of church offices. This was in part ren- 
dered necessary by the growth of the communities, and the accumula- 
tion of business on the hands of the deacons, from whose office many 
things had to be taken away; in part, new matters of business in the 
churches of large capital towns, required new offices for their proper 
discharge ; in part, the new notions respecting the dignity of the 
clerus, led men to believe that what had hitherto been regarded as the 
free gift of the Spirit to all or to individual Christians, must be confined 
to a particular office in the service of the church. It is clear from 
what has been said, that none of these changes, which were conditioned 
partly by local circumstances, should be considered universal ones. 
The new church offices were as follows: after the deacons, followed the 


1 Cyprian, in the name of a synod, to 
the communities at Lyons and Astorga, ep. 
68: Apostolica obseryatione servandum est, 
quod apud nos quoque et fere per provin- 
cias universas tenetur, ut ad ordinationes 
rite celebrandas, ad eam plebem, cui prsepo- 
situs ordinatur, episcopi ejusdem provinciz 
proximi quique conveniant, et ,episcopus 


deligatur plebe preesente, que singulorum 
vitam plenissime novit et uniuscujusque 
actum de ejus conversatione perspexit. 
2 Nihil sine consensu plebis gerere. Ep. 5. 
ὃ Preesente etiam stantium plebe, quibus 
et ipsis pro fide et timore suo honor haben- 
dus est. Ep. 13. 


OFFICES MULTIPLIED. 201 
sub-deacons, collateral officers to the former in administering the out- 
ward concerns of the church; then, the lectores (ἀνάγνωσται,) who read 
the scriptures before the assembled community, and also had the care 
of the biblical manuscripts used on these occasions, —a duty performed 
at first, probably, by the presbyters themselves, or by the deacons, as 
in later times the reading of the scriptures, particularly the gospels, 
still continued to be left to the deacons in many churches ; — next, the 
acolytes (ἀκόλουϑοι, acolythi) who, as the name indicates, waited on 
the bishops while discharging their official functions ; the exorciste, 
who made prayer over those who were supposed to be possessed of 
evil spirits, (the energumeni ;) finally, the ϑυρωροὶ, πυλωροὶ, ostiaril, whose 
business it was to attend to such outward matters as the cleanliness 
and good order, the opening and closing, of the places of public worship. 

The office of church reader is, perhaps, the oldest among these. [Ὁ 
is mentioned as early as the second century by Tertullian. The others 
are noticed collectively not till about the middle of the third century, 
and indeed the whole of them for the first time, in a letter of the Roman 
bishop Cornelius, cited by Eusebius? The office of acolyte had its 
origin most probably in the hierarchical assumptions of the Roman 
church. It did not find its way into the Greek church. The Greek 
name of the office is not inconsistent with this view of its origin; for 
the Greek language was in frequent use at Rome, and many of the Ro- 
man bishops were of Grecian extraction. As regards the office of exor- 
cist, the end to be accomplished by it had, origmally, been considered 
a work of the Holy Spirit confined to no outward institution, — whether 
it was supposed that any Christian might be employed as the instru- 
ment, who called on the name of Christ with believing confidence in him 
as having overcome the power of evil, or whether it was regarded as a 
spiritual gift peculiar to individuals. Now, the free working of the 
Spirit was to be confined to a formal, mechanical process. The spirit 
of the ancient church, preserved for a longer time in the East,® was 
rightly expressed, on the other hand, by the Apostolic constitutions ; 
«An exorcist cannot be chosen, for it is the gift of free grace.” * 

We now leave the general constitution of the communities, and pro- 
ceed to the forms of union by which the individual communities were 
bound together. 


Forms of union by which the individual communities were bound 
together. 


With the inner fellowship, Christianity produced among its professors 
from the first a living outward union, whereby the distantly separated 


1 Prescript. heret. c. 41. 
2L. VI. c. 43. 
- 87Τῃ the letter of Firmilianus, bishop of 
Cesarea in Cappadocia, (Cyprian. ep. 75,) 
mention is made of the church exorcists. 
- But Origen describes this sort of influence 
as something that was not confined to any 
determinate office, but wholly free. He 
considers the influence as a thing depend- 
_ ing on the subjective piety of the individual 


' 
; 


: 


that exercises it, in Matth. T. XIII. § 7: 
Elmore δέοι περὶ ϑεραπείαν ἀσχολεῖσϑαι 
ἡμᾶς τοιοῦτόν τι πεπονϑότος τινὸς, μὴ ὀρκί- 
ζωμεν, μηδὲ ἐπερωτῶμεν, μηδὲ λαλῶμεν ὡς 
ἀκούοντι τῷ ἀκαϑάρτῳ πνεύματι, ἀλλὰ σχο- 
λάζοντες προςευχῇ καὶ νηστεΐᾳ, ἐπιτύχωμεν 
προςευχόμενοι περὶ τοῦ πεπονϑότος. 

41, VIII. c. 26: Οὐ χειροτονεῖται, εὐνοί- 
ας γὰρ ἑκουσίου τὸ ἔπαϑλον, καὶ χώριτος 
ϑεοῦ διὰ Χριστοῦ. 


202 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


were brought near to each other. This union must be realized in a 
determinate form, which latter was conditioned by the existing forms 
of social life under which Christianity first unfolded itself in the Roman 
empire. A system of fraternal equality in the relations of the commu- 
nities to each other, would, independent of these determinate circum- 
stances, have answered best to the spirit of Christianity, and been most 
promotive of its free, uncorrupted manifestation. But those circum- 
stances soon gave rise to a system of subordination in the mutual rela- 
tion of the communities to each other. This system, as well as every 
other social form which had sprung out of the historical development 
of the race and contained nothing sinful, Christianity could appropriate 
to itself. Yet, since this relation was not sufficiently interpenetrated 
with the free and free-making spirit of the gospel, it operated, by its 
undue preponderance, to check and interrupt the development of Chris- 
tian doctrine and of church life. 

We have observed already, that in many districts, Christianity very 
early made progress in the open country. Now wherever this was the 
case, and the Christians in a village or country town were in sufficient 
numbers to form a separate community, it was the most natural course 
for these to choose at once their own presiding officers, presbyters or 
bishops, who were quite as independent as the presiding officers of the 
city churches. In these first centuries themselves, it is indeed impos- 
sible, from the want of authentic records of so early a period, to point 
out any particular example of this kind; but in the fourth century we 
find, in many districts of the East, country bishops, as they are called, 
( χωρεπισκόπους, ) who, beyond doubt, might trace back their origin to the 
oldest times; for in the later period, when the church system of subor- 
dination had become established, and the country churches were now 
accustomed to receive their presiding officers from the city, it is certain 
that no such relation could have arisen; on the contrary, the country 
bishops, wherever they yet existed, must have entered into a struggle 
with those of the city, for the preservation of their independence. But 
the more common case, as we have likewise already remarked, was for 
Christianity to be diffused from the city into the country; and while 
the Christians in the immediate neighborhood of the cities were still few 
in number, they would most naturally repair on the Lord’s day to the 
city to join in public worship with the assemblies there convened. But — 
in process of time, when their number was so increased as to enable 
them to form a community of their own, they applied to the bishop of 
the city church with which they had been connected, to set over them 
a presbyter, who consequently remained ever after subordinate to the 
city bishop. Thus arose the first greater church union between city 
and country communities, which together formed one whole.t’ In the 
larger cities it might now have become necessary also to separate the 
city communities themselves into several divisions ; as in Rome, where, 
according to the report of the Roman bishop Cornelius, already referred 


1 The presbyters of whom Cyprian, at invenientur in civitatibus suis, were such 
his examination before the proconsul, said, presiding officers of country communities. 








METROPOLITAN AND APOSTOLIC CHURCHES. 203 


to, there were in his time six and forty presbyters; though the state- 
ment of Optatus of Mileve, that Rome contained, in the beginning of 
the fourth century, more than forty churches, is an exaggeration. Yet 
in this case, distinct and subordinate filial communities were not always 
formed by the side of the one episcopal Head and Mother church ; but 
more often, the community remained united as a whole; and only on 
Sundays and feast days, when one church was insufficient to accommo- 
date all the members, they were divided into several churches, where 
the different presbyters, according to a certain rotation, conducted the 
public worship. But it must be admitted, that with regard to the early 
shaping of these incipient relations, nothing can be decided with cer- 
tainty, and in default of immediate information on the subject, we can 
only infer respecting the past from what we find to have been the case 
in the succeeding times. iit 

Again, as Christianity was diffused, for the most part, from the cities 
into the country, so, as a general thing, it spread from the principal 
cities (μητροπόλεις) to the other provincial towns. Now as these latter 
were politically subordinate to the former, a close bond of union and 
subordinate relation were gradually formed between the communities 
of the provincial towns and those of the principal city or metropolis. 
The churches of a province constituted a whole, at the head of which 
stood the church of the metropolis. The bishop of this became in rela- 
tion to the other bishops of the province, Primus inter pares. Yet 
owing to local causes, this relation did not every where unfold itself in 
be same way, and in this period was limited, for the most part, to the 

vast. 

A like relation to that between these metropolitan cities and the pro- 
vincial towns, existed between the capitals of the larger divisions of the 
Roman empire, —as seats of government, channels of commerce and 
of all intercourse, — and the latter. It was from such larger capitals, 
Christianity was diffused through entire sections of the vast empire; it 
was here the apostles themselves had founded churches, appointed over 
them their presiding officers, and orally preached the gospel; and to 
the churches here established they had written their epistles. Hence, 
these churches, which went under the name of ecclesiz, sedes apostoli- 
cx, matrices ecclesiz, were held in peculiar veneration. When a con- 
troversy arose with regard to any regulation or doctrine of the church, 
it was the first inquiry, how is the matter regarded in these communi- 
ties, where the principles taught on the spot by the apostles them- 
selves, have beén faithfully preserved from one generation to another ? 
Such ecclesize apostolicee were especially Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, 
Ephesus, Corinth. 

But all this, which held good of all the churches in the great capital 
cities, might be applied in a preéminent sense to the church of Rome, 
the great capital of the world. The legend that Peter, as well as Paul, 
died as a martyr at Rome, is not raised, it is true, beyond all doubt ; 
but “assuredly it is older than the effort to glorify the Roman church 
through the primacy of the Apostle Peter, its founder. From many 
other causes ; from the eagerness to confute the Jews and Gnostics, who 


204 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 

endeavored to make out a difference between these two great apostles, 
by showing that they were united even to a common martyrdom in the 
capital of the world ; from the stories of the contest between St. Peter 
and Simon Magus, the origin of such a legend would admit of being 
more easily explained. But these reasons surely are not sufficient to 
warrant us in absolutely denying its truth, when so high antiquity 
speaks in favor of it; and many difficulties which present themselves 
in relation to the concatenation of events, may have their ground in our 
defective historical information! At all events, the universally diffused 
belief, that these two great apostles had taught in the Roman church, 
and honored it by their martyrdom, contributed to promote its author- 
ity. From Rome, the larger portion of the West had received the gos- 
pel; from Rome, the common interests of Christianity, through the 
whole extent of the Roman empire, could best be advanced. The Ro- 
man bishops, heads of the wealthiest community, were early distin- 
guished and known in the most distant lands, for their liberal benefac- 
tions to the Christian brethren ;? and a common interest bound all the 
communities of the Roman empire to the church of the great capital. 
In Rome was the ecclesia apostolica to which the largest portion of the 
West could appeal as to their common mother. In general, whatever 
transpired in this ‘‘ apostolic church’’ could not fail to be well known to 
all; for here Christians were continually pourmg in from all quarters of 
the world. So Irenzeus, who wrote in Gaul, appeals, —as he does 
also occasionally to other apostolic churches, — in one passage particu- 
larly to the ecclesia apostolica in Rome, as the greatest, the oldest, 
(which must be doubted,) the universally known, the church founded 
by the two most illustrious apostles, where Christians congregate from 
the communities of the whole world, and could not fail to learn the doc- 
trine taught by the Apostles.® 


1 Comp. the new inquiry into this matter 
in the 3d edition of my History of the 
Planting, &c., p. 516, et seq. 

2 Kuseb. 1. IV. c. 23. 

8. 1Π. c.3. According to the ancient 
Latin translation, the original Greek text 
being unfortunately lost: “ Ad hance eccle- 
siam, propter potiorem principalitatem, ne- 
cesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc 
est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua 
semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata 
est ea, que est ab apostolis traditio.” If 
the word convenire is taken in the intellect- 
ual sense, — all churches must agree with the 
Roman church, as the one having preémi- 
nence over the rest, —we have a meaning 
which is. by no means perfectly natural, and 
which scarcely in the least degree coincides 
with the circle of ideas elsewhere exhibited 
in Irenzeus. What would be meant by say- 
ing, the communities of the whole world 
have preserved in the Roman church the 
apostolic tradition? It would be under- 


stood only in some such way as this; that. 


the Roman church was the central and repre- 
sentative point of all the Christian churches; 


as if, — what was said in later times, — the 
whole church was contained virtualiter in the 


- Roman; an idea of which not the least 


trace is to be found in Irenzeus, and a mode 
of expression foreign to this whole period. 
If the passage is really to be understood in 
this way, we could not avoid the suspicion, 
that here was one of the interpolations, of 
which so many indications are to be ob- 
served in this writer. But although it is 
impossible to decide with perfect certainty 
as to the right interpretation of these words, 
because we have not the original Greck, 
yet there are other ways of explaining them, 
which agree more completely with Irenzeus’ 
mode of thinking as elsewhere exhibited, 
and with the connection in this place. In 
the first place, I must state that I cannot 
approve of the interpretation proposed by 
the Licenciate Thiersch in the Studien und 
Kritiken, J. 1842, 2tes Heft, S. 527, by 
which, we may admit, all difficulties would 
be removed. According to that exposition, 
the phrase “in qua,” “ἐν ἡ," should refer, 
not to the more remote subject, “hance ec- 
clesiam,” but to that which stands nearer, 


CERTIFICATES OF FELLOWSHIP. 205 

Moreover, by means of letters, and Christian brethren who were 
travelling, a mutual correspondence was maintained between the most 
distant churches in the Roman empire. When a Christian entered a 
foreign city, his first inquiry was for the church; and here he was 
received as a brother, and supplied with whatever could contribute to 
his spiritual and to his bodily refreshment. But as deceivers, inform- 
ers, false teachers seeking only to gain more followers for their peculiar 
opinions, abused the confidence and charity of the Christians, it became 
necessary to adopt precautionary measures to prevent the manifold evils 
which might in this way arise. The regulation was therefore adopted, 
that in foreign churches those travelling Christians only should be 
received as Christian brethren, who could produce a certificate from 
the bishop of the community to which they belonged. These church 
letters, — which were as tessare hospitales, whereby Christians from 
every quarter of the world stood in fraternal union with each other, — 
received the name of epistolze or literze formatee ; ( γράμματα τετυπωμένα,) 


because, to guard against counterfeits, they were drawn up after a cer- 


oO 
tain form; (forma, τύπος :}} and 


“omnem ecclesiam,” as determining this 
antecedent,— every church in which the 
doctrine has been preserved pure, as the 
author himself explains: “Dummodo ne 
in ea per hereticos ipsos traditionis puritas 
inquinata sit, sive, ut Irenzi verbis utar, 
dummodo in ea a fidelibus cujusvis sint loci 
pure conservata sit tradita ab Apostolis ve- 
ritas.” But this exposition seems to me 
attended with an insurmountable difficulty 
already, in the interposed sentence, “hoc est 
eos,” etc. If Irenzeus intended any such 
determination of ecclesia, he would certain- 
ly have affixed it immediately to the word 
ecclesiam. And after all, it is most natural 
to refer the relative to the Roman church 
as the principal subject. But now the ques- 
tion arises, to what Greek word does the 
term “convenire” correspond ; whether to 
συμβαίνειν, as Dr. Gieseler, and agreeing 
with him, Dr. Nitzsch, in his letter to Del- 
briick and Licenciate Thiersch, in the trea- 
tise above cited, suppose, or to συνέρχεσθαι. 
If the latter is the word, by coming must be 
understood a coming to that place in per- 
son, and the passage would have to be ex- 
plained thus: On account of the rank 
which this church maintains as the ecclesia 
urbis, all churches, that is, believers from 
all countries must,—the “must” lies in 
the nature of the case,—come together 
there; and since now from the beginning, 
Christians from all countries must come 
together there, it follows that the apostolic 
tradition has been preserved from genera- 
tion to generation by the Christians from 
all countries of the world, who are there 
united together. Every deviation from it 
would here fall immediately under the ob- 
servation of all. As confirmatory of this 
interpretation, might be cited what Athe- 


VOL. I. 18 


also ‘“‘ epistole communicatorie,’’ 


nus says of the city of Rome, (Deipno- 
soph. ]. 1, ὁ 36:) ““᾿Οικουμένης δῆμον τὴν 
Ῥώμην, τὴν Ῥώμην πόλιν ἐπιτομὴν τῆς 
οἰκουμένης, ἐν 7 συνιδεῖν ἐστιν οὕτως πάσας 
τὰς πόλεις ἱδρυμένας." So might one say: 
Ἔν τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἐκκλησίᾳ πάσας ἐκκλησίας 
ἱδρυμένας." Yet I will not deny the diffi- 
culty attending the interpretation of the 
second sentence; to the alteration of con- 
servata into observata, I can no longer 
agree. If we consider συμβαίνειν to be the 
word which answers to “convenire,” it 
would be the best way, with Gieseler, to 
suppose an error of translation, — that the 
translator, out of mistake, rendered the 
Greek dative into “ab his.” The words 
would haye to be understood thus: “in 
which church the apostolic tradition has 
ever been preserved for the Christians of all 
countries of the world.” I cannot deny, 
that in the comparison of these words with 
those at the beginning of the same chapter, 
“in omni ecclesia adest respicere omnibus,” 
an argument may be found in favor of the 
sense just given. But even according to 
this interpretation, the same general view 
of Rome as that contained in the passage 
from Athenzeus, would lie at the basis of 
the whole. I think it will be unnecessary 
for me to remark here, that I am very far 
from being influenced in this investigation 
by any protestant interest. At the position 
where a scientific understanding of the his- 
torical development of Christianity is aimed 
at, the interests of Protestantism, which I 
profess, could not be in the least endanger- 
ed by recognizing a high antiquity of the 
Catholic element, both in general and in 
particular. 

1 How. very necessary it was to guard 
against the falsification of such church let- 


206 CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 


ᾷ γράμματα κοινωνικᾶ, ) inasmuch as they indicated’ as well that the bear- 
ers were in the fellowship of the church, as that the bishops who mutu- 
ally sent and received such letters, were united together in the bonds 
of church fellowship. By degrees the church letters (epistole clericz) 
were divided into different classes, according to the different objects for 
which they were written. 

It was remarked above, that a closer bond of union existed in the 
early times between communities belongmg to the same province. We 
may add as another effect of the catholic spirit of Christianity, that in 
all cases of emergency, in disputes respecting matters of doctrine, of 
church life, of church discipline, common deliberations were frequently 
held by deputed members from these communities. Such assemblies 
become known to us in the controversies respecting the time of Haster, 
and in the discussions on the Montanistic prophecies, towards the close 
of the second century. But as a permanent and regular institution, 
bound to stated seasons, these provincial synods first make their appear- 
ance at the end of the second or beginning of the third century ; and 
then, as a peculiar practice of a single district, where local causes may 
have led to an arrangement of this kind, earlier than in other countries. 
This district was Greece proper, where, from the time of the Achzean 
league, the spirit of confederacy had beea still preserved; and as 
Christianity could attach itself to all national peculiarities, so far as 
they contained in them nothing immoral; nay, become so merged in 
them as to manifest itself under their peculiar form; it might well hap- 
pen, that the cil spirit of federation, already existing here, passed 
over to the ecclesiastical, and gave to the latter, still earlier than in 
other countries, a form which was in fact well suited for the common 
deliberations of the Christians;— so that out of the representative 
assemblies of the city communities, — the Amphictyonic councils, — 
sprung the representative assemblies of the church communities — the 
provincial synods. As the Christians, in the consciousness that they 
were nothing and could do nothing without the Spirit from on High, 
were used to begin every important business with prayer, so also at the 
opening of these assemblies, they prepared themselves for the public 
deliberations by uniting in prayer to Him who had promised to en- 
lighten and guide by his Spirit his faithful disciples, when they cast 
themselves wholly on him, and to be in the midst of them wherever they 
were assembled in his name.1 

It seems that this regular institution was at first objected to as an 
innovation, so that Tertullian felt himself called upon to stand forth as 
its advocate.? Yet the prevailing spirit of the church decided in favor 
of the arrangement, and to the middle of the third century, the annual 
provincial synods appear to have been universal, —if we may judge 


ters, may be seen from a passage in Euse-  versis ecclesiis, per que et altiora, queque 

bius, 1. LV. c. 23, and another in Cyprian, in commune tractantur, et ipsa repreesentatio 

ep. 3. totius nominis Christiani magna venera- 
1See the passage of Tertullian, in a tione celebratur. 

work written at the beginning of the third 2 Ista solennia, quibus tunc prasens pa- 

century, (de jejuniis, c. 13:) Aguntur per  trocinatus est sermo. 

Greecias illa certis in locis concilia, ex uni- 


PROVINCIAL SYNODS. 207 


from the fact, that we find them observed at the same time in parts of 
the church so widely remote from each other as Northern Africa and 
Cappadocia.? 

These provincial synods might, beyond a doubt, have proved emi- 
nently salutary in unfolding and purifymg the Christian and church 
life, and indeed did prove so in many respects. In these common de- 
liberations, the views of different individuals might mutually correct 
each others’ errors and supply each others’ defects ; wants, abuses, and 
necessary reforms might be discussed more easily and under more dif- 
ferent points of view; and the communicated experience of each mem- 
ber, made available to all. Certainly also, it savored neither of fanati- 
cism nor hierarchical arrogance, if the delegates and presiding officers 
of the communities, in the consciousness that they were assembled in 
the name of Christ, confidently relied on the guidance of his Spirit, 
whose organs alone they wished to be. 

But this confidence, in itself so right and so salutary, took a false 
and mischievous direction, when it ceased to be accompanied by a spirit 
of humility and self-renunciation, by the constantly living consciousness 
of the condition to which Christ had attached that promise, that Chris- 
tians should be assembled in his name. When, unmindful of this condi- 
tion, the bishops believed they were entitled merely as bishops to rely 
on the illumination of the Holy Spirit, a confidence so ungrounded be- 
came the source of all the self-deception of spiritual pride, that expressed 
itself in the customary words with which the decrees of such synods 
were made known, “under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,’— 
ἐς spiritee sancto suggerente.”’ 

The provincial synods, again, must have operated as a check on the 
development of the church, when, instead of providing for the interests 
of the communities according to the varying wants of each point of 
time, they sought to bind mutable things to unchangeable laws. 
Finally, it was an evil, that the communities were excluded from all 
participation in these assemblies ; that at length the bishops came to 
constitute the sole power in them, and by the union which these synods 
enabled them to enter into with one another, made themselyes more 
powerful every day. 

As the provincial synods were used to communicate their decisions 
on all important matters of common interest to distant bishops, they 
thus served, at the same time, to place the distantly separated portions 
of the church in living union with each other, and to preserve them in 
this connection. 


Union of the entire Church in one whole, closely connected and inter- 
dependent in all its parts. Outward unity of the Catholic Church, 
and its Mode of Representation. 


Thus from the unapparent grains of mustard seed, scattered in the 
field of the world, sprung up a tree, towering above all the plants of 
1 Cyprian, ep. 40, and Firmilianus of nos seniores et przepositi in unum convenia- 


Czsarea in Cappadocia, in Cyprian, ep.75: mus, ad disponenda ea, 4188 cure nostre 
Necessario apud nos fit, ut per singulos an- commissa sunt. 


208 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 


the earth, and spreading its branches in every direction. Such was 
that great unity of the catholic church, which, closely connected 
through all its scattered parts, was so distinguished in its origin, its 
course of development, and its constitution, from all barely human in- 
stitutions. The consciousness of being a member of such a body, that 
had come off victorious over all opposition of earthly power, and was 
destined for perpetuity, must have been felt with the more liveliness 
and power by pagans, inasmuch as they had been familiar only with 
the political and earthly bond of union, but never had a presentiment 
of such a spiritual and moral tie binding men together as members of 
the same heavenly community. Still stronger and more elevated must 
this consciousness have become in times of persecution, when outward 
force tried in vain to sunder this connection. With good right might 
the Christians attach importance even to this unity in its outward man- 
ifestation, even to this intimate external connection, as serving to rep- 
resent that higher life, in the fellowship of which all were as one, and to 
exhibit the unity of the kingdom of God. In this outward fellowship 
of the chyrch life, they experienced the blessed effects of the inward 
fellowship of God’s invisible kingdom ; and to preserve this unity entire, 
they entered into conflict with two different parties — those idealistic 
sects, which threatened to sever the inward bond of fellowship itself — 
the bond of faith; to introduce into the Christian church the old dis- 
tinction between a religion for the educated and refined, and a popular 
faith, (πίστις and γνῶσις.) and, as was justly charged upon them by 
Clement of Alexandria, to divide up the church into a multitude of The- 
osophic schools ; 1 and next, those men who, blinded by self-will or pas- 
sion, brought in divisions on the ground of mere outward differences, 
while in faith they continued to agree with the rest. 

But the conflict arising out of a genuine Christian interest, and 
aimed against some one-sided subjective element that threatened to dis- 
solve this wholesome unity of the church, might easily mislead to another 
extreme, —an undue estimation of externals, —of the existing church 
forms, with which at first this unity was closely knit. Since that out- 
ward unity was, beyond all doubt, not barely outward, but the image 
and expression of the unity within, and in this connection exhibited 
itself to the Christian consciousness and experience; men could the 
more easily suffer themselves, in this polemic attitude, to be so misled 
as to confound, in their conceptions, things which had been fused 
together in each one’s feelings and experience, and to consider them as 
inseparably connected. ‘Thus the conception of the church and its 
necessary unity was thrown outward (verausserlichte sich.) This out- 
ward church became the original one for the religious consciousness ; 
and, in this its outward form, the only possible medium of fellowship 
with Christ. That which in all should, in like manner, have formed 
itself outwardly from within, was transferred to this fellowship, medi- 
ated by means of a determinate outward organism, in certain visible 
forms, — and so the inner and the outward, the invisible and the visible, 


1 For the words of Clemens see St. 1. VII. p. 755: Αὐχοῦσι προίστασϑαι διατριβῆς 
μᾶλλον ἢ ἐκκλησίας 





FIRST SPIRITUAL——THEN OUTWARD. 209 


inseparably fused together. This association of the Christian conscious- 
ness we may perceive already in a writer as early as Irenzeus, who 
defines, in the first place, the conception of the church subsisting under 
this determinate form of constitution, and then puts down the commun- 
ion of the Holy Spirit as something first derived from, and mediated 
by, the former, when he begins by saying, ‘‘ Ubi ecclesia, ibi et Spiritus 
Dei,” and then first adds, “et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic ecclesia.”! An 
entirely different apprehension of the idea of the church and its neces- 
sary unity would have presented itself, by reversing the order of these 
propositions. “It is only at the breast of the church,” as Irenzeus 
says, ‘ that one can be nursed to life. He who takes not refuge in the 
church, cannot partake of the Holy Spirit. He who separates himself 
from this church, renounces the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” Such 
are the propositions grounded in that association of ideas. It is true, 
Trenzus has in his mind simply such opponents of the church as, by 
unchristian doctrine and temper, by selfish imterests, had excluded 
themselves from the fellowship of the divine life.2 Not without good 
and sufficient reason could he complain of those ‘ who, from frivolous 
causes, divided, and, so far as in them lay, annihilated, the great and 
glorious body of Christ.” ? With great truth, doubtless, could he say 
of them, that it was utterly out of their power to occasion as much good, 
as they had done evil through the divisions excited by their means. 
But the position held by Irenzeus might easily lead to the mistake of 
imputing a bad temper and purpose to all those who, from whatever 
tendency, occasioned a reaction against the dominant church system, 
excited some movement or other in the church, and hence, divisions. 
Now as that which distinguishes the New Testament position from the 
Old, is the outward development of the kingdom of God from within 
man’s spirit, so we may recognize in this making outward of the king- 
dom of God, in this notion of the outward church as an indispensable 
mediation, that same confounding together of the Old and New Testa- 
ment positions, which we were forced to recognize before, in the notions 
of the priesthood and of the Clerus. Indeed, both are necessarily con- 
nected ; for the existence and propagation of the church was, in fact, 
to depend on the priesthood and its connection with Christ, of which 
the priesthood was to be the medium. ΤῸ the priesthood was added 
afterwards the episcopal system, as the outward mediation and founda- 
tion of the outward church unity, —a new step in the progress of The- 
ocracy made outward, whose deep-reaching consequences must ever go 
on unfolding themselves more widely. 

In bringing the episcopal system to its completion, we have seen the 
important part acted by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. Not Jess impor- 
tant was his agency in this process of converting the church into an 
outward system of mediation, and confounding together the Old and 
New Testament positions generally. In this regard, his work, De uni- 


1L Til. c. 24,§ 1. χούσας αἰτίας τὸ μέγα καὶ ἔνδοξον σῶμα 
_* Semetipsos fraudant ἃ vita per senten- τοῦ Χριστοῦ τέμνοντας καὶ διαιροῦντας, καὶ 
tiam malam et operationem pessimam. ὅσον τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἀναιροῦντας. 


SL. IV. c. 33,§ 7: Διὰ μικρὰς καὶ τυ- 
18" 


/ 


210 UNITY OF THE CHURCH — 


‘tate ecclesize, written after the middle of the third century, amidst the 


divisions with which he had to contend, constitutes an epoch. This book 
contains a remarkable mixture of the true with the false, arising from 
that outward view of the church; and we shall recognize, in much that 
he says, only the pure expression of the Christian consciousness, when 
we strip away from it that outward notion, and understand it after a 
more inward sense ; when we apply to the propositions he lays down the 
distinction of the visible and the invisible church. We shall then find 
in this work much that is true, directed against a self-seeking, insulat- 
ing tendency, that breaks loose from all connection with the fellowship 
of life, of which the foundation is Christ. We need only to apply what 
he says of the outward relation to a determinate visible form of mani- 
festation of the church, to that inner relation to the community of holy 
men subsisting im union with Christ its head, whence the divine life 
flows forth to the collective body of all the members, which community, 
we must admit, is not necessarily confined to any determinate form of 
constitution. ‘ Try to pluck away his beams from the sun,” says Cy- 
prian, ‘‘ the unity of the light cannot be so divided asunder. Break 
away the twig from the tree, it cannot produce fruit. Cut off the 
stream from its fountain, it becomes dry. Just so the church, inter- 
penetrated by the light of the Lord, sends its rays through the whole 
world. Yet the light which is thus diffused in all directions, is one. In 
the lap of that church we were born; we are nourished by its milk, 
and quickened by its spirit. Whatever breaks itself off from the origi- 
nal stock, when thus apart by itself, cannot breathe and live.” But all 
this, which is in itself true, Cyprian referred exclusively to the determi- 
nate church, connected,—by means of the bishops, its foundation 
pillars, as the successors of the apostles and inheritors of their spirit- 
ual power, — with these apostles, and through them with Christ. His 
chain of ideas is this: Christ communicated to the apostles, the apos- 
tles to the bishops by ordination,! the power of the Holy Ghost; by 
the succession of bishops, the power of the Holy Ghost, whence alone 
all religious acts can receive their efficacy, is extended, through the 
channel of this outward transmission, to all times. Thus is preserved, 
in this organism of the church, ever unfolding itself with a living pro- 
gression, that divine life, which, flowing from the fountain-head through 
this point of mediation, is thus distributed to all the members united 
with the organic whole ; and whoever breaks off his outward connection 
with this outward organism, does, by so doing, exclude himself from 
participating in that divine life and from the way to salvation. No one, 
by himself alone, can, by faith in the Saviour, have any share in the 
divine life that flows from him; no one can, by this faith alone, secure 
to himself all the blessings of God’s kingdom; but all this remains neces- 
sarily mediated through these organs and the connection with them, — 
the connection with the catholic church derived from Christ through 
the succession of bishops. 

This outward view of the church, however, where it had progressed 


1 See on its original form and significancy, my History of the Planting, etc. Vol. I. p. 213. 


FIRST SPIRITUAL—THEN OUTWARD. 911 


so far, called forth a reaction, in the effort after a more spiritual un- 
derstanding of its idea, based on the words of Christ himself. A class 
of persons, perhaps laymen,}! arose in opposition to Cyprian, who appeal- 
ed to the promise of Christ, that “‘ where two or three were gathered 
together in his name, there he would be in the midst of them ; (Matth. 
xviii. 20;) every association of true believers, then, was a church. But 
Cyprian styled such as urged this objection, corruptors of the gospel. 
He accused them of rending these words from their connection, and 
hence giving them a false explanation. He maintained, on the other 
hand, that Christ had just before established harmony among believers, 
the union of hearts in love, as the condition to which the fulfilment of 
this promise was annexed. He then proceeded to argue ;? “ But how 
is it possible for that person to agree with any individual, who does not 
agree with the body of the church itself? How can two or three be 
assembled in the name of Christ, who are separated from Christ and his 
gospel?’ He looks in vain for the fulfilment of the condition of this 
promise in men, who, from leaning to the side of their own opinions, had 
separated themselves from the church ; for they were the authors of the 
schism, — the church had not separated itself from them.? But who 
is the infallible judge of men’s inward disposition, so as to infer with 
certainty from their outward conduct towards a church, not always free 
from blemish, that such a temper exists; where ignorance and misap- 
prehension are quite possible, and right and wrong, in the struggle 
between the parties, may be on both sides ? 

The church once conceived as wholly outward, it must also be con- 
ceived as having a necessary outward unity ; and this principle estab- 
lished, it came next to be thought necessary to settle on some outward 
representation of this outward unity, at some one determinate point. 
This was at first a thing wholly vague and undefined ; — but it was the 
germ from where sprang the papal monarchy of the middle age. 

Now it was, without doubt, not an accidental circumstance, that the 
Apostle Peter, rather than any other one of the apostles, became the 
representative of this unity for the religious consciousness of the West- 
ern church. For on him had been bestowed, in virtue of his peculiar 
natural character, ennobled by the Holy Spirit, more particularly the 
charisma of church government. This gift Christ claimed for the 
development of the first community, when he named him the Man of 
Rock and made him the man of rock, on which he would build his 
church. Yet he said this not to that Peter with whom the human 
passed for more than the divine, — not to that Peter whom he called 
rather a Satan; but to the one who had uttered the powerful witness 


1 Cyprian describes them thus: Nec se dunt—. Unanimitatem prius posuit, con- 
quidam vana interpretatione decipiant, quod cordiam pacis ante preemisit, ut conveniat 
dixerit Dominus: Ubicunque fuerint duo nobis, fideliter et firmiter docuit. Quomo- 
aut tres collecti in nomine meo, ego cum do autem potest ei cum aliquo conyenire, 
jis sum. Corruptores evangelii atque in- cui cum corpore ipsius ecclesiz non con- 
end falsi. See next note. venit? Quomodo possunt duo aut tres in 

Extrema ponunt et superiora prete- nomine Christi colligi, quos constat a Chris- 
reunt, partis memores et partem subdole to et ab ejus evangelio separari 1 
comprimentes. Ut ipsi ab ecclesia scissi 8 Non enim nos ab illis, sed illi a nobis 
sunt, ita capituli unius sententiam scin- recesserunt. 


212 UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 


of him as the Son of God; and inasmuch as he had uttered this, that 
one to whom he could say, ‘‘ Blessed art thou, for flesh and blood have 
not revealed this unto thee, but my Father in Heaven.’ That peculiar 
charisma procured for this apostle the position he assumed in speaking 
and acting in the name of all who composed the first community of 
Christians.! Yet with all this was by no means conceded to him a 
preference and precedence over the rest of the apostles. Of any rank, 
indeed, of one above another, the question generally was never to be 
raised among them. Every assumption of that kind, he who came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister, severely rebuked, (Luke xxii: 
24.) The only contention was to be a mutual strife of each to serve 
the other. There were three apostles whom Christ, by virtue of their 
personal traits of character, distinguished above the rest; Peter was 
only one of these. Hach of them had his own particular charisma, and 
his peculiar position which depended on this. As Peter was the man 
of Rock, working outwardly; so John possessed that charisma by virtue 
of which he leaned on the Lord’s bosom, penetrated most deeply into 
his being, and into the matter of his discourses. As his own peculiar 
charisma and position caused Peter first to appear prominent at the 
founding of the church; so his own charisma and position caused John 
to retreat more out of view, acting no prominent part until a later 
period, when it became important to reconcile the oppositions that had 
arisen, to restore peace among the conflicting elements, to tranquillize 
and establish the communities when fallen into commotions. The great 
apostle to the Gentiles maintained, in a manner the most decided, his 
apostolic independence, against that Jewish principle, estimating every 
thing by a standard of outwardness, which subsequently, under another 
form, mixed itself in with the development of the church; and Paul 
could say of himself, that grace had effected more by him than by all 
the others. 

From these remarks, then, it is clear, that the idea of a primacy of 
the Apostle Peter had nothing to fix on but a misunderstanding as well 
of the position assigned him in the progressive movement of the church 
development, as also of the particular predicates which were given 
to him; although it had its good ground, that this peculiar talent 
centered precisely in him. 

In his work on the unity of the church, Cyprian justly observes, that 
all the apostles had received from Christ the same dignity and the same 
power with Peter; but he supposes that in one passage, however, 
Christ bestows this power on Peter in particular, —says of him im par- 
ticular, that on him he will build his church,— gives it in charge to 
him in particular to feed his sheep— for the purpose of showing how 
the whole development of the church and of the priesthood was to radi- 
ate from one point, and thus making clearly evident the unity of the 
church, the unity of the episcopal power. The Apostle Peter appears 
here as the representative of the one church, abiding in the unity she 
derived from the divine appointment, and of the one episcopal power, 


1 See my History of the Planting, &c., Vol. I. p. 505, et seq. 


PETER’S PRIMACY A MISUNDERSTANDING. 218 


which, though distributed among many organs, yet in its origin and 
essence is, and ever remains, but one. Whoever, therefore, forsakes 
the outward fellowship with the one visible, catholic church, tears him- 
self away from the representation of the unity of the church, connected 
by divine appointment with the person of the Apostle Peter. How is 
it possible for any one to suppose he continues still to be a member of 
the church of Christ, when he forsakes the cathedra Petri, on which the 
church was founded ?? 

But even allowing that the Apostle Peter might be considered as the 
representative of the unity of the church, still it by no means follows, 
that an individual representative of this kind must continue to exist in 
the church through every age. Still less does it follow, that this indi- 
vidual representative must be connected particularly with the Roman 
church ; for although the tradition that the Apostle Peter visited the 
church at Rome cannot, on good and sufficient grounds, be called in 
question, yet certain it is, that he was not the founder of this church, 
and that he was never, in any special sense, its presiding officer. . ‘This 
church could with as little propriety be called the cathedra Petri, as 
the cathedra Pauli. Irenzeus and Tertullian seem to be aware, indeed, 
that Peter and Paul were its founders, that they gave it a bishop, and 
honored it by their martyrdom. But that the Roman church held a 
prominence, as the cathedra Petri, over all other apostolic churches, 
they still remain ignorant. Yet as the idea of an outward unity of the 
church could suggest the notion of an outward individual representative 
of that unity, so the recognition of such a historical representation 
might easily pass out of the ideal into the real world, so that the exhi- 
bition of the church unity at a determinate point came to be considered 
not barely as a thing once existing, but as necessary for the existence 
of the church in all times. And as it was no accidental thing, that the 
apostle had been made the representative of the church guidance, so 
too was it no accidental thing, that men, when once impelled to seek 
for such an outward representation of the church unity for all times, 
transferred this dignity precisely to the church of the great city which 
was called to rule in the world. As most of the western communities. 
were used to regard the Roman church as their mother, their ecclesia 
apostolica, to whose authority they especially appealed; as they were 
in the habit of naming Peter the founder of the Roman church, and to 
trace back the tradition of the Roman church to him; and as Rome 
was once the seat of the domimion of the word; it so happened that 
men began to consider the Roman church as the cathedra Petri, and 
to apply what had been said of the Apostle Peter, as the representative 
of the church unity, to this cathedra Petri. In the making outward 
of the conception of the church, from which this form of the outward 
presentation of its unity gradually shaped itself, the way was already 


1 Some trace of this mode of explaining 
the above passages relating to the Apostle 
Peter, may be found even in Tertullian. 
Prescript. heret. c. 22: “Latuit aliquid 
Petrum zdificande ecclesia Petrum dic- 
tum, claves regni coelorum consecutum et 


solvendi et alligandi in ceelis et in terris 
potestatem?” This language shows that he 
was not a Montanist when he wrote this book; 
as is evident by comparing it with what he 
wrote when a Montanist, in his book de 
Pudicitia, of which we shall speak hereafter, 


214 ARROGANT CLAIMS OF ROMAN BISHOPS. 

prepared for the conversion of the political supremacy of the “ city” 
into this spiritual form,— which moreover contained the germ to the 
secularizing of Christ’s kingdom. 

In Cyprian we find this transference already complete. As evidence 
of this, may serve not only those passages in his book de unitate ecclesize, 
where the reading is disputed ;!— in an uncontroverted passage, ep. 
55 ad Cornel., he styles the Roman church the “ Petri cathedra, ec- 
clesia principalis, unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est.” 

Without doubt, this idea was still very obscure and vague; but a 
false principle once established, the more vague the notion, the more 
room would be left for introducing new meanings, and extracting 
new inferences. In the minds of the Roman bishops, this idea seems 
early to have obtained a more fixed and definite shape; and here the 
Roman love of empire seems early to have insinuated itself into ecclesi- 
astical affairs, and made its appearance in a spiritual dress. 

Far back we observe already in the Roman bishops traces of the 
assumption, that to them, as successors of the Apostle Peter, belonged 
a peculiar and ultimate authority in ecclesiastical disputes; that the 
cathedra Petri must take precedence of all other apostolic churches, as 
the source of the apostolic tradition. Such an assumption was shown 
by the Roman bishop Victor, when, about the year 190, he excommu- 
nicated the churches of Asia Minor on account of some trifling dispute 
relating to mere externals.? In the Montanistic writings of Tertullian 
we find indications, showing that the Roman bishops issued peremptory 
edicts on ecclesiastical matters; endeavored to make themselves con- 
sidered as the bishops of bishops —episcopos episcoporum ;* and were 
in the habit of appealing to the authority of their “ antecessores.”’ 4 

After the middle of the third century, the Roman bishop Stephanus 
allowed himself to be carried away by the same spirit of hierarchical 
arrogance as his predecessor Victor. It was his wish, too, in a dispute 
by no means important,° to obtrude the tradition of the Roman church 
on all other churches as an unalterable and decisive law; and he ex- 
communicated the churches of Asia Minor and of North Africa, which 
refused to acknowledge this rule.® 


1 Though, in the passage from Cyprian, 
“ Qui ecclesiz renititur et resistit, [qui ca- 
thedram Petri, super quem fundata est ec- 
clesia, deserit] in ecclesia se esse confidit ?” 
the suspected clause, here included in brack- 
ets, were genuine, yet it would not follow, 
that, in this particular instance, he had in 
his mind the cathedra Petri subsisting at 
his time in the Roman church; but the 
phrases, “ ecclesiz reniti,” and “cathedram 
Petri deserere,” might rather, according to 
the connection, be wholly codrdinate, so 
that he would say: he who breaks his con- 
nection with the one only church, does by 
that very act attack the representation of 
the church unity which had been attached 
by Christ himself to the person of the Apos- 
tle Peter. The whole Apostolic and epis- 
copal fulness of authority as one, although 
manifesting itself through different organs, 
appears to him to be represented in the 


spiritual power transferred to the Apostle 
Peter. The entire episcopatus, or the ca- 
thedra of all the bishops conceived as 
one = the cathedra Petri,— hence to re- 
nounce obedience to the bishops is the same 
as to attack the cathedra Petri. 

2 The dispute about the time of celebrat- 
ing Easter, of which mention will be made 
hereafter. 

8 Tertullian, de pudicitia, c. 1: Audio, 
edictum esse propositum et quidem peremp- 
torium: pontifex scilicet maximus, quod 
est episcopus episcoporum, edicit. 

4 Tertullian, de virg. velandis. 

5 The dispute about the validity of bap- 
tism administered by heretics, also to be 
noticed elsewhere. 

® Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est, 
—he declared,—se per successionem ca- 
thedram Petri habere. Cyprian, ep. 74 et 75. 


OPPOSITION TO THEM. IREN®US—CYPRIAN. 215 


But it was far from being the case, that these assumptions of the 
Roman bishops could penetrate even through the western ghurch — to 
say nothing here of the reaction they had to encounter from the freer. 
tendencies of the Greek church. In the first named dispute, the com- 
munities of Asia Minor, nothing daunted by the arrogant langnage of 
Victor, maintained their own principles, and set over against the tradi- 
tion of the Roman church, the tradition of their own sedes apostolicee. 
Irenzus, bishop of Lyons,! in a letter to the Roman bishop Victor, 
severely rebuked his unchristian arrogance, although agreemg with 
him as to the matter in dispute. He disapproved of his attempt to 
obtrude one form of church life on all the communities; and declared 
that nothing was required but unity in faith and in love ; and that this, 
instead of being disturbed by differences in respect to outward things, 
did but shine forth through these differences with the greater strength. 
He recognized the right of all the communities, in such matters, to act 
freely and independently, according to their own ancient usage. He 
objected to the authority of the tradition of a single determinate church 
the fact, that tradition often originates in, and is propagated by, sim- 
plicity and ignorance. Although Cyprian, as we have before re- 
marked, looked upon the Roman church as really the cathedra Petri, 
and as the representative of the outward church unity, yet he was far 
from inferring thence the nght of this church to determine all matters 
of church controversy. On the contrary, he maintained, with firmness 
and energy, the independent right of the individual bishops to manage 
the affairs of their churches according to their own principles; and he 
carried through what he recognized as right, in spite of the op- 
position of the Roman church. In communicating to Stephanus, 
bishop of Rome, at the commencement of the second of the above 
mentioned controversies, the principles of the North African church, 
which he well knew did not accord with the Roman usages, he ad- 
dressed him in the name of a synod, as one colleague, conscious of an 
equality of dignity and of rights, addresses another. ‘In virtue of 
our equal dignity,’ says he, ‘‘ and in unfeigned love, we have imparted 
these things to you, dearest brother; for we hope, that whatever is 
agreeable to piety and truth — will also, in accordance with your own 
true faith and true piety, be pleasing to you. We are well aware, 
however, that many are reluctant to part with the opinions they have 
once imbibed, and slow to change their principles; but so far as they 
can do it, without violating the bond of unity and peace, binding them 
to their colleagues, cling to many peculiarities which have become cus- 
tomary among them. In matters of this sort, we put no restraint, we 
impose no law, on any man; since each presiding officer of a commu- 
nity has, in the management of these matters, his own free will, and 
is accountable for his mode of proceeding to the Lord alone.” 


1 Kuseb. 1. V. c. 24. aut legem damus, quando habeat in eccle- 

2 Τῶν παρὰ τὸ ἀκριβὲς ὡς εἰκὸς κρατούν- six administratione voluntatis suz arbitri- 
τῶν τὴν Ka ἁπλότητα καὶ ἰδιωτισμὸν συνῆ- um liberum unusquisque prepositus, ratio- 
ϑειαν εἰς τὸ μετέπειτα πεποιηκότων. nem actus sui Domino redditurus. 

8 Qua in re nec nos vim cuiquam facimus 


216 CYPRIAN OPPOSES THE CLAIMS OF ROME. 


After the violent declarations which ensued from the Roman bishop, 
he continued to avow the same principle before a council of more than 
eighty of the bishops of North Africa; inviting each of them to express 
his own views. with freedom; “ for no one,” said he, “should make 
himself a bishop of bishops.” When Stephanus appealed to the author- 
ity of the ancient Roman tradition, and spoke against innovations, 
Cyprian replied,! that it was rather Stephanus himself who made the 
innovations, and broke away from the unity of the church. ‘‘ Whence 
then,’’ he says, “‘ comes that tradition? Is it derived from the words 
of our Lord and from the authority of the gospels, or from the instruc- 
tions and the letters of the apostles? Custom, which has crept in 
among some unawares, ought not to hinder the truth from eee 
and triumphing ; for custom without truth is only inveterate error. 
He finely remarks, “ that it is no more beneath the dignity of a Roman 
bishop than of any other man, to suffer himself to be corrected when he 
is in the wrong; for the bishop ought not only to teach but to learn, 
for he becomes even the better teacher, who is daily addmg to his 
knowledge and making progress by the correction of his errors.” Fir- 
milianus also, the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, in expressing his 
agreement with Cyprian, declared himself quite strongly against the 
unchristian behavior of Stephanus, who forbade the Roman church to 
receive the delegates of the North African church into their houses. 
He considered it a reproach that one who boasted of being the succes- 
sor of the Apostle Peter, on whom was built the unity of the church, 
should rend that unity by his uncharitable and arrogant proceedings. 
In opposition to the alleged tradition of the Roman church, he pro- 
duced the tradition of other ancient churches, as also doctrinal reasons ; 
and as evidence that the Romans did not observe, in all points, the 
original tradition, and appealed im vain to the authority of the apostles, 
he adduces the fact, that in many church matters, they departed from 
the customs of the church at Jerusalem, and of the ancient apostolical 
churches ;° yet notwithstanding all these differences, the unity and 
peace of the catholic church had never been disturbed.4 

On another and earlier occasion, Cyprian had already shown how 
far he was from yielding to the Roman bishops a supreme jurisdiction 
in the church, and from countenancing them im the exercise of it. 
Basilides and Martialis, two Spanish bishops, had been deposed by a 
synod, because they were lidellatici, and for other offences; and it is 
said, they acknowledged themselves the validity of their sentence. In 
the place of Basilides, a successor had already been chosen by the pro- 
vincial bishops, with the assistance of the church over which he had 
presided. The two deposed bishops, however, had recourse to Stepha- 
nus, the bishop of Rome, and the latter, assuming a supreme judicatory 
power, reversed the sentence of the Spanish ecclesiastical court, and 


1 Ep. 74, ad Pompej. 8 Ep. 75. 

2Nec consuetudo, que apud quosdam 4 Kos autem, qui Rome sunt, non ea in 
obrepserat, impedire debet, quominus veri- omnibus observare, que sunt ab origine 
tas prevaleat et vincat; nam consuetudo tradita, et frustra apostolorum auctorita- 
sine veritate vetustas erroris est. tem preetendere. 


CHURCH DISCIPLINE. a1 


restored them both to their office; whether it was that he found good 
reasons for so doing in what they alleged in their own justification, or 
that there was already a strong inclination in the Roman church to 
take part with those that appealed to its jurisdiction. A contest now 
arose in Spain on the question whether the first or the second sentence 
should be respected, and the communities of North Africa were applied 
to for their opinion. The North African synod at Carthage, in whose 
name Cyprian replied, did not hesitate to declare that the decision of 
the Roman bishop was without force, and strongly charged the Spanish 
churches not to suffer the two unworthy bishops to continue in office. 
Into the question, whether the Roman bishop was justified in prosecut- 
ing such a judicial examination, Cyprian did not enter; but he declared 
without farther discussion, the unjust sentence, resting as it did on in- 
sufficient grounds, to be void. ‘“ The regular ordination,”’ he observed,} 
(meaning of the successor to the deposed bishop Basilides,) “ cannot 
be rendered null, because Basilides, after his offences were discovered, 
and had been acknowledged too by himself, went to Rome and deceived 
our colleague Stephanus, who was at a distance, and not acquainted 
with the real circumstances of the case; so that he who had been de- 
posed by a just sentence, fraudulently contrived to be reinstated in his 
office.” Perhaps the mortification which the ambitious, hierarchical 
views of Stephanus experienced on this occasion — although in other 
respects Cyprian speaks of him with great moderation —had much in- 
fluence in deciding him to the obstinate stand which he took in the 
later controversy of which we have before spoken. 


Church Discipline. Exclusion from thegFellowship of the Visible 


Church. Re-admission to the same. 


As the founder of the church had foretold, the process of its develop- 
ment could be none other than a process of refining, renewed over and 
over again. The idea of a perfectly pure and perfectly holy church 
could not be realized in the earthly course of its history ; — for the life 
communicated by Christ to humanity can be sustained and transmitted 
only in a never ceasing conflict with the power of sin, which resists the 
current of that life from without, and even threatens to mix in and 
disturb it with its own impurities. The church itself which truly an- 
swers to its conception, the church of the regenerate and sanctified, 
continues ever to be inwardly affected by the reactions of this principle 
of sin never wholly overcome ; and hence in continual need of cleansing. 
But this church, though represented in a visible form, is yet in its es- 
sence invisible ; and to this its visible appearance various elements be- 
come attached, partaking in no respect of that inner essence ; ---- and 
there are no sure and certain marks whereby it is possible to separate 
from one another these heterogeneous components. Manifold are: the 
gradations through which the transition is made from the true church 
to the opposite world, which strives to draw her into itself and to trans- 
form her by its own spirit; a thing impossible, unless she enter herself 


1 Ep. 68. 
VOL. I. 19 


218 CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 


into such a union. Hence the sifting of the chaff from the wheat, 
which can be accomplished by no human tribunal, and which strives 
prematurely to sever the threads of historical development ordained and 
surely guided by divine Wisdom, and would hinder the very work of 
the church itself to reform the world, must be left to a higher judgment, 
and can only take place after the threads of history have run their 
appointed course. 

But the church, when left wholly to herself, and unmixed as yet 
with the state, might bring about, if not a perfect, yet a certain separa- 
tion —so as to exclude from herself the manifestly foreign elements, 
showing themselves to be such by marks not to be mistaken ; indeed, 
the Jewish synagogues had before exercised a disciplinary judgment of 
this kmd over their members. The early communities were thus to 
seek to secure themselves against the infection of pagan immorality, 
and thereby practically to bear witness, that the mere confession of 
faith made no man a Christian ;— that whoever contradicted by his 
daily living the laws of Christianity, could not be regarded as a Chris- 
tian brother. . 

Hence the Apostle Paul declared the Christian communities to be 
not merely justified, but bound, to eject such,unworthy members from 
their body. With all pagans, the Christians might eat, and stand in 
every social relation; but with such apostate brethren, they were to 
avoid all manner of intercourse, for the purpose of practically showing 
them, that they could no longer claim the title of Christian brethren. 
It was from this point of view, that Tertullian could now say to the 
pagans: ‘‘ Those who are no Christians, are wrongly so called; such 
in truth take no part in ouf religious assemblies; such receive not with 
us the communion; they have by their sins become yours again, since 
we hold not even common intercourse with those whom your cruelty 
has forced to denial; although we should certainly be likely to tolerate 
amongst us more easily those who through constraint than those who 
have voluntarily deserted the principles of our religion. Besides, it is 
without reason you call those Christians who are not recognized as such 
by the Christians, who cannot deny their own.”’} 

But the church was designed also to be an institution for training ; 
it was not to give up the hope of reclaiming the fallen. By this very 
exclusion from the society of the brethren, the fallen members, if they 
retained any susceptibility for better feelings, were to be brought to the 
sense of their guilt and awakened to a fruitful repentance. If they 
manifested any such penitence im their living, they were to be taken 
under the fostermg care of the church, and at length, after their re- 
pentance had been sufficiently proved, once more adopted into the 
community. Such was the direction of the Apostle Paul. In later 
times, various regulations were gradually introduced, relating to the 
cases in which resort should be had to such exclusion from the church 
fellowship; to the manner of life which the excluded members ought to 
lead ; to the proofs of remorse and penitence which they must give, and 


1 Ad nation. 1. I. ο. 5. 


CHURCH PENANCE. 219 


to the duration of the time of their exclusion. All these points were 
differently determined, according to the different nature of the offences, 
and the different moral character evinced by the offenders. Those who 
stood in this relation to the community, were made a particular class, 
designated by the name of pcenitentes. Tertullian requires “ that the 
inward compunction of conscience should be manifested also by outward 
acts ;! that they should express their sorrow by their whole deportment, 
pray for the forgiveness of their sins with fasting, present a confession 
of their sins before the community, request the intercessions of all the 
Christian brethren, and especially humble themselves before the pres- 
byters and the known friends of God.” ? To those who suffered them- 
selves to be kept back by shame from making confession before the 
church, he says, “‘ This may be grievous, where one exposes himself to 
contempt and to mockery ; where others exalt themselves at the expense 
of him who has fallen. But in the midst of brethren and fellow-servants, 
where the hope, fear, joy, pain and suffering are shared in common ; 
because one common spirit proceeds from one common Lord and Fath- 
er, — how should you there consider your own as different from your- 
self? Why fly from those to whom your grief is as their own, as if 
they rejoiced over it? The body cannot rejoice at the suffering of one 
of its members. The whole body must share in the pain and codperate 
towards the cure. Where two are together, there is the church ; but 
the church is Christ. When you embrace the knees of your brother, 
you embrace. Christ, you are a suppliant to Christ. And so when they 
weep over you, Christ suffers, Christ supplicates the Father. Hasily 
is that ever obtained, which the Son supplicates of the Father.” Ori- 
gen writes: + “ the Christians sorrow over those who have been overcome 
by lust, or any other noticeable vice, as if they were dead; and after a 
long period, if they have given sufficient evidence of a change of heart, | 
they receive them once more to the standing of catechumens, as those ~ 
risen from the dead.”” When their penitence had been satisfactorily 
proved, they were absolved and restored to the fellowship of the church 
= the sign of blessing, the laying on of the hands of the bishop and 
clergy. 

Salutary as these regulations might be, as a means of Christian cul- 
ture, in the then existing state of the church, yet here also there was 
great danger of confounding the Inner essence with the Outward form, 
especially when the outward notion of the church had already become 
a fundamental principle. Such must have been the case, for example, 
when it was attempted to confine the expression of penitent feelings to cer- 
tain uniform signs, and it was thought that in manifesting these consisted 
the essence of true penitence itself; and again, when no distinction was 
made betwixt absolution and the divine forgiveness of sins. The church 
teachers, however, did not fail to point out the true nature of Christian 
repentance, and to represent those outward mortifications as merely 
signs of an inward grace. ‘ When the man condemns himself,” says 


1 Ut non sola conscientia preferatur, sed 2L.c. 
aliquo etiam actu administretur. De poeni- Ῥ Το, ὃ, 10: 
tentia, ο. 9. #¢. Cels. 1. III. ¢. 51. 


220 CHURCH PENANCE. 


Tertullian,! “ΚΞ God acquits him. So far — believe me —as thou sparest 
not. thyself, God will spare thee.”” And the bishop Firmilianus of 
Ceesarea in Cappadocia says, in a letter written in the latter half of the 
third century: ‘ With us, the bishops and presbyters meet once a year 
to consult together for the recovery by repentance of fallen brethren ; 
not as though they could receive from us the forgiveness of sins, but 
that they may by us be brought to a sense of their sins and constrained 
to render a more full satisfaction to the Lord.? Cyprian explains him- 
self thus:? ‘We do not prejudge the Lord’s judgment; so that if he 
find the sinner’s repentance full and satisfactory, he may ratify our 
decision; but if any man shall have deceived us by a hypocritical 
repentance, then let God, who cannot be mocked, and who looketh on 
the heart, decide with regard to that which we have failed to explore 
to the bottom, and the master correct the judgment of his servants.” 
But still it cannot be denied, that the consequences resulting from 
that making outward of the conception of the church, and that Old 
Testament view of the priesthood, had here already mixed in. Thus 
the judgment on an individual who had rendered himself liable to the 
church penance was reckoned among the acts of this priesthood; and 
the full power of exercising it, derived from the authority to bind and 
to loose, given to the apostles. That one should thus submit himself to 
the judgment of the priest, appeared as an act of that humility which 
belongs to the essence of true penitence.t The notion took such a 
shape, that the whole system of church penance came to be considered 
as a satisfaction to be done to God.® Perhaps there were some who 
opposed this view of the necessity of outward church penance, and who 
endeavored to establish the principle that all depended on the direction 
of the heart and of the affections towards God, not on external things.® 
We say perhaps, —for from the language of Tertullian in combatting 
this class, from his own assumed position, we cannot decide with cer- 
tainty in what sense that principle was understood. It is certamly 
possible, that they may have been a class, who made a false distinction 
between the Inner and the Outward in the religious life, and under the 
pretext that all depended on the inner direction of the affections towards 
God alone, allowed themselves to excuse the failings of the outward life.’ 
Connected with the remarks here made on church penance and 
church absolution, must be our judgment also of a controversy which 
arose with regard to these matters. Had the notion of absolution been 
rightly understood, as an announcement of the divine forgiveness of sin, 
always conditioned on repentance and faith, instead of being converted 
into a judicial act of the clergy, a mutual understanding might have 


1 De peenitentia, c. 9. Peenitentia; aterm derived from the civil 
2 Cyprian, ep. 75. law, which he had studied and practised in 
8 In his 52d letter ad Antonian. early life. 

4 See the words, in a letter of the Con- 6 Sed ajunt quidam, satis Deum habere, 


fessors, in Cyprian, (ep. 26.) Humilitas si corde et animo suspiciatur, licet actu mi- 

atque subjectio, alienum de se expectasse nus fiat. De poenitentia, ¢. 5. 

judicium, alienam de suo sustinuisse sen- 7“Ttaque se salvo metu et fide peccare,” 

tentiam. says Tertullian, —prone, as he was, to in- 
5 Satisfactio, in Tertullian’s book de fer evil from the doctrines of his opponents. 


VENIAL SINS — MORTAL SINS. 221 


been easily brought about on the matter of dispute which we are now 
about to mention. We allude to the controversy between a milder and 
a more rigid party on the subject of church penance. 

All were agreed in distinguishing those sins into which all Christians 
might fall through the remaining sinfulness of their nature, and those 
which clearly indicated that the transgressor was still living under 
bondage to sin as an abiding condition ; that he was not one of the 
regenerate; that he had either never attained to that condition, or 
had again fallen from it — peccata venalia — and peccata mortahia, or 
ad mortem. ‘These terms they had derived from the first epistle of St. 
John. Among sins of the second class they reckoned, besides the de- 
nial of Christianity, deception, theft, incontinence, adultery, ete.! Now 
it was the principle of the milder party, which gradually became the 
predominant one, that the church was bound to receive every fallen 
member, into whatever sins he may have fallen, —to hold out to all, 
ander the condition of sincere repentance, the hope of the forgiveness 
of sin. At least, in the hour of death, absolution and the communion 
should be granted to those who manifested true repentance. The 
other party would never consent to admit again to the fellowship of the 
church, such as had violated their baptismal vow by sins of the latter 
class. Such persons, — said they, — have once despised the forgive- 
ness of sin obtained for them by Christ, and assured to them in baptism. 


There is no purpose of divine grace with regard to such, which is 


revealed to us; hence the church is 1m no case warranted to announce 
to them the forgiveness of sin. If the church exhorts them also to 
repentance, yet she can promise nothing to them as to the issue, since 
the power bestowed on her to bind and to loose has no reference to 
such. She must leave them to the judgment of God. The one party 
would not suffer that any limits should be set to the mercy of God 
towards penitent men; the other would preserve erect the holiness of 
God, and feared that, by a false confidence in the power of priestly ab- 
solution, men would be encouraged to feel more safe in their sins. 


Church Divisions or Schisms. 


The schisms, or church divisions in the more limited sense, must be 
distinguished from the heresies properly so called. The former were 
such divisions of the catholic church, as proceeded from certain out- 
ward occasions, aiming at objects connected with the constitution or the 
discipline of the church ; the latter, divisions which sprung out of differ- 
ences and disputes on matters of doctrine. While all that is to be said 
of the latter stands intimately connected with the genetic development 
of doctrines, the exhibition of the former cannot be separated from the 
history of the constitution and discipline of the church ; and each serves 
to illustrate the other. Ina doctrinal point of view, the history of 
church divisions is important only so far as it serves to unfold the doc- 
trine on the church; but the development of this doctrine stands closely ἡ 


1 Homicidium, idololatria, fraus, negatio, blasphemia, mechia et fornicatio. Tertullian, 
de pudicitia, c. 19. 
iv” 


222 CHURCH DIVISIONS. 
connected again with the history of the church constitution. It seems, 
therefore, in every view, best suited to our purpose, to annex the history 
of church divisions with the section which relates the history of the con- 
stitution of the church. anne 

We have to notice in this period two remarkable divisions of the 
church, both intimately connected with each other, as well in respect to 
the time of their origin, as in respect to the churches and persons, that 
especially took part in them. In the history of both, the monarchical 
system of episcopacy is seen coming forth victoriously out of the contest 
with presbyterianism; in both, Catholicism is seen triumphing over 
Separatism ; both divisions conduced to the establishment of the system 
of church unity. We refer to the divisions of Felicisstmus and to that 
of Novatian ; the first proceeding out of the church of proconsular 
Africa, the second out of the church of Rome. 

In the history of the first mentioned division, the bishop Cyprian of Ὁ 
Carthage appears as the head of a party, and as the most important 
among the actors in the scene; and the origin of the schism was imme- 
diately connected with the manner in which he arrived at the episcopal 
dignity. It will serve, therefore, to give us a clearer understanding of 
the whole subject, if we begin with casting a ‘glance at the history of 
this man’s life. Cyprian had remained a pagan until the last years of 
his manhood. He was by profession a rhetorician, if not an advocate,! 
and the rhetorical cast of his style of writing testifies of this his earlier 
occupation. In the years of his paganism he had already gained pub- 
lic confidence by the uprightness of his life. By the influence of the 
presbyter Czecilius, whose name he afterwards adopted, and who at his 
death committed his wife and children to Cyprian’s care, he was 
brought to embrace the Christian faith. Although, while a pagan, he 
had led a blameless life in the common estimation, yet it by no means 
appeared so to himself, after he had learned to contemplate the requisi- 
tions of the divine law, and to know himself in the light of Christianity. 
The profound sense of sin, as a power from which man cannot deliver 
himself by his own strength, preceded also in his case the experience of 
that which grace alone can effect; as he expresses it in the letter ad- 
dressed to his friend Donatus, written probably soon after his baptism. 
Hence he was now the more inspired with a glowing enthusiasm to reach 
‘that idea of the divine life which Christianity had lighted up within his 
soul. And as he interpreted the words of our Lord —“ If thon wilt be 
perfect, go sell that thou hast and give it to the poor,” according to the 
prevailing views of that period, more closely to their letter than to their 
spirit, for the purpose of fulfiling this requisition, he sold the two landed 
estates of which he was possessed,* and distributed the proceeds among 


1 Jerome says, (ἃ. v. i. c.67,) that he was 
a rhetorician, and we have no good reason 
to doubt this account. We are under no 
necessity of supposing that in what he says 
(ep. I. ad Donatum.) respecting the oppo- 
sition between spiritual and worldly elo- 
quence, (in judiciis, in concione, pro rostris,) 
that he was thinking of his own calling, 


and therefore had once been used to such 
public discourse. 

2 See the biographical sketch of his life, 
composed by his disciple, the Deacon Pon- 
tus. 

8 His garden was soon restored back to 
him, probably by the love of the church, as 
we may gather from the language of Pon- 


CYPRIAN—HIS HISTORY AND POSITION. 223 


the poor. The devout zeal which shone forth so brilliantly in his con- 
duct even while a neophyte, acquired for him, to a great degree, the 
love and esteem of the community. He became the man of the people ; 
and the community made use of the influence they could then com- 
mand, in his behalf. He was raised by their votes, contrary to the letter 
of the church laws, soon after his baptism, in 247, to the dignity of a 
presbyter, and as early as the year 248, placed at the head, as bishop. 
The community environed his house, for the purpose of compellmg him 
to accept the episcopal dignity. But this very circumstance, that he 
had been raised to the station he occupied by the enthusiastic love of 
the church, contributed from the first to create a party against him, at 
the head of which stood five presbyters.1 Of these, several, perhaps, 
put forward claims themselves to the episcopal office, and looked with 
eyes of jealousy on the upstart neophyte who superseded those that had 
grown gray in the service of the church. They might also be led on 
by other motives to us unknown. Cyprian was well aware of the diffi- 
cult position he was about to assume, when he shrank back from the 
assumption of the chief pastoral office, the whole weight and responsi- 
bleness of which stood clearly before him, — attractive as it must have 
seemed, on the other hand, to a man of his peculiar bent and talent for 
tule to be placed at the head of the church governance. We discover 
here the first ground and the germ of the ensuing controversies. The 
five presbyters above mentioned now proceeded with their followers to 
contest the episcopal authority of Cyprian ; and as the presbyters were 
still mindful of their ancient rights, and still striving to maintain their 
former influence in the government of the church, there could be no 
want of disputes between a bishop, and especially one like Cyprian, so 
resolutely active, in the consciousness of that supreme spiritual power 
which he believed himself to possess by divine right, and his antagonists 
in the presbyterial college. 

Where men are contending for their rights, even those men in whom 
a life from God has indeed begun, but the strength of the old nature 
stil makes itself felt, it is usually the case, that instead of emulating 
each other, with the spirit of love and self-renunciation, in the fulfil- 
ment of duties, they allow, on both sides, their own will and their pas- 
sions to give that which is wrong the color of right. So it happened in 
the present case. But we are not well enough mformed of all the cir- 
cumstances to be able clearly to separate the right from the wrong on 
either side; for we have only the representations of one party in the 
dispute, —representations which sometimes bear on their very front the 
marks of strong excitement. 

An unbiassed contemplation will certamly not fail to discover in Cy- 
prian, the man inspired and animated with true love to the Redeemer 


tius: Hortos, quos inter initia fidei sue the five presbyters: Conjurationis suze me- 
venditos, et Dei indulgentia restitutos. mores, et antiqua illa contra episcopatum 

1 We see this from the words of Pontius, meum, imo contra suffragium vestrum et 
in speaking of Cyprian’s election: Quidam Dei judicium venena retinentes, instaurant 
illi restiterunt, etiam ut vinceret; with which veterem contra nos impugnationem suam. 
compare ep. 40, respecting the intrigues of 


224 CHURCH DIVISIONS. 

and to his church. It is undeniable that he was devoted to his com- 
munity, as a faithful shepherd; that its interests honestly lay nearest 
his heart; and that he meant to exercise his episcopal authority for the 
preservation of good order and discipline in the flock ; — but it is also 
certain, that he was not sufficiently on his guard against that funda- 
mental evil of man’s nature, which so easily fastens on what is best in 
him, and by which the best qualities may be even perverted and de- 
stroyed, — an evil which may be most dangerous to those endowed with 
great gifts and powers for the Lord’s service, — most dangerous, where 
it exhibits itself under the spiritual garb, — that he was not watchful 
enough against the risings and suggestions of self-will and pride. The 
point he was contending for, the full power of the episcopate, proved to 
him certainly, at times, the rock whereon his spiritual life made ship- 
wreck. He forgot, in the bishop, ‘“‘appointed by God himself and act- 
ing ὧν the name of Christ,” the man, still living im the flesh, and 
exposed, like all other men, to the temptations of sin; im the dzshop, 
over whom no layman might set up himself to judge, the bishop called 
to rule and gifted with an inviolable authority from God, he forgot the 
disciple of Christ, of him who was meek and lowly of spirit, and for the 
good of his brethren, appeared in the form of‘a servant. Tad he ever 
remained true to this spirit of Christ’s disciples, he might assuredly 
have gained the victory over his adversaries with far more ease to him- 
self and safety to the church, than by all his stir about the inalienable 
rights of the episcopate, and his appeals to the dignity of the priestly 
office with which God had invested him. 

The five presbyters of the opposite party, or some of them at least, 
seem to have been at the head of separate communities in Carthage or 
its neighborhood; and they now ventured, in defiance of the bishop 
whom they hated, to introduce several arbitrary measures in the man- 
agement of their filial communities; or, at any rate, such measures as 
Cyprian, from the principles he maintained with regard to the episcopal 
system, might properly consider as encroachments on the episcopal 
rights. One of them, Novatus by name, president of a community 
situated upon a hill in or near by Carthage, was, so far as we can 
judge,! a man of restless and enterprising mind, who, with a fierce spirit 


1The charges which Cyprian himself 
brings against him, (ep. 49,) if well found- 
ed, do, indeed, place him in the most unfa- 
vorable light; but these charges wear every 
appearance of being dictated by blind pas- 
sion, trusting in deceptive reports without 
due investigation, and indulging a most un- 
warrantable liberty of drawing conclusions. 
A common method in controversies, — to 
impute the worst motives to an opponent, 
and suppose them just as true as if one 
could read into his heart, yet without offer- 
ing the least evidence to justify the suppo- 
sition. Of Novatus, it was said, that he 
was about to be arraigned before an eccle- 
siastical court ; his own conscience declared 
him guilty; happily for him, the Decian 
persecution broke out, and interrupted the 


proceedings which had commenced against 
him. And now, in order to evade the sen- 
tence which awaited him as soon as the 
persecution was over, he excited all those 
agitations, of which we shall speak hereaf- 
ter, and separated himself from the domi- 
nant church. How cleverly put together, 
yet how improbable is all this! Cyprian 
himself, during the Decian persecution, 
still recognized Novatus as a lawful presby- 
ter, see ep. 5. Now, for the first time, he 
knows of this man such wicked things as, 
if they were true, would testify against the 
bishop who could suffer a man of such a 
character to retain the office of presbyter. 
Cyprian does, indeed, bring forward facts 
against him; but what vouches for the 
truth of those facts? How would it have 


NOVATUS. 225 
of ecclesiastical freedom, spurned from him the yoke of episcopal mon- 
archy.! This person, without authority from the bishop, proceeded to 
ordain one of his followers, Felicissimus, a man well calculated for the 
position of a zealous and enterprising partizan, and who doubtless, by 
his personal relations, had great influence in the community, to the 
office of deacon in this his own church.2 Cyprian declares this act an 
encroachment on his episcopal rights ; but it may have been the opinion 
of Novatus, on the principles of his presbyterian system, that as a pres- 
byter and presiding officer of the church, he was warranted so to pro- 
ceed. The right and the wrong in the transaction was a point certainly 
not so clearly made out, at a time when the struggle betwixt the aris- 
tocratic and monarchical forms of church government remained still 
undecided. Cyprian permitted Felicissimus to retain his office ; 
whether it was out of deference to a powerful party, or whether it 
was not till later that he was induced, by the hostile proceedings of 
Felicissimus, to declare his ordination irregular and a violation of the 
episcopal authority. He avoided in the outset, as it should seem, to 
take any violent measures; he sought by indulgence and gentleness, 
with a prudence befitting the circumstances, to gain over his oppo- 
nents. Perhaps his success would have been complete, if he could have 
exercised sufficient control over himself to follow out this course with 
patience ; or if the Decian persecution, which broke out soon after, had 
not furnished the opposite party too inviting an opportunity to com- 


been possible for this man, if such accusa- 
tions could be justly laid against him, to 
play the part he did? What is there which 
idle tattle will not gradually set a going 
amidst party strifes of this kind? ‘The op- 
ponents of Cyprian too, as we may infer 
from his letter to Pupianus, of which we 
shall speak hereafter, had said many hard 
things against him. 

1 50 far there may have been truth in 
Cyprian’s statement, when he calls him, 
(ep. 49:) Fax et ignis ad conflanda sedi- 
tionis incendia. 

In order to a right understanding of No- 
yvatus’ conduct in these disputes, it is im- 
portant to have the question settled, wheth- 
er he was one of the five presbyters who 
opposed Cyprian from the beginning. Mos- 
heim has urged several objections against 
this supposition, the most weighty of which 
we shall notice further along. The ques- 
tion, we must admit, cannot be decided with 
absolute certainty. But yet the whole con- 
nection of the history seems to be in favor 
of the affirmative. In Cyprian’s fifth letter, 
already cited, the names of four presbyters 
are introduced, who brought him a petition. 
One of these, Fortunatus, belonged, accord- 
ing to Cyprian’s own statement, ep. 55, to 
the number of the five presbyters. Now 
as the name of Novatus occurs here along 
with that of Fortunatus, it is highly proba- 
ble that all the four presbyters, which seem 


in this case to have formed one party, were 
in fact no other than the old opposition par- 
ty, —the five presbyters or presbyterium 
Felicissimi. And in the repulsive answer 
which Cyprian gave to their petition, we 
may perhaps discern a new cause of their 
irritation against the bishop. A compari- 
son of what Cyprian says respecting the 
intrigues of Novatus, ep. 49, with what he 
says respecting the intrigues of those five 
presbyters, ep. 40, and with what Pontius 
reports about the old adversaries of Cy- 
prian, speaks for the existence of but one 
anti-Cyprian party, which held together 
from the beginning, and in which Novatus 
occupied an important place. 

2 See Cyprian, ep. 49, of Novatus: Qui 
Felicissimum satellitem suum diaconum, 
nec permittente me nec sciente, sua factione 
et ambitione, constituit. All goes to show 
that this nomination of Felicissimus to the 
office of deacon preceded the schism of 
which he was the author; although the 
whole subject is involved in much obscurity 
on account of our imperfect knowledge of 
the circumstances. 

8 ΤῸ this doubtless refers what Pontius 
says of Cyprian’s conduct towards his op- 
ponents: Quibus tamen quanta levitate, 
quam patienter, quam benevolenter indul- 
sit, quam clementer ignovit, amicissimos 
eos postmodum inter et necessarios compu- 
tans, mirantibus multis ! 


226 CHURCH DIVISIONS. 
mence a public attack on the man, whom from the first they had unwil- 
lingly seen placed at the head of the church government. 

We have already observed, that at the first beginning of this perse- 
cution, Cyprian retired for a while from his community. He had good 
reasons, indeed, as we then saw, to justify this step, and the best of all 
justifications was his subsequent martyrdom; but still it was a step 
which would always admit of bemg differently construed. The enemies 
of Cyprian were glad to look upon the thing im its worst light, and 
accused him of allowing himself to be influenced to violate his duties as 
a pastor, by motives of fear.? 

Besides this, the party opposed to Cyprian had many opportunities, 
arising out of events that transpired in the persecution, to increase the 
number of their followers, and to excite the minds of men against the 
bishop. Numbers, as we have already observed in our account of this 
persecution, had been induced by their fears, or compelled by torture, 
to resort to measures which were regarded as a virtual denial of the 
faith, and which actually excluded them from the communion of the 
church. But most of them were afterwards seized with compunctions 
of remorse, and longed to be restored to the community of the breth- 
ren, and to the privilege of participating with them m the Lord’s sup- 
per. The question now arose, whether their wishes should be complied 
with : — was their petition to be absolutely rejected, or should a middle 
course be pursued, by holding out to them, indeed, the hope of being 
restored to the fellowship of the church; but before the privilege was 
actually granted them, by subjecting their conduct to a longgr proba- 
tion, and requiring evidence of continued penitence? Should the same 
course be pursued with all the lapsed, or should the treatment be 
varied according to the difference of circumstances and the character 
of the offences? The church at this time was still without any gene- 
rally acknowledged principles of church penance in cases of this sort. 
There was one party, who were for refusing to grant absolution, on any 
conditions, to such as had violated their baptismal vow by one of the so 
called mortal sins. Following that Jewish principle which did not 
allow all duties to be regarded alike as duties to God, and all sins 
alike, as sins against God, men made an arbitrary distinction, — for 
which they cited as their authority the passage 1 Samuel 11. 25, — be- 
tween sins against God and against man; and to the former was reck- 
oned every act of denying the faith, though the degree of guiltiness, if 
the denial was simply a yielding to the weakness of sense, might be far 
inferior to that involved in some of the so called sins against man. 
Cyprian, who was in the habit of calling Tertullian especially his 


1 We remarked at page 134, how doubt- 
fully the Roman clergy expressed them- 
selves with regard to Cyprian’s conduct ; 
their words, “ quod utique recte fecerit,”* in- 
dicate that Cyprian’s enemies had contrived 
to represent the matter in an unfavorable 
light. Hence Cyprian intimated a suspi- 
cion that this letter, in which passages oc- 
curred which were so strange to him, might 
be a forgery, ep. 3. Afterwards, when he 


learned that his adversaries had represent- 
ed his conduct in an unfavorable light at 
Rome, he considered it necessary to justify 
himself by a correct account of the whole 
course of the affair, and he writes thus to the 
Roman clergy, ep. 14: Quoniam comperi, 
minus simpliciter et minus fideliter vobis re- 
nuntiari, que hic a nobis et gesta sunt et 
geruntur. 


SCHISM OF FELICISSIMUS. 227 


teacher,! might, perhaps, from the study of that father’s writings, have 
received a bias towards the principles of the more rigid party with re- 
gard to penance. Many passages of his works, written previous to the 
Decian persecution, would lead us to conclude, that he was at first in 
favor of the principle of granting absolution to none who had committed 
a mortal sin; as, for instance, when he says,” ‘ The words of the Lord, 
who warns while he heals, are ‘ Behold, thou art made whole; sin no 
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ After he has bestowed 
health, he gives the rule of life ; nor does he leave the man thenceforth 
to wander about as he lists; but as the man was bound to serve him 
by the very fact that he had been healed by him, our Lord threatens 
him with the greater severity ; for the guilt is less, to have sinned before 
one has known the doctrines of the Lord, but when one sins after he has 
begun to know them, there is no place for forgiveness.” ® It may be 
said, perhaps, that Cyprian, in this case, meant simply to mark the 
greater criminality of a sin committed by a Christian, and that the 
passage is to be understood only in a relative sense ; but assuredly more 
than this is implied in one of his positions laid down in the collection 
of Biblical Testimonies. ‘That to him who has sinned against God, 
no forgiveness can be granted in the church.”® Besides the already 
cited passages from the Old Testament,° he quotes on this occasion that 
from the gospel, relating to the sin against the Son of man, and against 
the Holy Ghost ; whence it is plain, how greatly he misunderstood these 
conceptions, and this antithesis. 

But if Cyprian was an advocate of this principle when he first en- 
tered on the episcopal office, yet, cherishing as he did the heart of a 
father towards his church, he could not fail to be shaken by the great 
multitude of the lapsed, who, sometimes with bitter tears of repentance, 
entreated him to grant them absolution. Must all these, many of 
whom, as for example, the libellatici, had fallen only from defect of 
knowledge, and others from simply yielding to the flesh under the 
severity of their tortures, remain forever excluded from the blessed 
community of their brethren, and, in Cyprian’s view, from that church 
in which alone was to be found the way to heaven? ‘The paternal 
heart of the bishop revolted at the thought, but he dared not act here 
upon his own responsibility. In this state of indecision, he declared 
that the fallen should be received and exhorted to repentance ; but that 
the decision of their fate should be reserved to that time when, on the 
restoration of peace, the bishops, clergy and churches, in joint and 
cautious deliberation, after having examined the question in all its 
bearings, should be able to unite on some common principles, in rela- 
tion to a matter where every Christian was so deeply interested. Be- 


1 According to Jerome, de vir. illustr. 5 Non posse in ecclesia remitti ei, qui in 
When he asked for Tertullian’s writings, Deum deliquit. 
he used to say to his secretary, “ Da magis- 6 The same texts which Cyprian quotes 
trum.” . in the epistle to the clergy of Carthage, 
2 De habitu virginum. ep. 9, on the subject of denial of the faith 
8 Nulla venia ultra delinquere, postquam under persecution. So also in ep. 11, we 
Deum nosse ccepisti. find the antithesis: Minora delicta, qua 


4 De testimoniis, 1. III. c. 28. non in Deum committuntur. 


228 SCHISM OF 


sides, there was a great difference between the offences of these fallen 
brethren. While some, merely to avoid the sacrifice of their worldly 
possessions, had, without a struggle, even hastened up to the altars of 
the gods; others had fallen only through ignorance, or under the force 
of torture. The disorders of the times made it impossible to examine 
carefully into the difference of offences, and the difference of moral 
character in the individuals. Moreover, those that had fallen should, 
by practical demonstration of their penitence, render themselves worthy 
of re-admission to the fellowship of the church, — and the persecution 
itself presented them with the best opportunity for this. ‘‘ He who 
cannot endure the delay,’’ says Cyprian, “may obtain the crown of 
martyrdom.” 

It was under this view of the case he acted; directing all the lapsed 
who applied for absolution, to look forward with hope to the time for 
the restoration of tranquillity, when their cases should be examined. 
But some of the clergy, and as Cyprian afterwards learned, his old ad- 
versaries, espoused the interest of these men, and, instead of exhorting 
them to peace and order, according to the wishes of the bishop, con- 
firmed them in their importunate demands, availing themselves of this 
opportunity to foment the wished for division in the church. 

Had these lapsed individuals been upheld in their importunate de- 
mands by the presbyters opposed to Cyprian alone, without finding any 
other support, their resistance to the measures of the bishop would have 
been of less consequence. But now they found means to gain over to 
their cause a voice which in those days had great influence with the 
Christians, — the voice of those witnesses of the faith, who under the 
pains of torture had laid down their witness of the Lord, or who, after 
having laid down their testimony, confronted martyrdom. It was, in 
itself considered, altogether consonant with the spirit of Christianity, 
that the last legacy of these men should be a legacy of affection ; that 
their last words should be an expression of love to their brethren; that 
they, who, after having victoriously sustained the conflict, were about 
to enter into glory, should show sympathy for their weaker brethren, 
who had fallen in the struggle; that finally, they should recommend 
these fallen to the charitable acceptance of the church. It was just 
and right, moreover, that the word of these witnesses of the faith 
should be held in peculiar respect, provided only it were not forgotten, 
that they were sinful men, needing, like all others, the forgiveness of 
their sins, and that, so long as they were in the flesh, they had still to 
maintain the contest with the flesh; and provided only, these witnesses 
of the faith themselves had not forgotten this, and dazzled by the ex- 
cessive veneration which was paid them, had not been, on this very 
account, the more exposed to the lurking enemy with which even they, 
as sinful men, had still to contend, and turned the momentary victory, 
gained by the grace of God, to the nourishment of a spiritual pride. 
Many fell under this temptation; and controversies were excited and 
nourished by such confessors. ‘The poet Commodian, so distinguished 
for his moral enthusiasm, held it needful to remind such persons, that 


FELICISSIMUS. 229 


eyen by their sufferings they could not expiate βίη. There were con- 
fessors, who, in an authoritative tone, gave to all applicants the peace 
of the church, and acted as if it needed only their word to exculpate 
and discharge the fallen. Many of the clergy, who, according to Cy- 
prian’s advice, ought to have set them right and led them to humility, 
rather confirmed them in their delusion, and used them as tools in their 
intrigues against the bishop. By their peremptory declarations, oft- 
times vaguely expressed, as for example, ‘‘ Let such an individual, with 
his,’ — an expression admitting of interpretations and applications 
without limit, —‘‘be received to the fellowship of the church,” they 
caused the bishop no slight embarrassment.? Those who applied such 
vague declarations to themselves, now boasted that the confessors or 
martyrs had granted them absolution, and they would brook no delay, 
suffer no trial of their conduct. When Cyprian evinced the less dispo- 
sition to comply with their impetuous demands, in proportion to the 
want which they betrayed of true contrition and humility, he made him- 
self extremely unpopular by his resistance. On two sides, he appeared 
in an unfavorable light, on the side of his severity against the lapsed 
and of his lack of reverence for the confessors.? 

He fulfilled his duty as a pastor, by taking a firm and decided stand 
against the exaggerated reverence paid to these confessors, which might 
be a fruitful source of superstition, and against the false confidence in 
their intercession, leading men to feel secure in their sms. He made 
the confessors observe, that true confession was not an opus operatum, 
but that it must consist in the whole tenor of conduct. “Ἢ The tongue,” 
he said, ‘‘ which has confessed Christ, must preserve its honor, pure 
and untarnished ; for he who, according to our Lord’s precept, speaks 
what tends to peace, to goodness and to truth, confesses Christ every 
day of his life.” In warning them agaist false security and pride, he 
observes,* “It must be your endeavor to carry out what you have hap- 
pily begun. It is but little to have succeeded in obtaining an advan- 
tage; it is more, to be able to preserve what you have obtained. Our 
Lord taught us this, when he said, ‘ Behold, thou art made whole: sin 
no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ Think that he also says 
this to his confessor ; ‘ Behold thou art made a confessor ; sin no more, 
lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ In fine, Solomon and Saul and 
many others were able, so long as they walked in the ways of the Lord, 


1 See his Instructio, 47 : 

Impia martyribus odio reputantur in ignem, 
Distruitur martyr, cujus est confessio talis, 
Expiari malum nec sanguine fuso docetur. 

2 Communicet ille cum suis. According 
to Cyprian, ep. 14, thousands of such “ li- 
belli pacis” were daily issued by the con- 
fessors without examination. ‘Tertullian, 
at the close of the second century, speaks 
already of this practice as a traditional 
one. “Pacem in ecclesia non habentes, a 
martyribus in carcere exorare consueve- 
runt.” Ad martyr. c.1. As a Montanist 
he speaks earnestly against the excessive 
abuse to which this practice was carried ; 


VOL. I, 


and intimates that many were made to feel 
secure in their sin by these libelli pacis, in- 
considerately bestowed by the confessors, 
de pudicitia, c. 22. Against the abuses 
growing out of recommendatory letters of 
the confessors, spurious or genuine, the 
council of Elvira speaks on this wise, ὁ. 25: 
Quod omnes sub hac nominis gloria passim 
concutiunt simplices. 

8 He gives us himself to understand how 
much he had to suffer in this way, ep. 22: 
Laborantes hic nos et contra invidie impe- 
Ro totis fidei viribus resistentes. 


Ep. 6. 


230 SCHISM OF 


to retain the grace which was given them; but no sooner had they left 
the discipline of the Lord, than they were left also by his grace. I 
hear that some are elated with pride; and yet it is written, ‘ Be not 
high-minded, but fear.’ Our Lord ‘ was led as a sheep to the slaugh- 
ter ; as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth ;’ 
and is there any one now, who lives by him and in him, that dares to 
be proud and high-minded, unmindful of the life which He led, and of 
the doctrines which He has given us either by himself or by his apos- 
tles? Ifthe servant be not greater than his Lord, then let those that 
follow the Lord, humbly, peacefully and quietly walk in his footsteps: 
the more one abases himself the more shall he be exalted.” 

When a certain confessor, Lucianus, professing to act “‘in the name 
of Paul, a martyr,” and in obedience to his last injunctions, proceeded 
to bestow on the fallen the peace of the church, and to furnish them 
with the so called certificates of church-fellowship (libellos pacis,) Cy- 
prian refused to acknowledge their validity, and observed, ‘‘ Although 
our Lord has given command that the nations shall be baptized and 
their sins forgiven in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Ghost; yet this man, in ignorance of the divine law, proclaims peace 
and the forgiveness of sins in the name of Paul ; — he does not consider 
that the martyrs make not the gospel, but the gospel, the martyrs.” 1 
He spoke on this poimt with the same emphasis in the discourse, 
already referred to, delivered on his return to his church.2 “ Let no 
man deceive himself, the Lord alone can show mercy. He alone can 
bestow forgiveness of the sins which have been committed against him, 
who bore our sms; who suffered for us; whom God delivered up for 
our offences. The servant may not forgive a crime committed against 
his Master, lest the offender contract additional guilt, if he be unmind- 
ful of what is written, ‘Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man.’ 
We must address our prayer to the Lord, who has assured us he will 
deny those that deny him, who alone has received all judgment from 
the Father. The martyrs require something to be done ; —but what 
they require must be written in the law of the Lord ; — we must know, 
first of all, that they have obtained from God what they require; and 
then only can we do what they require; for it by no means follows, as 
a matter of course, that the Divine Majesty will grant what a man has 
promised. Either the martyrs are nothing, if the gospel can be made 
void; or if the gospel cannot be made void, then they are not author- 
ized to act against the gospel, who by its. means become martyrs. 
That man can neither say nor do anything against Christ, whose faith 
and hope, whose power and glory are nowhere but in Christ.” 

Still Cyprian was not firm and consistent enough in his opposition to 
the extravagant respect paid to these witnesses of the faith. He was, 
to a certain degree, carried away himself by the prevailing spirit of the 
multitude, which he ought to have controlled and guided by the spirit 
of the gospel. When the summer heats of an African climate began 


1 Quod non martyres evangelium faciant, 2 Sermo de lapsis. 
sed per evangelium martyres fiant. Ep. 22. 


FELICISSIMUS. 231 
to multiply cases of sickness, he yielded so far as to grant absolution to 
those of the fallen, who in sickness and the fear of death were earnestly 
desirous of the communion, and were depending on such certificates 
given them by witnesses of the faith.’ In his report to the Roman 
church, he assigns as his reason for so doing, that he wished by such a 
compliance in one particular, to assuage, in some measure at least, the 
violence of the multitude, and so to counteract the plots of those who 
were at the bottom of the mischief, and to remove from himself the ob- 
loquy of refusing to the martyrs the respect which belonged to them.? 

Thus by his half-way measures of resistance to the violence of this erro- 
neous tendency, and by his inconsistency, Cyprian did injury to the inter- 
ests of Christian truth and to his own cause. If, on the one hand, he 
attacked with the weapons of truth that false confidence in the martyrs’ 
intercession, on the other hand, he supported it, by yielding his ground ; 
for must not the recommendation of the martyr become possessed of a 
peculiar power and significance, as soon as it was understood, that those 
only who were supported by such a recommendation, might in the hour of 
death, simply on the strength of this recommendation, obtain the peace 
of the church and receive the communion, while it might easily happen 
that many who had not sought for this recommendation of the martyrs, 
were distinguished above those who had secured it, by their sincere 
contrition and penitence.? Cyprian favored this conclusion, for which 
his conduct furnished so natural a pretext, by his peculiar form of 
expressing this concession, addressing it ‘‘to those, who by help of the 
martyrs may obtain succor from the Lord in their sins.”? By this in- 
consistency, he laid open a weak spot to his enemies, of which they 
would not fail to take advantage. 

Another circumstance which must have particularly contributed to 
give a more decided weight to the opposite party im their connection 
with the fallen, was the powerful voice of the Roman church, which 
had declared itself in favor of the milder principle, if not in its applica- 
tion to all the fallen, at least to those who were sick. Cyprian avowed 
also, in making his concession, that he was partly induced to this meas- 
ure by his respect for the Roman church, with which he did not choose 
to be at variance. But the proceedings of this church had been more 
consonant with the spirit of evanyelical truth, in directing the fallen to 
the one and only Mediator, and allowing of no other distinction among 
them, but that of a penitent or impenitent disposition.’ In their first 
letter addressed to the clergy at Carthage, the Roman church had said 
of the fallen, ‘“‘ We have, indeed, separated them from us, yet we have 
not left them to themselves; but we have exhorted them and do still 


1 Cyprian, ep. 12, 13 et 14. 

2 Ep. 14: “Ad illorum violentiam inte- 
rim quoquo genere mitigandam —, cum 
videretur et honor martyribus habendus, et 
eorum qui omnia turbare cupiebant, impe- 
tus comprimendus.” Of the other lapsi, on 
the contrary, he says, ep. 13: “Qui nullo 
libello a martyribus accepto invidiam fa- 


ciunt ;” it was therefore this invidia which 
he feared. 

8 Auxilio eorum adjuvari apud Domi- 
num in delictis suis possunt. 

4 Ep. 14. to the Roman clergy. Standum 
putavi et cum vestra sententia, ne actus 


‘noster, qui adunatus esse et consentire circa 


omnia debet, in aliquo discreparet. 
Ep. 2. 


232 SCHISM OF 


exhort them to repent, if peradventure they may obtain forgiveness from 
Him who alone can bestow it. We do this, lest they should become 
worse, if deserted by us. If such persons are attacked by sickness, 
become penitent for their offences, and anxiously desire the communion, 
they should certainly be assisted.” 

Yet by the Christian prudence manifested in the rest of his conduct, 
where he understood .how to unite mildness with energy; by instruc- 
tions and friendly paternal representations, winning over the better 
disposed among the confessors; by the firmness with which he main- 
tained his ground against the presbyters who were so obstinate in their 
opposition ; by the love and esteem in which he stood with the majority 
of the church, the bishop Cyprian seemed to have succeeded in restoring 
tranquillity at Carthage, and he was rejoicing in the hope, as the Decian 
persecution began to wane in its violence, of returning back to the 
church from which he had been painfully separated for a year, and of 
being able to celebrate with his flock the Haster of the year 251. But 
ere his hopes could be realized, he had to learn that the intrigues of 
the opposite party were too deeply laid, and too closely and firmly in- 
terwoven, to admit of bemg so easily destroyed. The fire which was 
smouldering on in secret, wanted but a favorable occasion to break 
forth into an open flame. This occasion Cyprian himself presented by 
the exercise of his episcopal power in an important matter. | 

Before he returned to his church, he had sent two bishops and two 
presbyters, as his deputies, with full powers to hold a visitation, They 
were to give to the poor of the church, who on account of their age or 
sickness could do nothing for their own support, so much out of the 
church treasury as might be necessary for the supply of their bodily wants. 
They were to add to the earnings of those who had a trade, but could 
not gain from it enough for their subsistence, or who wanted money to 
purchase the tools and stock necessary for their employments, or who 
had been interrupted in their business by the persecution, and were 
now wishing to commence it again, so much as might be needed in 
these several cases. Finally, they were to draw up a schedule of all 
the poor, who were to be supported out of the church funds, with a 
notice of their different ages, and of their behavior during the persecu- 
tion, in order that the bishop, whose care it was, might become accu- 
rately acquainted with them all, and might promote the worthy, and as 
is here particularly specified, the meek and the humble, to such places 
in the service of the church, as they might be found qualified to fill. 
The last of these arrangements promised the following advantages, — 
that the abilities of such persons would be suitably employed in the 
service of the church; that they would secure for themselves an ade- 
quate support ; and that, at the same time, a burden would be removed 
from the church funds. The qualifications to which particular attention 
was to be directed, namely, meekness and hwmility, were peculiarly 
needful, during this period of ferment and uneasiness in the church, in 
those who entered into its service, that the peace of the church might 
be restored on a solid foundation, and the first germs of division sup- 
pressed. The presbyterian party opposed to Cyprian may not have admit- 


FELICISSIMUS. 238 
ted the bishop’s right to order such a church visitation, or distribution of 
the church funds, on his own responsibility, and without the concurrence 
of the whole presbyterial college ; or they may have disputed, at least, 
the right in Cyprian, inasmuch as they were no longer willing to own 
him as their bishop; at any rate, it would be quite contrary to their 
plans, should he successfully carry through such an act of episcopal 
authority, which must tend to confirm his power in the church, to bind 
the church more closely to himself, and thus give strength to his party. 
At the head of the opposition in this instance appeared the deacon 
Felicissimus. His official character alone would give him considerable 
influence with a portion of his community, for in the church of North 
Africa as well as in the nearly related church of Spain,! the deacons 
had more power than they possessed in other countries. Besides, 
from circumstances of which we have no accurate knowledge, he had 
become an influential organ of his party, thought he was entitled, 
especially, perhaps, because part of the church funds was entrusted to 
his care,? to put in his word in a matter that concerned the application 
of the money of the church. He employed all his arts of persuasion, 
his influence and power, to excite a general spirit of determined oppo- 
sition to this episcopal ordinance. He declared in particular to the 
poor belonging to the church of Novatus, over which he had been made 
deacon, that he should contrive means without fail, of providing for all 
their wants; and threatened, in case they appeared before those episco- 
pal commissioners, that he would never admit them to the communion 
im his church.’ This church now became the general resort of all the 


1 Concil. Illiberit. ο. 77: Diaconus regens 
plebem. 

2 That in the North African church, it 
belonged to the deacons to keep and man- 
age the church funds, we learn from the 
49th letter of Cyprian, where it is brought 
as a charge against a deacon, that ecclesi- 
astice pecuniz sacrilega fraude subtracte 
et viduarum ac pupillorum deposita dene- 

ta. And this was the case not only in 

orth Africa, but also in the churches of an 
entirely different quarter of the world; as 
we learn from Origen’s complaints of those 
deacons who enriched themselves at the ex- 
pense of the church, (in Matth. T. XVI. 
ο. 22:) Οἱ μὴ καλῶς διώκονοι διοικοῦντες τὰ 
τῆς ἐκκλησίας χρήματα, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ μὲν ταῦτα 
ψηλαφῶντες, ob καλῶς δὲ αὐτὰ οἰκονομοῦν- 
τες, ἀλλὰ σωρεύοντες τὸν νομιζόμενον πλοῦ- 
τον καὶ χρήματα, ἵνα πλουτῶσιν ἀπὸ τῶν 
εἰς λόγον πτωχῶν διδομένων, οὕτοι εἰσιν οἱ 
κολλυβίσται τραπέζας χρημάτων ἔχοντες, 
ἃς κατέστρεψεν ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς. It is with refer- 
ence this fact, that Felicissimus is ac- 
cused of “fraudes” and “rapine,” ep. 55. 
Pecunie commisse sibi fraudator. Similar 
charges were brought against Novatus, the 
presbyter and presiding officer of the com- 
munity in which Felicissimus had been ap- 
pointed deacon. True, these accusations 
against both, from the mouth of their ene- 
my Cyprian, cannot be considered as credi- 


20* 


ble testimony against them. An indepen- 
dent application of that portion of the church 
funds which was deposited in this filial 
community,—an application of them which, 
with the views they entertained of their re- 
lation to the bishop, they may have thought 
themselves warranted to make, — an appli- 
cation suited perhaps to the objects and 
ends of their party, may have been repre- 
sented by Cyprian as embezzlement. At 
all events, the want of an impartial state- 
ment of the whole matter leaves it impos- 
sible to assert any thing here with confi- 
dence. 

8 Every thing here depends on the cor- 
rect reading and interpretation of those dif- 
ficult words in Cyprian, ep. 38: “commi- 
natus, quod secum in morte,” or “in monte 
non communicarent, qui nobis obtemperare 
voluissent.” According to the reading “ in 
morte,” the meaning might be either, if the 
phrase “in morte” be referred to Felicissi- 
mus, that at his own death he would not 
acknowledge them as Christian brethren, 
would pronounce them excluded from 
church fellowship,—in other words, would 
never be reconciled to them;—in which 
case, however, it would be difficult to see 
how a threat of this kind could be so dread- 
ful a thing to the Christians at Carthage; 
or, what would be a more natural construc- 
tion, the phrase “in morte” being referred 


234 SCHISM OF 
lapsed who were unwilling to wait with patience till the whole matter 
relating to their case could be decided. Here, without any preparation, 
they were admitted to the communion — here was the rallying point of 
all the. disaffected —a circumstance which must have been attended 
with the most disastrous effects on the discipline and order of the com- 
munity. 

It τὰ these troubles which induced Cyprian to defer his return to 
Carthage until after the Easter of 251. He chose this particular time, 
because he could reckon on meeting at that time the other bishops of 
North Africa, who would be there assembled at the annual synod. 
This secured to him two advantages ; — united with the collective body 
of his North African colleagues, he would be enabled to take a firm 
stand against the refractory ; and certain settled principles having been 
fixed upon, after mature deliberation, by the synod, with regard to the 
proper treatment of the lapsi, he might hope that a limit would be set 
generally to the hitherto wavering practice of the North African 
church with regard to penance. In this council of the North African 
church, it was resolved to adopt a middle course between that exces- 
Sive severity which cut off the lapsed from all hope, and a Jax indul- 
gence in complying with their wishes; to maintain the soundness of 
church discipline, and yet not drive the lapsed to despair by an uncon- 
ditional refusal of absolution and re-admission to the church, whereby 
they might be led at length to abandon themselves to their lusts, or to 
sink back again into paganism. First, the different character of the 
offences should be carefully investigated,! and to all, not excepting even 
the sacrificati, who gave evidence by their conduct of a truly penitent 
spirit, the communion was to be granted, at least in cases of mortal 
sickness. Should such persons recover, they were not to be deprived 
of the privilege they had obtained by the grace of God, but might re- 
main in the fellowship of the church.2 When afterwards the persecu- 
tion was renewed with increased violence, another indulgence, prompted 
by Christian charity and wisdom, was conceded, namely, that the com- 
munion should be granted to all who had given evidence by their conduct 
of true penitence, so that they might not enter the conflict unarmed, 
but strengthened by communion with the Lord’s body.? But they who 
had not given the least evidence of repentance in any of their conduct, 


to the subject understood in “communica- that the community over which Novatus 
J bf 


rent,” the meaning might be that they, at 
their own death, should not be admitted by 
him to the fellowship of the church, should 
not receive from ‘him, as deacon, whose of- 
fice it was to convey the consecrated ele- 
ments to the sick, the communion of the 
supper. The latter interpretation gives a 
good sense, if we bear in mind, that Feli- 
cissimus was deacon of a particular parish 
church, and that he was well agreed with 
Novatus the presbyter and pastor of this 
church, so that it was in his power to re- 
fuse the communion to those who dwelt in 
this part of the diocese. An analogous 
sense results, if the reading “in monte” be 
adopted. In this case, we must suppose 


and Felicissimus were placed, resided on an 
eminence in or near by Carthage, — and 
hence we might be reminded of the Mon- 
tenses, the Donatists at Rome, who were 
so called from their place of assembly, 
which was situated on a hill. Felicissimus 
threatened to exclude those that complied 
with the requisition of Cyprian, from com- 
munion in this church. 

1The different degree of guilt in the 
sacrificati, according to the different ways 
in which they had been induced to re- 
nounce the faith; and so also in the libe- 
latict. 

2 Ep. 52. 

3 Ep. 54. 


FELICISSIMUS. 235 


and first expressed a desire for the communion when on the sick bed, 
should not then receive it, because it was not sorrow for sin, but the 
fear of approaching death which had prompted the desire, and he was 
not deserving of consolation in death, who had not thought of death till 
it was near at hand. In this explanation, it certainly is not difficult to 
perceive the truly Christian effort to fix men’s attention on the nature 
of true repentance, and to warn them against the error of reposing 
confidence on the opus operatum of absolution and the communion.! 
But as we see, the synod allowed itself, by this purely Christian imnter- 
est, to be led into the mistake of pronouncing a sentence, too harsh and ᾿ 
indiscriminate in this general form, on those who first expressed signs 
of penitence at the hour of death ; for although such repentance might 
+n most cases be false, resulting from mere sensuous impressions, yet in 
some cases, known only to the Omniscient, it might also be true. And 
it is clear that the synod might have secured its object without resort- 
ing to this unwarranted decision, by a more correct and clearer exposi- 
tion of the nature of absolution in relation to the forgiveness of sin, as 
we have already explained. At this church assembly, sentence of con- 
demnation was passed on the party of Felicissimus; and Cyprian, 
united with the bishops of North Africa, succeeded in putting an end 
to the schism. 

It is true, the party did not at once give up their opposition. They 
gought to extend their influence in this part of the church ; and several 
of the African bishops, who were at variance with their other colleagues, 
or who had been deposed for their bad conduct, united themselves to 
this party. They chose in the place of Cyprian, as bishop of Carthage, 
Fortunatus, one of the five disorderly presbyters. ‘They sent delegates 
to Rome for the purpose of gaining over to their side this principal 
church of the West, and there demanded a hearing of the charges 
which they had to bring against Cyprian; but they were unable to dis- 
solve the bond of friendship existing between the two most influential 
bishops of the West, although their clamors excited a momentary sen- 
sation. In ἃ letter expressing in a remarkable manner the spirit of the 
episcopal theocracy, — a theocracy that savored more of Judaism than 
of Christianity,2 — Cyprian urged the Roman bishop to defend against 
the schismatics the unity of the church founded on the union of the 
bishops. In the same letter, he strenuously contends also for the inde- 
pendence of the bishops in their own dioceses. “ Since it has been 
decided by us all,” he writes, “and is, moreover, just and right, that 
every man’s cause should be examined into on the spot where the wrong 
has been done, and since his own part of the flock has been allotted to 
each pastor, which he is to guide and govern as one who must render to 
the Lord an account of his stewardship ; those who are under our juris- 
diction ought not to be suffered to go where they please, and by their 
deceptions and effrontery interrupt the harmony of the united bishops, 
but they should be obliged to prosecute their causes where accusers 
and witnesses of their offences can be had.” 


1 Ep. 52. 2 Bp. 55 ad Cornel. 


236 SCHISM OF FELICISSIMUS. 


It is clear even from this exhibition of the case, in which we have 
been able to use the reports of only one party as the sources of our in- 
formation, that Cyprian’s conduct in this controversy was not wholly 
free from reproach’; and we should, perhaps, find still more to censure, 
were it in our power to compare together the reports cf the opposite 
parties. In this regard, a letter of Cyprian,! addressed to one of the 
opposition, Florentius Pupianus, who having maintained a good confes- 
sion under the’ pains of torture, stvod m high authority as a martyr, is 
particularly deserving of notice ; for this letter is in answer to another, 
- and hence we may gather from it, what Pupianus had to object against 
Cyprian. Although not free from that error of the separatist tendency 
which attaches undue importance to the subjective views and feelings, 
yet he appears to have been a pious, well-meaning man, —certainly not 
disinclined to hearken to reason. He had referred to many charges 
against Cyprian, of which we possess no further distinct information. 
He asserted that he was at a loss to say what he would not part with, 
sooner than enter into terms of fellowship with him as a bishop.” He 
reminds him that priests should be humble, as even our Lord and his 
apostles were humble.? 

Cyprian, by virtue of a tendency of mind riot uncommon in North 
Africa, was inclined to lay too great stress on unusual psychological 
phenomena, on presentiments, visions and dreams, and was thus ex- 
posed to many delusions. He doubtless insisted on the voice of the 
Spirit, which he pretended to have heard on these occasions, where he » 
ought to have maintained his positions on rational grounds; but Pupian 
disdained these evidences.! 

The way in which Cyprian replied to this person was certainly not 
calculated to remove his scruples. Without entering at all mto the 
matter of his opponent’s charges, Cyprian continually insists on the 
same thing, — the inviolable authority of the bishop ordained of God, — 
and declares it impiety for any man to set up himself as a judge over 
the judicium Dei et Christi. He maimtains that, as the bishop stands 
in fellowship with the entire church, so the church rests on the bishop ; 
and whoever separates from the bishop, separates from the church.® 
His hierarchical arrogance inspired in him dreams and visions, which 
he pronounced divine revelations. He pretended that he had heard a 
divine voice, saying, “‘ He that believes not Christ who appoints the 
priest, will be compelled to believe him when he avenges the priest,” δ 
He brings in proof of the necessity of the obedience to be rendered to 
the bishop, the fact that even the bees had a queen which they obeyed, 
and robbers, a captain whom they followed in all things. Moreover, 
the way in which he appeals to the testimony of Christians and pagans 


1 Ep. 69. words: Quanquam sciam somnia ridicula 
2 This we gather from Cyprian’s answer: et visiones ineptas videri. ‘ 
Dixisti, scrupulum tibi esse tollendum de 5 Unde scire debes, episcopum in eccle- 


animo, in quem incidisti. sia esse, et ecclesiam in episcopo; et si quis 
8 Sacerdotes humiles esse debere, quia et cum episcopo non sit, in ecclesia non esse. 
Dominus et Apostoli ejus humiles fuerunt. 6 Qui Christo non eredit sacerdotem fa- 


4As may be inferred from Cyprian’s cienti, postea credere incipiet, sacerdotem 
vindicanti. 


SCHISM AT ROME. 237 
concerning his humility, is not exactly suited to refute what Pupian had 
said respecting his want of that virtue.! 

When Cyprian wrote the above mentioned letter, m the year 258 
or 254, —for according to his own account he had then administered 
the episcopal office for a period of six years, — the conventicles of this 
party, where the holy supper was distributed, still remamed open.? 
Pupian had reproached him also with this, that by his fault a part was 
separated from the whole community. Commodian, who wrote his 
Christian Admonitions at a somewhat later period, considered it still 
needful to combat this separatist tendency, which, as usually happens, 
perhaps continued to be cherished for a short time even after the occa- 
sion was forgotten which first called it forth. He rebukes those who 
see the motes in others’ eyes, but cannot discern the beam that is in 
their own.* 

The second schism had its origin in the Roman church; and as in 
the suppression of the first, Cornelius of Rome cooperated with Cyprian 
of Carthage, so in this we see Cyprian joined with Cornelius in maimtain- 
ing the church unity. This latter division, like the former, sprung out of 
a controversy relating to the choice of a bishop, and from the collision 
of opposite opinions respecting the proper administration of church pen- 
ance ; but with this difference, that in the first case, the schism pro- 
ceeded from the laxer party, in the last, from the more rigid one. The 
immediate occasion which led to the actual outbreak of this as well as 
the other schisms, were various occurrences which took place during 
the persecution of Decius. We have already observed, that in the Ro- 
man church, the prevailing inclination was on the whole to the milder 
principle in regard to the matter of penance ; but there was also in that 
church a more rigid party, at the head of which stood Novatian, an 
eminent presbyter, who had acquired celebrity as a theological writer. 

For the rest, we possess but scanty means of accurate information 
with regard to the character of this man, — not enough to enable us to 
form any certain conclusions as to the relation of his views on this ques- 
tion and of his whole conduct in this affair to the peculiar bent of his 
disposition ; for the sayings of exasperated enemies, and representations 
which every where bear the marks of passionate exaggeration, are of 
course entitled to no credit. When we endeavor to separate the facts 
at bottom from the distorted and spiteful representations of Novatian’s 
opponents, the following presents itself as the most probable state of the 
case. Novatian had been thrown, by fierce conflicts within, from an 
earnest frame of mind into one of those states, usually considered in 
those times as a demoniacal possession. ‘This was for him, as it was for 


1 Humilitatem meam et fratres omnes et 
gentiles quoque optime novunt et diligunt; 
et tu quoque noveras et diligebas, cum ad- 
huc in ecclesia esses et mecum communi- 
cares. 

2 As Cyprian himself gives us to under- 
stand, when he says: Frustra sibi blandiri 
608, qui, pacem cum sacerdotibus Dei non 
habentes, obrepunt et latenter apud quos- 


dam communicare se credunt. 

3 Scripsisti quoque, quod ecclesia nune 
propter me portionem sui in dispenso ha- 
beat. 

4 Cap 66: 

Dispositum tempus venit nostris. Pax est in orbe 
Et ruina simul blandiente seculo premit _ 
Przecipitis populi, quem in schisma misistis, 6 
Conspicitis stipulam cohzerentem in oculis nostris, 
Et vestris in oculis non yultis cernere trabem. 


238 NOVATIANUS. 

so many others of that period, the hard way to faith. It was to the 
prayer of an exorcist of the Roman church, that he, — who had perhaps 
already been touched in various ways by the power of Christianity,— 
owed his restoration for the moment. From this violent convulsion of 
his whole being, he fell into a severe sickness, whence first resulted his 
entire and radical cure. In the course of this sickness his faith be- 
came established, and seeing death near at hand, he received babtism 
on the sick bed. He found in Christianity peace, rest and sanctifying 
power. As he became distinguished for stedfastness in faith, clearness 
of Christian knowledge, — of which his writings bear witness, — for a 
happy faculty of teaching and for an ardor in the pursuit of holiness, 
which afterwards led him to the ascetic life, the bishop Fabian ordained 
him presbyter, overlooking the fact that he had first made profession of 
his faith and been baptized on the bed of sickness. The Roman clergy 
were dissatisfied, from the first, with this procedure ; because they held 
to the letter of that church law, which required that no individual bap- 
tized on the sick bed, —no clinicus, — should receive ordimation ; but 
the wiser Fabian decided more according to the spit than according 
to the letter of this law,! for its object was simply to exclude from the 
spiritual order those who had been induced to receive baptism without 
true repentance, conviction and knowledge, in the momentary agita- 
tion excited by the fear of death. In Novatian’s case, every appre- 
hension of this kind was removed by his subsequent life. For a season, 
he exchanged the active life of a practical ecclesiastic for the noiseless 
seclusion of the ascetic; but afterwards, perhaps not till he had made 
up his mind to place himself at the head of a party, he was induced 


once more to resume the active duties of his office.” 


1 As this is expressed in the 12th canon 
of the council held at Neo Cesarea, A. D. 
814; for after it had been here declared, 
that a person baptized in sickness could not 
be consecrated as a presbyter, it was as- 
signed as a reason, “ that such faith did not 
spring from free conviction, but was forced,” 

οὐκ ἐκ προαιρέσεως γὰρ ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ, 
ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης.) Hence too, an exception 
was made, viz. unless it might be permitted 
on account of his subsequent zeal and faith, 
(διὰ τὴν μετὰ ταῦτα αὐτοῦ σπουδὴν καὶ 
πίστιν.) This exception might apply to 
Novatian. 

2 It is particularly important to compare 
here the synodal letter of Cornelius, bishop 
of Rome, to Fabius, bishop of Antioch. A 
fragment of it has been preserved by Eu- 
sebius, (1. VI. c. 43.) This letter deserves 
notice as illustrating that tendency of the 
church spirit to confound the outward with 
the inner life, which became, at an early 
period, so markedly prominent, especially 
at Rome. It is urged as an objection 
against Novatian, that his restoration from 
a demoniacal frenzy, (see above,) as it was 
called, by exorcists of the Roman church, 
had been the means of his conversion. 
Whether this were the case or not, that 


surely could bring no reproach on Nova- 
tian’s character as a Christian, which be- 
longed simply to the means whereby he 
had been led to embrace Christianity. Not 
less wanting in good sense than unworthy 
of a Christian, was the reproachful lan- 
guage of Cornelius, that Satan was the oc- 
casion of Novatian’s faith, (@ ye ἀφορμὴ τοῦ 
πιστεύσαι γέγονεν 6 oaravic;) as if the 
works of the evil one must not often be- 
come subservient to the foundation and in- 
crease of the kingdom of God. After his 
restoration from {18 demoniacal disease, it 
is objected again, that he fell into a severe 
fit of sickness, (which may be very natural- 
ly explained ; the crisis in his whole organ- 
ic system, for which he was indebted to the 
restoration from that frenzy-like condition, 
was the cause of the sickness,) and that in 
the apprehension of death, he received bap- 
tism, but baptism only by sprinkling, as his 
condition required, (the baptismus clinico- 
rum not being, according to the usual prac- 
tice of those times, by immersion,) if it 
could be said, indeed, that such a one had 
been baptized at all. It is objected, more- 
over, that subsequently he received none of 
those rites which should have been bestow- 
ed on him according to the usages of the 


NOVATIANUS. 239 

Some slight hints of Cyprian by no means suffice to prove that No- 
vatian, previous to his conversion, had been a stoic philosopher, and 
that the spirit of the stoic morality, mixing in with his Christianity, had 
produced that severe tone of thinking which distinguished him on these 
matters. His principles admit of so natural an explanation from the 
sternness of his Christian character, he acted in this case so entirely in 
the spirit of a whole party of the church in his time, that there is the 
less need of attempting to derive them from some outward source, for 
which there is not the least ground of historical evidence.! 

Here a question arises of considerable importance, as the right an- 
swer to it would materially assist us in forming a judgment both as to 
the matters in dispute, and as to the character of Novatian. It is 
this, — whether his opposition was, in the first place, to Cornelius as 
bishop, or to the milder principles of church penance. According to 
the accusations of his passionate opponents, we must, indeed, suppose, 
that in the outset he was striving, from motives of ambition, after the 
episcopal dignity, and was thence induced to excite these troubles and 
throw himself at the head of a party. If it could be proved, that dur- 
ing the Decian persecution he still belonged to the milder party, it 
might in this way be made to appear probable, that he had been driven 
to those extremes by outward causes of excitement. Now the Roman 
clergy, in the time of the Decian persecution, and while they were 
without a bishop, sent to Cyprian, bishop of Carthage,” a letter in 
which he was informed of their decision, that absolution ought to be 


church, — not confirmation by the hand of 
the bishop. “ How then could he possibly 
have received the Holy Ghost?” All this is 
so wholly characteristic of the outwardness 
and passionate slavery to prejudice of the 
hierarchical spirit then acquiring strength 
in the Roman church! A bishop of Rome, 
probably Fabianus, — the letter goes on to 
say, —ordained him presbyter, against the 
wishes of the rest of the clergy, who ob- 
jected to the ordination of a person who 
had been baptized by sprinkling, on a sick 
bed. ‘The bishop, (probably a man of more 
liberal spirit,) wished in this case to make 
an exception. Cornelius again objects to 
him, that during the persecution, he had 
shut himself up in a chamber, out of fear; 
and was unwilling to leave it, to perform 
the duties of his office in behalf of such as 
needed his help. When his deacons asked 
him to do this, he turned them off with the 
reply, that “he was the friend of another 
philosophy.” We can here, to be sure, 
merely conjecture what the fact at bottom 
is, which lies under the distorted represen- 
tation of Cornelius’s hatred. By the érépa 
φιλοσοφία, is to be understood, probably, 
the secluded life of the ascetic as compared 
to that of the practical ecclesiastic. Nova- 
tian may have retired, for a season, into 
solitude, and withdrawn himself from pub- 
lic occupations. This is in keeping with 
the austere character which expresses itself 


in his principles of penitence ; and he might, 
as an ascetic, too, stand in high considera- 
tion with the church. Novatian may have 
been wrong in this respect, that by the mis- 
leadings of a false asceticism, he forgot Chris- 
tian charity, and was unwilling to leave his 
spiritual quiet and solitude, to serve the 
brethren who needed his priestly offices ; 
but Cornelius may have allowed himself to 
invent for his conduct on this occasion, 
another motive, inconsistent with Nova- 
tian’s character. 

1 It is by no means clear, that Novatian’s 
opponents seriously thought of deriving his 
peculiar views from any such source as 
this. When Cyprian objects to these views, 
that they are more stoic than Christian, (ep. 
52 ad Antonian,) this naturally refers to 
their character only, and not to their ori- 
gin; and when he upbraids him, “Jactet se 
licet et philosophiam vel eloquentiam suam 
superbis vocibus preedicet,” the first alludes 
perhaps to the τρίβων, the pallium of the 
ἀσκητής, (see the preceding note,) or to the 
fame of a distinguished dogmatic writer 
which Novatian had acquired as author 
of the work De regula fidei, or De trinitate. 
Thus too, Cornelius speaks of him in the 
above cited letter, as Οὕτος ὁ δογματιστὴς, 
ὁ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἐπιστήμης ὑπερασπι- 
στῆς. 

2 Ep. 91. 


240 NOVATIANUS. 

granted at the extremity of death to all lapsed persons who manifested 
true penitence ; —a decision at variance with the principles of the more 
rigid party, according to which all who had been convicted of peccata 
mortalia should be unconditionally excluded from church absolution. 
And yet, according to Cyprian’s testimony, this letter was composed by 
Novatian.1_ But even if Cyprian’s account be entirely correct, yet 
from a letter setting forth the common decision of a college of presby- 
ters, no certain inference can be drawn with regard to the subjective 
opinion of the individual who composed it; for nothing else needed to 
proceed from him besides the form and style of composition. It may 
be, that Novatian at this time submitted to the voice of the majority, 
which he afterwards felt himself bound to oppose. By the same letter, 
in fact, notice was also given, that a settled decision on these contro- 
verted matters should finally be made, at the restoration of peace, and 
after a new bishop had been chosen. Novatian, although himself m- 
clined to the severer principles, might the more readily yield for the 
moment, in the hope of being able to succeed, when the matter should 
be discussed preparatory to the final decision, in procuring an authori- 
tative sanction of his own principles. In the same letter, too, he ex- 
presses himself doubtfully enough with regard to the significancy of the 
absolution imparted in such cases, — “‘ God only knows,” he says, ‘‘ how 
he will dispose of such, and by what rule he will judge them; ? lan- 
guage which intimates the writer’s own opimion, that absolution could 
not with propriety be granted to such persons; that they should only 
be recommended to the divine mercy, and the decision of their fate 
left with God; although we would not deny that one might express 
himself thus from the position of the milder party, in the consciousness 
of the deceptive nature of all outward signs of penitence.? If Novatian 
generally performed at this time the function of secretary to the Roman 
church, he must be considered as the writer also of a somewhat earlier 
letter,> composed in the name of the Roman clergy, in which the same 
principles are expressed asin the second. Supposing this to be so, then 
what we have just said respecting the relation of the writer’s own opin- 
ions to the views expressed in the communication of a public body, must 
be applied also to this letter. It was never objected to Novatian, that 


1 He says, for instance, ep. 52, of this let- 
ter: Novatiano tunc scribente et quod scrip- 
serat, sua voce recitante. 

2 Deo ipso sciente, quid de talibus faciat 
et qualiter judicii sui examinet pondera. 

ὃ See Cyprian, ep. 52: Si nos aliquis 
penitentiz simulatione deluserit, Deus, qui 
non deridetur, et qui cor hominis intuetur, 
de his que nos minus perspeximus, judicet, 
et servorum suorum sententiam Dominus 
emendet 

4 Which, however, cannot be certainly 
inferred from the testimony of Cyprian, al- 
ready cited. For it is left doubtful, wheth- 
er it was by a mere accident that Novatian 
composed that letter, or whether he wrote 
it in his official capacity. We must allow 
it, however, to be not improbable, that the 


theological author, in a church where learn- 
ing and talent for composition were not so 
common, would be made the church secre- 


tary. 

δ The letter we have cited already at page 
134, note 1, and page 226, note 1. 

6 In this letter, too, the subjective opinion 
of the writer may gleam through the lan- 
guage, where he speaks of the admonitions 
given to the fallen: “ Ipsos cohortati sumus 
et hortamur, agere pcenitentiam, si quo 
modo indulgentiam poterunt recipere ab eo 
qui potest prestare,”’— though the words 
do not necessarily express as much. In the 
severity of tone with which this letter speaks 
of those bishops that forsook their commu- 
nities, we might likewise recognize the sen~ 
timents of the more rigid Noyvatian. 


HIS SCHISM FOSTERED BY NOVATUS. 241 


his later views contradicted the convictions he had earlier expressed ; 
and it admits of being easily explained, how it should happen that the 
opposition of the more rigid party did not assume a bolder form until 
the close of the persecution, when the deliberations respecting the 
treatment of the lapsi commenced, and when the milder party obtained 
a leader in the person of their bishop Cornelius. We have the less 
reason to doubt, that it was his zeal for the more mgid principles 
which inspired Novatian from the first, because they accorded so per- 
fectly with his character. The accusations of his opponents should not 
be suffered to embarrass us; for it is the usual way with the logical 
polemics, to trace schisms and heresies to some outward, unhallowed 
motive, even where there is no evidence at all that any such motive 
has existed. Novatian had on some occasion solemnly declared, after 
the Roman bishopric was vacated by the death of Fabian, that he would 
not be a candidate for the episcopal dignity — an office to which per 
haps, on account of the high respect entertained for him, as an ascetie 
and a divine, by a large portion of the community, he might easily have 
attained. But he said he had no longing for that office. We have no 
reason, with the bishop Cornelius, to accuse Novatian in this case of 
falsehood. He could say this with perfect sincerity; he, the quiet, 
loving ascetic, the theologian glad to be left undisturbed to his dog- 
matic speculations, surely had no wish to burden himself with an office 
so overwhelmed with cares as that of a Roman bishop had already be- 
come. Cornelius knows, mdeed, that he secretly aspired after the 
episcopal dignity ; but whence had Cornelius the faculty to penetrate 
thus into the secret feelings and inmost recesses of his opponent’s 
heart? Cyprian himself intimates, that a party strife concerning prin- 
ciples, in the outset wholly objective, had preceded; and it was not 
until this dispute made a schism inevitable, that the opposite party set 
up another bishop, as their chief, against Cornelius.1_ Inspired by his 
ascetic zeal, Novatian was only contending for what he conceived to be 
the purity of the church, and against the decline of discipline, without 
wishing or seeking for anything besides. Settled in his own convic- 
tions, zealous in the defence of them, but averse, by natural disposition, 
to everything that savored of a boisterous outward activity, he was, 
against his own will, made the head of a party by those who agreed 
with him in principles, and compelled by them to assume the episcopal 
dignity. In this regard, he could say with truth, in his letter to Dio- 
nystys bishop of Alexandria, “ that he had been hurried on against his 
will.” 

The man who, properly, was the moving soul of this party, and 
to whose influence, doubtless, it was owing, that they broke entirely 
with Cornelius and created another bishop for themselves, came from 
a different quarter. NVovatus, the Carthagenian presbyter, who had 
been the chief instigator of the troubles in the church of North Africa, 
had left that country, when Cyprian gained the ascendancy; whether 


1 Cyprian, ep. 42: Diverse partis obsti- οἵ in pejus recrudescente discordia, episcopum 
nata et inflexibilis pertinacia non tantum 5101 constituit. 
matris sinum recusayit; sed etiam, gliscente 2 Ὅτι ἄκων ἤχϑη. Euseb. 1. VI. c. 46. 
21 


VOL. I. 


242 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 

it was, that he no longer agreed with the principles of Felicissimus, 
and yet could not be reconciled to Cyprian, and would not have him for 
his bishop, or whether it was only the failure of his intrigues against 
Cyprian, that induced him to this step. He had betaken himself to 
Rome, where he found those disputes already existing in the bud. His 
temperament did not allow him to lie idle and neutral where strife and 
agitation were going on. According to the principles which, in common 
with the other four presbyters and Felicissimus, he had adyocated at 
Carthage, he ought to have leaned to the cause of Cornelius! But 
whether he had now undergone a radical change in his views on the 
matters in dispute, either through the influence of Novatian, his supe- 
rior as a theoretical theologian, or in consequence of his ardent temper- 
ament, so ready to fly from one extreme to another; or whether he took 
no interest in the real object of the dispute, either at Carthage or at 
Rome, but was only, in his way, everywhere a friend to the party in 
opposition ; whether he was inclined to espouse the cause of that party 
which had no bishop at its head, or whether he hated Cornelius for 
other reasons — it suffices to know, that Novatus enlisted warmly in the 
contest for the principles of Novatian. He was the man, wherever he 
might be, at Carthage or at Rome, to becdme the moving spring of 
agitation, although he placed some one else at the head and caused 
every thing to move under the name of the latter. Thus may it have 
been through fs active influence, that the schism became more decided 
in its character, and that Novatian was forced by his party to place 
himself, as bishop, in opposition to Cornelius. 

As to the latter, he had been governed, in his treatment of those 
who had fallen during the persecution of Decius, by the milder princi- 
ples of the church. He had received many to church fellowship, who 
were accused, at least by the other party, of being saerificatt. It was 
laid to his account, by Novatian and his followers, that he had polluted 
the church by the admission of the unclean; and on both sides, great 
liberties were taken in ascribing the actions of the opposite party to se- 
cret motives, calculated to place them in the most unfavorable light. 
As Cornelius pretended to believe that Novatian acted under the im- 
pulse of an ambitious longing after the episcopal dignity, so a part at 
least of Novatian’s followers attributed the mildness of Cornelius towards 
others to the consciousness of similar guilt in himself, for he, as they 
affirmed, was a libellaticus.2 Both parties sought, as usual in such 
cases of dispute, to secure on their own side the verdict of the great 
metropolitan churches at Alexandria, Antioch and Carthage, and both 
sent delegates to those communities. The zeal shown by Novatian for 


1 Mosheim defends Novatian against the 
reproach of contradicting himself, by re- 
calling the fact, that Novatian was not one 
of those five presbyters, and that he agreed 
with these and with Felicissimus, not in 
every respect, but only in their opposition 
to Cyprian. But the evidence above cited 
stands in the way of this assertion. The 
strongest argument which Mosheim brings 


in favor of his opinion is, that Cyprian, who 
hunted up every possible charge against 
Novatian, yet never accuses him, even when 
he had occasion for so doing, of self-contra- 
diction. But it may be conceived, that 
Cyprian was loth to touch on this point, 
because he had reason to fear a retort on 
account of his own change of principles. 
2 Cyprian, ep. 52. 


SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. © 243 


the strictness of church discipline and the purity of Christian conduct, 
to the honesty of which zeal his own life bore testimony, and the author- 
ity of certain confessors united with him in the beginning, procured for 
his delegates a favorable reception. One bishop, Fabius of Antioch, 
was even on the point of deciding in his favor. Dionysius, bishop of 
Alexandria, a mild, prudent, liberal minded man, was opposed to the 
Novatian principles from the first; but he began with trying by 
friendly persuasions to prevail on Novatian to submit. He wrote in 
reply to his application,! “If you have been urged on, as you say, 
against your own will, you will prove this by voluntarily turning about ; 
for there is nothing you ought not to be willing to suffer rather than 
create a schism in the church of God. And martyrdom incurred for 
the sake of preventing such a schism would be not less glorious, than 
martyrdom to avoid being an idolater; nay, it would, in my opinion, 
be a nobler act, — for in the one case, you become a martyr for the 
peace of your own soul, in the other, for the good of the entire church. 
If, then, you should now, either by persuasion or by constraint, restore 
the brethren to unanimity, the good you would thus effect would exceed 
the evil which you have occasioned. The latter would not be charged 
to your account, and the former would redound to your praise. But 
should they refuse to follow you, and the affair prove impracticable, 
hasten at least to deliver your own soul. Follow after peace; and I 
bid you farewell in the Lord.”’ But Novatian was too firmly set in his 
opinions, and too far carried away by his polemic zeal, to listen to such 
representations as these. The amiable Dionysius, therefore, now de- 
clared more decidedly against him, and used his influence also to draw 
away others from his party. He accused him of promulgating the most 
mischievous doctrines concerning God, and of misrepresenting the com- 
passionate Saviour as an unmerciful being.? 

Novatian might now rely with the more confidence on finding support 
in North Africa, because Cyprian had himself been hitherto inclined 
to favor similar principles on the matter of penitence. But meanwhile 
Cyprian, as we have already observed, had changed his views and his 
line of conduct, thus bringing upon himself the charge of inconsistency 
and fickleness of mind.? At the same time, he looked upon Novatian 
as a disturber of the church unity, who set up himself against a bishop 
regularly chosen and appointed by God himself, and who would prescribe 
his own peculiar principles as laws for the entire church. 

The controversy with the Novatian party turned upon two general 
points; one relating to the principles of penitence, the other to the 
question, what constitutes the idea and essence of a true church? In 
respect to the first pomt of dispute, Novatian had been often unjustly 
accused of maintaining, that no person, having once violated his baptis- 
mal vows, can ever obtain forgiveness of sin, — he is certainly exposed 
to eternal damnation. But first, Novatian by no means maintained 
that a Christian is a perfect saint; he spoke here not of all sins, but 

1 Euseb. |. VI. c. 46 συκοφαντοῦντι. 


2 Euseb. 1, VII. c. 8: Tov χρηστότατον 8 Ep. 52: Ne me aliquis existimet, a pro- 
κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, ὡς ἀνηλεῆ posito meo leviter recessisse. 


944 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 


assuming as valid the above-mentioned distinction between “ peccata 
venialia ’’ and ‘ peccata mortalia,” he was treating only of the latter. 
Again, he was speaking by no means of the divine forgiveness of sin, 
but only of the church tribunal, of absolution by the church. The 
church, he would say, has no right to grant absolution to a person who, 
by any mortal sin, has trifled away the pardon obtained for him by 
Christ, and appropriated to him by baptism. No counsel of God, touch- 
ing the case of such persons, has been revealed; for the forgiveness of 
sin, which the gospel assures us of, relates only to sins committed be- 
fore baptism. We ought doubtless to be interested for such fallen . 
brethren, but nothing can be done for them save to exhort them to 
repent, and to commend them to God’s mercy. ‘“ The sacrificati,”’ 
Novatian wrote,! “‘ must not be received to the communion ; they should 
only be exhorted to repentance, — the forgiveness of their sins must be 
left to that God, who alone has power to forgive sin.” That this was 
Novatian’s doctrine, even Cyprian, — though in the heat of controversy - 
he was not always mindful of it, — evidently presupposes, when he says,? 
“Oh, what mockery of the deceived brethren, what empty cheating of 
those afflicted, unhappy men, — to exhort them to a repentance where- 
by they are to satisfy God, and yet deprive them of the salvation which 
they were to obtain by this satisfaction! To say to your brother, — 
mourn, weep tears, sigh day and night, abound im good works, so thou 
mayst wash away thy sins, but after all thou shalt die without the 
church. Thou must do all that serves to obtain peace ; but the peace 
thou seekest, thou shalt not obtam! Who would not give up at once ὃ 
Who would not sink in very despair? Think you, the husbandman 
could labor, were it said to him, ‘ Bestow all diligence and care on the 
culture of your fields, but you shall reap no harvest ?’”’ It must be 
allowed that Cyprian, even in what he says here, does not enter enough 
into his opponent’s train of thought, and is not entirely fair towards him. 
For it was, by no means, Novatian’s doctrine, that all the efforts of a 
person, doing penance in this sense, were to no purpose. He main- 
tained only, that the church was not warranted to announce to him the 
forgiveness of sin, which was sought and which divine grace might 
bestow. | 

As we see from Novatian’s declaration im the passage just quoted 
from Socrates, the question in this controversy related, in the outset, 
only to one of those offences reckoned among the peceata mortalia, only 
to acts involving the denial of Christianity. On the supposition that 
Novatian was at first so severe only against this class of offences, Cy- 
prian was right in attacking the standard of the whole moral judgment 
which must lie at the basis of this mode of procedure, —in combatting 
the notion, that barely such offences were to be denominated sins 
against God, denial of God, denial of Christianity ; as if every sin were 
not a sin against God, a practical denial of God, and of Christianity. 
“ΤῸ must be allowed,” says Cyprian,’ “ the sin of an adulterer and de- 
ceiver is more aggravated than that of the libellatici; for the latter 


1 Vid. Socrat. 1. IV. ¢. 28. 2 Ep. 52. 3 Ep. 52. 


SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 245 


have fallen into sin by yielding to force, under the wrong impression 
that it is enough merely not to have sacrificed, while the former sins 
out of free choice. Adulterers and deceivers, according to the apostle 
Paul, Eph. 5: 5, are as idolaters.” ‘For since our bodies are the 
members of Christ, and each of us is a temple of God, whoever by adul- 
tery violates God’s temple, offends God himself; and whoever in com- 
mitting sin does the will of the devil, serves evil spirits and false gods : 
for evil works proceed not from the Holy Spirit, but from the instigations 
of the adversary, and evil desires proceeding from the unclean spirit 
impel men to act against God and to serve Satan.” 

But later, at least, the Novatian party applied their principle avow- 
edly to the entire class of “mortal sins ;”? which application Novatian 
himself most probably had in mind from the beginning, though the im- 
mediate turn of the controversy led him to speak of one description 
only of mortal sins. The ascetic was assuredly not disposed to treat 
sins of voluptuousness with too much indulgence. 

Again, Novatian speaks, in the passage from Socrates, of those only 
who had sacrificed. But if Cyprian does not misrepresent Novatian, 
the latter, in the outset at least, must, with great injustice, have placed 
in the same category, all who had in any way proved unfaithful under 
the persecution, as well libellatici as sacrificati, without respect to the 
different gradations of guilt, or to the different circumstances that ac- 
companied it; and utterly refused absolution to all libellatici as well as 
sacrificati, without considering*how many of the libellatics were guilty 
rather of an error and mistake of the understanding, than of an actual 
sin. 
There is beautifully expressed, in the manner in which Cyprian com- 
batted these principles of Novatian,! the loving, paternal heart of the 
pious shepherd, following his Master’s example — the animating spirit 
of Christian charity and Christian sympathy. Having supposed the 
case, that many a libellatic, whose conscience reproved him of no crime, 
might be tempted, in despair, to tear himself away, with his family, 
from the church, and seek admission into some heretical sect, he ob- 
serves—“ At the day of judgment, it will be laid to our charge that we 
took no care of the wounded sheep, and on account of one that was 
diseased, left many sound ones to perish; that while our Lord left the 
ninety and nine whole sheep, and went after the one that had wandered 
and become weary, and when he had found it, brought it away himself 
on his shoulders, we not only do not seek after the fallen, but even 
reject them when they return to us.” He contrasts with this severity 
several passages from the apostle Paul, (1 Corinth. 9: 22,—12: 26, 
—10: 33, etc.) and then adds, ‘ The case stands differently with the 
philosophers and stoics, who say all sins are alike, and that a sound 
man should not easily be brought to bend. But the difference is wide 
betwixt philosophers and Christians. We are bound to keep aloof from 
what proceeds, not from God’s grace, but from the pride of a severe 
philosophy. Our Lord says, in his gospel, ‘Be ye merciful, even as 


91" 1 Ep. 52. 


246 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 

your Father is merciful ;? and ‘the whole need not a physician, but 
the sick ;’ but such a physican he cannot be, who says, I take care only 
of the sound who need no physician. Behold, yonder lies thy brother, 
wounded in battle by his enemy. On the one hand, Satan is trying to 
destroy him whom he has wounded; on the other, Christ exhorts us 
not to leave him to perish, whom he has redeemed. Which cause do 
we espouse ; on whose side do we stand? Do we help the devil finish 
his work of destruction? Do we, like the priest and the Levite in the 
gospel, pass by our brother lying half dead? Or do we, like the priests 
of God and of Christ, following Christ’s precepts and example, snatch 
the wounded man from the grasp of his enemy ; that having done every 
thing for his salvation, we may leave the final decision of his case to the 
judgment of God?” 

Beautifully and truly said as all this was, in opposition to the spirit 
of Novatianism, yet Novatian’s principles could neither be touched nor 
refuted by it. Novatian too declared that the fallen brethren must be 
cared for, and exhorted to repentance. He too acknowledged God’s 
mercy towards sinners, and allowed it mght to recommend the fallen to 
that mercy; but that men could once more surely announce to them 
that forgiveness of sins they had trifled away, this he was unwilling to 
concede, because he could find no objective ground for such confidence. 
Hence, the only way in which he could be substantially refuted, was to 
point out such an objective ground of confidence for all sinners, — 
namely, in the merits of Christ, which the sinner needed ever but to 
appropriate to himself in believing penitence and believing trust, when 
the true relation was unfolded between the objective and subjective in 
justification and regeneration. But on this point, Novatian’s opponents 
themselves had not the clearest views ;—for though, in opposing his 
principles, they did sometimes refer, indeed, to 1 John 2: 1, 2, yet in 
so doing, they expressed themselves as if the forgiveness of sin obtained 
by Christ, related properly to those sins alone which had been commit- 
ted before baptism; and as if in respect to sins committed afterwards, 
there was need of a new and special satisfaction by good works. This 
position once taken, Novatian might fairly ask, who can vouch for it, 
that such a satisfaction will suffice ? 

With regard to the second main point of the controversy,? the idea 
of the church, Novatian maintained, that one of the essential marks of 
a true church being purity and holiness, every church which, neglect- 
ing the right exercise of church discipline, tolerated im its bosom, or re- 
admitted to its communion, such persons as, by gross sins, have broken 
their baptismal vow, ceased by that very act to be a true Christian 
church, and forfeited all the rights and privileges of such a church. 


1Ut euratum Deo judici reservemus ; 
upon the supposition, that is, that absolu- 
tion cannot forestall God’s judgment, but 
remains valid at the divine tribunal only 
when God, who tries the secrets of the 
heart, finds the temper of the man to cor- 
respond with this absolution. 

2 Pacianus, of Barcelona, who wrote in 


the latter part of the fourth century, con- 
cisely expressed the two main positions of 
Novatian in these words: “Quod mortale 
peccatum ecclesia donare non possit, immo 
quod ipsa pereat recipiendo peccantes.” 
Kp. Ill. contra Novetion, Gelland, bibl, 
patr. T. VII. 


SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 947 


Hence the Novatianists, as they held themselves to be alone the pure, 
immaculate church, called themselves ‘ οἱ caapoi,”” the Pure. It was 
rightly urged against Novatian, that individuals could be accountable 
and punishable only for their own sins, and not for the sins of others in 
which they had no share; that it was only the inner fellowship with 
sinners by the disposition of the heart, not outward companionship with 
them, that tended necessarily to contaminate ; and that it was a mere 
assumption of human pride, to pretend to the exercise here below of 
that judicial power of separation between the true and false members 
of the church, which the Lord has reserved in his own hands. On this 
point, Cyprian finely remarks, ‘‘ Though the tares appear to exist in the 
church, this should not disturb our faith or our love so far as to lead us 
to separate ourselves from the church itself, because there are tares in 
it. We should see to it, that we ourselves belong to the wheat, so that 
when the grain is gathered into our Lord’s garner, we may receive the 
reward of our work. The apostle says, ‘in a great house, there are not 
only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and 
some to honor and some to dishonor.’ Let us labor with all diligence, 
that we may be vessels of gold or of silver. To dash the earthen ves- 
sel in pieces, belongs to the Lord alone, to whom is also given the rod 
of iron. The servant cannot be greater than his Master; and no man 
may arregate to himself what the Father has given only to his Son; 
nor suppose himself able to wield the fan to winnow and cleanse the 
floor ; or of separating, by mere human judgment, every tare from the 
wheat.” 

But after all, it was impossible in this direction to find the real point 
at issue for the confutation of Novatianism; rather, Novatian and his 
opponents were here involved in the same fundamental error and dif- 
fered only in their application of it. It was the fundamental error of 
confounding the notions of the visible and the invisible church. Hence 
was it, that Novatian, transferring the predicate of purity and unspot- 
ted holiness, which belongs to the invisible church, the community of 
the saints as such, to the visible form in which the invisible church 
appears, drew the conclusion, that every community which suffered un- 
clean members to remain in it, ceased to be any longer a true church. 
The same error of conceiving the church as something wholly outward, 
which lies at the bottom of Novatian’s false application of the predicates 
belonging to the notion of the church, is also betrayed when he main- 
tains that a person is made impure by outward connection with the 
impure in the same church fellowship. But the opponents of Novatian, 
who started with the same fundamental error, differ from him only by 
laying at the basis of their speculations the notion of the church as me- 
diated by the succession of bishops, and then deriving the predicates 
of purity and holiness from that notion. The church transmitted and 
propagated by the succession of bishops was, in their view, as such, a 
‘pure and holy one. Novatian, on the other hand, laid at the basis of 
his theory, the visible church as a pure and holy one, and this was, in 
his view, the condition of the truly catholic church. The catholic 
church, transmitted by the succession of bishops, ceases, in his opinion, 


948 SCHISM OF NOVATIANUS. 


to be a truly catholic one, as soon as it becomes stained and desecrated 
through the fellowship of unworthy men. The more objective or sub- 
jective tendency made all the difference between the two parties, in 
- their application of the same fundamental principle. 

Now, instead of distinguishing different applications of the notion of 
the church, Cyprian is contented to distinguish simply a two-fold con- 
dition of one and the same church, its condition on earth and its condi- 
tion in glory, where the separation has been made complete by the final 
judgment. Entangled in this fundamental error of confounding Out- 
ward things with Inner, it came about on a subsequent occasion, when 
the controversy with Novatianism was no longer before his mind, that 
he approached very nearly himself to the Novatian principles, declaring 
to certain Spanish communities,! that by tolerating unworthy priests 
they would be defiled themselves; that they who remained in union 
with sinners would become themselves partakers of their sins.? 

Out of this controversy too, the catholic church system, so firmly 
established and exactly compacted in all its parts, came forth victorious ; 
and the Novatianists continued to linger along in the following centuries 
only as an insulated and insignificant sect. 


11 
1 Ep. 69. lictorum fieri, qui fuerint delinquentibus 
2 Consortes et participes alienorum de- copulati. 


SECTION THIRD. 


CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. 


Christian 1272. 


Christianity, since it first entered into human nature, has operated, 
wherever it has struck root, with the same divine power for sanctifica- 
tion; and this divine power cannot be weakened by the lapse of ages. 
In this respect, therefore, the period of the first appearance of Chris- 
tianity could have no advantage over any of the following ages of the 
Christian church. There was but one peculiarity of this first period, 
viz. that the change wrought by Christianity, in the consciousness and 
life of those in whom it was produced, could not fail to be more strongly 
marked by the contrast it presented with what they had previously 
been, as pagans;—and so the Apostle Paul, in writing to Christians 
converted from Paganism, reminds them of what they once were, when 
they walked according to the course of this world, according to the 
spirit that was then working in the children of disobedience — and 
after enumerating some of the prevailing vices of the corrupt pagan 
world, says to them, “‘and such were some of you; but ye are washed, 
but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
and by the Spirit of God.” ‘Teachers of the church, who had been 
pagans, frequently appeal to such experiences of which they themselves 
had been the subjects. Thus Cyprian, under the first glow of conver- 
Sion, witnesses of it.! ‘Receive from me, what must be felt ere it is 
learned, what is not gathered from a course of long continued study, 
but seized at once, by the shorter method of grace. While I was lying 
in darkness and blind night, tossed about by the waves of the world, 
ignorant of the way of life, estranged from the truth and from the light ; 
what divine mercy promised for my salvation, seemed to me, in my 
then state of mind, a hard and impracticable thing;— that a man 
should be born again, and casting off his former self, while his bodily 
nature remained the same, become in soul and disposition, another man. 
How, said I, can such a change be possible ; that what is so deep-rooted 
within should be extirpated at once? Entangled in the many errors 
of my earlier life, from which I could see no deliverance, I abandoned 
myself to my besetting sins, and despairing of amendment, nurtured 
the evil within me as if it belonged to my nature. But when, after the 
stains of my former life had been washed away by the water of regen- 
eration, light from on high was shed abroad in a heart now freed from 
guilt, made clear and pure; when I breathed the spirit of heaven, and 


1 Ad Donat. 


250 CHRISTIAN LIFE CONTRASTED WITH PAGAN. 


was changed by the second birth into a new man, all my doubts were, 
at once, strangely resolved. That lay open, which had been shut to 
me; that was light, where I had seen nothing but darkness; that be- 
came easy, which was before difficult ; practicable, which before’ seemed 
impossible ; so that I could understand how it was that, being born in 
the flesh, I lived subject to sin —a worldly life, but the life 1 had now 
begun to live, was the commencement of a life from God, of a life 
quickened by the Holy Spirit. From God, from God, I repeat, pro- 
ceeds all we can now do; from Him we derive our life and our power.” 
Justin Martyr describes thus the change produced in Christians: 1} 
‘* We, who were once slaves of lust, now have delight only in purity of 
morals; we, who once practised arts of magic, have consecrated our- 
selves to the Eternal and Good God; we, who once prized gain above 
all things, give even what we have to the common use, and share it 
with such as are in need; we, who once hated and murdered one anoth- 
er, who on account of differences of customs would have no common 
hearth with strangers, do now, since the appearance of Christ, live 
together with them; we pray for our enemies ; we seek to convince those 
that hate us without cause, so that they may order their lives according 
to Christ’s glorious doctrine and attain to the joyful hope of receiving 
like blessings with us from God, the Lord of all.” Origen appeals to 
the effects wrought by Christianity in the communities scattered through 
the world, as evidence of the truth of the evangelical history. “ The 
work of Jesus,” he says,? “reveals itself among all mankind, where 
communities of God, founded by Jesus, exist, which are composed of 
men reclaimed from a thousand vices; and to this day the name of 
Jesus produces a wonderful mildness, decency of manners, humanity, 
goodness and gentleness in those who embrace the faith in the doctrines 
of God and Christ, and of the judgment to come, not hypocritically, for 
the sake of worldly advantage and human ends, but in sincerity and 
truth.” 

As the contrast of Christianity with paganism — which is none other 
than that of the old with the new man — was strongly marked in com- 
paring different periods of the life of the same individual, so was it also, 
in comparing the Christian life with the pagan, as a whole; for the 
opposition now stood forth open and undisguised ; since paganism needed 
not as yet to hide itself under any foreign guise. To this contrast, 
Origen referred, when he said, ‘‘ The Christian communities, compared 
with those among whom they dwell, are as lights in the world.” ὃ 

The inducements to a mere outward Christianity that presented 
themselves in later times, — the worldly advantages connected with the 
profession of Christianity as the state religion ; custom, which leads men 
without any special reasons or inward call in their own minds to abide 
by the religion of their fathers,— all this, in the period of which we 


1 Apolog. IT. χρείας ἀνϑρωπικὰς ὑποκριναμένοις, ἀλλὰ 
2¢. Cels. 1. I. § 67: Ἐμποιεὶ δὲ ϑαυμα- παραδεξαμένοις γνησίως τὴν περὶ ϑεοῦ καὶ 
σίαν πραότητα καὶ καταστολὴν τοῦ ἤϑους Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς ἐσομένης κρίσεως λόγον. 
καὶ φιλανϑρωπίαν καὶ χρηστότητα καὶ ἡμε- 8 6, Cels. 1. III. c. 29. 
pornra ἐν τοῖς μὴ διὰ τὰ βιωτικὰ ἢ τινας 


OUTSIDE CHRISTIANS. 251 


treat — especially the early part of it—could effect nothing for the 
advantage of Christianity. The majority forsook a religion recom- 
mended to them by education, by the reverence for antiquity, by the 
force of custom, by the worldly benefits connected with its observance, 
for one which had agaznst it, everything that favored the otlier, and 
which from the very outset required of them many sacrifices, and ex- 
posed them to many dangers and sufferings. 

Still one must be very slightly versed in human nature to believe 
that in any period whatever, there could be a total absence of the 
causes that tend to produce a conscious or unconscious hypocrisy in the 
reception of Christianity. Even in this period many such inducements 
were at hand, particularly in those longer intervals of peace, which the 
church occasionally enjoyed. Says Origen— “There was always a great 
diversity among those who sought Jesus, since all did not seek him in 
the genuine way, for the sake of their own salvation, and to receive 
advantage from Him. ‘There were those that sought Jesus from vari- 
ous improper motives ; whence it was, too, that they alone found peace 
with Him, who sought Him in the right way—of whom it may with 
propriety be said, that they sought Him as the Word which was in the 
beginning and was with God, and for the purpose of obtaining from him 
fellowship with the Father.”! The .charitableness of the Christians 
offered to many a strong temptation to unite themselves to the Chris- 
tian community, without having become Christians by conviction and in 
the temper of their minds; as is evident from the passage before cited 
from Origen; and Clemens of Alexandria, too, speaks of those who 
hypocritically adopted the Christian profession for the sake of temporal 
advantages.” 

But besides these pretended Christians, there would be some even 
among those within whose hearts some seed of the gospel had been 
lodged, whose case would be represented by our Lord’s parable of the 
sower. It was not in every heart where the seed fell, that it found the 
congenial soil in which it would spring up immediately and bring forth 
fruit. In this period, as at all times, there would be those who had 
been for a moment touched by the power of truth, but who, neglecting 
to follow up the impressions they had received, proved faithless to the 
truth, instead of consecrating to it their whole life; or who, wishing to 
serve at one and the same time God and the world, soon became once 
more completely enslaved to the world. Whoever failed to watch over 
his own heart, whoever failed of seeking earnestly and constantly, with 
‘fear and trembling, under the guidance of the divine Spirit, to distin- 
guish and separate in his inmost being what was of the Spirit from what 
was of the world, exposed himself to the same causes of dangerous self- 
deception and consequently to the same fall, as Christians were liable 
to in other times. There are general sources of self-deception having 
their seat in human nature itself, to which general sources all particular 


1 Orig. T. XIX. in Joh. ὁ 3: Εἰσὶ γὰρ τῶν κοσμικῶν προστίασιν, κοινωνικοὺς τῶν 
καὶ κατὰ μυρίας ἀποπεπτωκυΐας τοῦ καλοῦ ἐπιτηδείων μαϑόντες τοὺς καϑωσιωμένους 
προϑέσεις ζητοῦντες τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν. τῷ Χριστῷ. 

2 Stromat. I. f. 272: Μεταλήψεως χαρὶν 


952 SOURCES OF SELF-DECEPTION. 


forms of it may be ultimately referred, and these manifest themselves 
outwardly in different ways according to different circumstances. There 
are also particular sources of self-deception, belonging to different ages 
of the world. Everything in fact without us, even what in itself con- 
sidered may be for man’s highest advantage, is yet capable, if the true 
light has not risen within him, or if he does not watch over his own 
heart, of proving only an occasion of self-deception. Of nothing out- 
ward, no situation, relations, or circumstances, can it be unconditionally 
affirmed, that by these means vital Christianity must necessarily be 
promoted. That which may promote it in one man, may to another, | 
who uses it otherwise than he ought, prove the occasion of his fall. 

The contrast between Christianity and paganism, which was so 
strongly marked in the life, contributed to preserve the Christian con- 
sciousness and life more pure, and to guard it agaist many a debasing 
mixture. But here, also, what proved to some the means of awaken- 
ing many Christian virtues, and in general served to promote the Chris- 
tian temper of mind, became to others a source of self-deception ; — to 
those, namely, who fancied that by a stern rejection of every thing 
pagan, they had quite satisfied the requisitions of Christianity, and made 
out of this an opus operatum ;— when they were thus led to conceive 
of the warfare with the world in too outward a sense, and on this account 
the more easily overlooked the inner conflict with the imward world ; 
and spiritual pride, uncharitable fanaticism fastened at the root of their 
religion. 

Many among the number who had been led along to Christianity by 
a profound sense of religious need, fell into a mistake, which hindered 
them from rightly appropriating to themselves the gospel, and from 
giving themselves up to its divine, trinsic power. The longmg after 
reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of sin often lay, in truth, 
as we have seen already, at the root of the superstition of this period ; 
but this longing remained covered under a grossly material form. A 
craving of this sort met with eagerness the annunciation of a Redeemer, 
the promise of the cleansing away of all sin by means of baptism ; — 
but this was the very source, too, of the delusion which led to the mis- 
apprehension — say rather the crass, material apprehension of what 
Christianity proposed. Such persons sought in Christ, not a Saviour 
from sin, but the bestower of an outward and magical annihilation of 
sin. Bringing their pagan notions over with them into Christianity, 
they were seeking in baptism a magical lustration, which could render, 
them at once wholly pure. That outward view of the church and the 
sacraments, of which we have spoken before, presented beyond doubt 
a convenient point of support for this erroneous notion. Hence it was, 
that many who meant to embrace Christianity, delayed their baptism 
for a long time, that they might meanwhile surrender themselves with- 
out disturbance to their pleasures, hoping to be made quite pure at last 
by the rite of baptism. Against such delusions, Tertullian thus ex- 
presses himself :1 ‘* How foolish, how wrong it is, to put off the duty 


1 In his book de peenitentia,c.6: Quam adimplere et veniam delictorum sustinere, 
ineptum, quam iniquum, peenitentiam non hoc est, pretium non exhibere, ad merce- 


SUPERFICIAL VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY. 253 


of repentance and yet expect the pardon of sin; that is, to hold back 
the price, and yet reach out the hand for the goods: for it has pleased 
the Lord to affix this price to the forgiveness of sin. If those that 
sell, then, first examine the money for which they offered the goods, to 
make themselves sure that it is neither worn, filed, nor counterfeit, so 
we may conceive that the Lord also first makes trial of our penitence 
before he will bestow on us the inestimable treasure of eternal life. The 
divine grace, full and free forgiveness of sin, awaits those who will come 
to baptism ; but we also must do what belongs to our part, in order to 
qualify us to receive it. Thou mayst, it is true, obtain baptism easily, 
— by thy protestations deceiving him whose business it is to confer it 
on thee. But God guards his own treasure, —he will never suffer it 
to be surreptitiously obtamed by the unworthy. In whatever darkness 
thou mayst veil thy work, God still is hght. But many fancy that God 
is under a certain necessity of performing even for the unworthy, what 
he has once promised, and thus turn his free grace into an obligation.” 
Tertullian appeals to experience to prove that in those who come in 
this spirit to baptism, the genuine effects of Christianity cannot be man- 
ifested, and that such idividuals often fall away from their profession, 
since they built their house on the sand. With an eye to the same 
class, Origen remarks that the whole profit of baptism depends on the 
disposition of the recipient; that it is to be enjoyed by him only who 
comes to this ordinance with true penitence; that, on the other hand, 
baptism redounds only to the condemnation of him who is destitute of 
such penitence ; that the spirit of renewal, therefore, which goes with 
baptism, is not shared by all.1 To guard men against the mistake of 
such outward Christians, Cyprian, in his collection of scripture proofs 
for a layman, (libri testimoniorum,) having laid down the position, that 
no man can attain to the kingdom of God, unless baptized and regen- 
erated, adds: “It is, however, nothing for one to be baptized, and to 
receive the communion, who in his life gives no evidence of reforma- 
tion.” * And the passages he cites on this occasion from the New 
Testament, go expressly to show the vanity of such outward Christian- 
ity; 1 Corinth. 9: 24, Matth. 3: 10,—5:16,—7: 22, Philipp. 2: 15. 
He then proceeds to say that “‘even the baptized person may lose the 
grace bestowed, and will do so unless he continues to remain pure from 
sin,’ citing in evidence the following passages of warning: John 5: 14, 
1 Corinth. 3: 17, 2 Corinth. 15: 2. 

It belonged, indeed, to the peculiar essence of Christianity, that as it 
was capable of becoming all things to all men, of adapting itself to the 
most different and opposite positions of humanity, so it could let itself 
down even to those modes of apprehending divine things, which were as 
yet altogether sensuous and material; and thus, by the power of a 


dem manum emittere. Hoc enim pretio bationem prius inire, tantam nobis merce- 
Dominus veniam addicere instituit; hac dem perennis scilicet vitae concessurum. 
peenitentize compensatione redimendam pro- 1'T. VI. John c. 17. 
ponit impunitatem. Si ergo qui venditant, 21,. III. c. 25, 26: Parum esse baptizari 
prius nummum, quo paciscuntur, exami- et eucharistiam accipere, nisi quis factis et 
nant, ne scalptus, neve rasus, ne adulter, opere proficiat. . 
etiam Dominum credimus, peenitentix pro- 

VOL. I. 


254 SUPERFICIAL VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY. 


divine iife, beginning from within, transform them gradually from sen- 
Suous to spiritual apprehensions. We should take good care, then, in 
estimating the religious appearances of these primitive times, how, from 
the material habits of feeling and thinking which they brought along 
from some earlier position, we make up our judgment respecting those 
who might really be wanting in nothing but the appropriate vessel to 
receive the transcendent, divine element that had, in truth, filled their 
inner life. In this case, too, the great saying of the apostle might find 
its verification, that the divine treasure was received —and for a season 
preserved —in earthen vessels, that the abundant power might be of 
God and not of man. It would be, therefore, a very superficial and 
unjust proceeding, to conclude at once, that men who framed to them- 
selves such strange conceptions of God, of the things of God and of 
his kingdom, could have nothing of the Christian life m them. But in 
the case of the class just described, when the sensuous element unduly 
predominated, and they would not yield themselves to the purifying 
influences of the Spirit of Christ, every motion of the higher life neces- 
sarily became vitiated by this sensuous element, and in the end sup- 
pressed. Every Christian quality was transformed into some shape of 
the flesh and secularized ; — was thus divested of its true significancy. 
Thus they apprehended Christ and his kingdom. Even though the ex- 
pectation of some future state of sensual bliss, of which their fanatical 
imaginations drew ravishing pictures to the fleshly sense, enabled them 
to deny the pleasures of the moment, and even to face tortures and 
death, yet they might be, notwithstanding all this, strangers to the true 
nature of the new birth, by which alone the kingdom of God can be 
entered ; — might be wanting in the spirit of ennobling love. 

Far be it from us, then, to be looking for any such appearance of the 
church in which it was found without spot or blemish, —a condition of 
it never to be realized till the final consummation. Nor do the defend- 
ers of the cause of Christianity in this period deny the existence of such 
blemishes. They acknowledge that among those who called themselves 
Christians, were some whose lives contradicted the essential character 
of Christianity and gave occasion to the heathen to blaspheme ; — yet 
they declare that such would not be recognized as Christians by the 
Christian communities; yet they challenge the heathen to judge every 
man by his life, and to chastise those whose morals deserved it, wherever 
they found them. Thus Justin Martyr and Tertullian express them- 
selves.! Says the latter, “If you assert that the Christians are, in aya- 
rice, in riotousness, in dishonesty, the worst of men, we shall not deny 
that some are so. In the purest bodies, some freckle doubtless may be 
discovered.’ But neither should we be led away by these blemishes 
that attached themselves to the surface of the church, to overlook the 
heavenly beauty which shone through them all. When the eye is fixed 
exclusively on the one or the other, the picture may be easily colored to 
an ideal perfection, or sunk to a distorted caricature. An unbiassed 
observation will shun both these extremes. 


1 Ad nationes, 1. I. ¢. 5. 


PROMINENT VIRTUES OF THE CHRISTIANS. 255 


That which our Lord himself, in his last interview with his disciples, 
described as the test by which his disciples might always be distin- 
guished — as the mark of their fellowship with him and the Father in 
heaven, the mark of his glory dwelling in the midst of them — namely, 
that they loved one another, — precisely this constituted the prominent 
mark, plain and striking to the pagans themselves, of the first Christian 
fellowship. The names, “brother” and “sister,’”’ which the Christians 
gave to each other, were not names without meaning. The fraternal 
kiss, with which every one, after being baptized, was received into the 
community, by the Christians into whose immediate fellowship he en- 
tered — which the members bestowed on each other just before the cel- 
ebration of the communion, and with which every Christian saluted his 
brother, though he never saw him before,—this was not an empty 
form, but the expression of Christian feelings — a token of the relation 
in which Christians conceived themselves to stand to each other. It 
was this, indeed, as we have had occasion to remark already, which, in 
a cold and selfish age, struck the pagans with wonder, — to behold men 
of different countries, ranks, relations, stages of culture, so intimately 
bound together,— to see the stranger who came into a city, and by 
his letter of recognition (his epistola formata) made himself known to 
the Christians of the place as a brother beyond suspicion, finding at 
once among those to whom he was personally unknown, all manner of 
brotherly sympathy and protection. 

The care of providing for the support and maintenance of strangers, 
of the poor, the sick, the old, of widows and orphans, and of those in 
prison on account of their faith, devolved on the whole church. This 
was one of the main purposes for which the collection of voluntary con- 
tributions in the assemblies eonvened for public worship, was insti- 
tuted; and the charity of individuals, moreover, led them to emulate 
each other in the same good work. In particular, it was considered as 
belonging to the office of the Christian matron to provide for the poor, 
for the brethren languishing in prison, to show hospitality to strangers. 
The hindrance occasioned to this kind of Christian activity, is reckoned 
by Tertullian among the disadvantages of a mixed marriage. ‘ What 
heathen,”’ says he, ‘ will suffer his wife to go about from one street to 
another to the houses of strangers, to the meanest hovels indeed, for 
the purpose of visiting the brethren? What heathen will allow her to 
steal away into the dungeon to kiss the chain of the martyr? Ifa 
brother arrives from abroad, what reception will he meet with in the 
house of the stranger ?1 If an alms is to be bestowed, store-house and 
cellar are shut fast.’”’* On the other hand, he counts it among the feli- 
cities of a marriage contracted between Christians, that the wife is at lib- 
erty to visit the sick and relieve the needy, and is never straitened or 
perplexed in the bestowment of her charities.’ 


1 Tertullian meant, probably, that a pe- πού to be a stranger’s house to him. 
culiar emphasis should be laid on the word 2 Ad uxorem. |. II. ο. 4. 
“stranger,” —in aliena domo, in the house 8L.c.c. 8: Libere exger visitatur, indi- 
which, to a Christian, is a stranger’s,— gens sustentatur, eleemosyne sine tor- 
when the house of a Christian matronought mento. 


256 BROTHERLY LOVE 


Nor did the active brotherly love of each community confine itself to 
what transpired in its own immediate circle, but extended itself also to 
the wants of the Christian communities in distant lands. On urgent 
occasions of this kind, the bishops made arrangements for special col- 
lections. They appointed fasts; so that what was saved, even by the 
poorest of the flock, from their daily food, might help to supply the com- 
mon wants.! When the communities of the provincial towns were too 
poor to provide any relief in cases of distress, they had recourse to the 
more wealthy communities of the metropolis. Thus it had happened 
in Numidia, that certain Christians, men and women, had been carried 
away captive by neighboring barbarians, and the Numidian churches 
were unable to contribute the sum of money'required for their ran- 
som ; — they therefore applied to the more wealthy communities of the 
great capital of North Africa. The bishop Cyprian of Carthage very 
shortly raised a contribution of more than four thousand dollars,? and 
transmitted the whole to the Numidian bishops, with a letter full of the 
spirit of Christian, brotherly affection.? ‘In afflictions of this sort,” 
he writes to them, ‘“‘ who ought not to feel pained, who ought not to 
look on the distress of his brother as his own, when the apostle Paul 
tells us, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and in 
another place says, ‘ Who is weak and I am not weak?’ Wherefore in 
the present case also it becomes us to regard the captivity of our breth- 
ren as if it were our own, and the distress of those now in peril as our 
own distress, since we are united together by one bond of love. And 
not love alone, but religion ought to urge and stimulate us to redeem 
the brethren who are our members. For when the apostle Paul again, 
m another place, asks, ‘ Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth im you?’ we must be reminded 
here, if charity alone were not enough to impel us to aid our brethren, 
that it is the temple of God which has been made captive, and that it 
does not become us, by delay, and in neglect of our own distress, to 
suffer that temple to remain long in bondage. And when the same 
apostle tells us, that ‘as many of you as are baptized have put on 
Christ,’ we are bound, in our captive brethren, to see Christ, and to 
redeem him from captivity, who has redeemed us from death; so that 
he who delivered us from the jaws of Satan, and who now himself dwells 
and abides in us, may be rescued from the hands of the barbarians ; 
and he be ransomed for a sum of money, who has ransomed us by his 
blood and cross. Meanwhile, he has suffered this to happen to try our 
faith — whether each one of us is ready to do for the other, what in 
like circumstances he would wish to have done for himself. For who 
that respects the claims of humanity and of mutual love, ought not, if 
he is a father, to consider it as though his own children were among 
those barbarians, and if a husband, as though his own wife were there 
in captivity, to the grief and shame of the marriage bond? It is indeed 
our earnest hope, that you may never be visited again with a like afflic- 


1 Tertullian, de jejuniis, c. 13: Episcopi 2 Sestertia centum millia nummorum. 
universz plebi mandare jejunia assolent, — 8 Ep. 60 
industria stipium conferendarum. 


AND CHARITY. 257 


tion, and that our brethren may be saved by the mighty power of the 
Lord from the recurrence of those dangers to which they are now ex- 
posed. But should any similar calamity again befall you, to try the love 
and faith of our hearts, delay not to mform us of it by letter; for be 
assured, it is the prayer of all the brethren here that nothing of the kind 
may again happen, but if it should, they are ready cheerfully and abun- 
dantly to assist you.” 

That from which such works took the impress of a truly Christian 
character, was indeed nothing else than the temper — which here ex- 
presses itself—of Christian love simply following the impulse from 
within. This Christian character was no longer present in its purity, 
when the charitable action had reference to an outward end; when it was 
converted into a ground of merit before God, into a means for extin- 
guishing sin. And this disturbing element found entrance whenever 
the Christian consciousness became in any way diverted from its cen- 
tral point, so as to cease referring to Christ as the sole ground for 
salvation. In proportion as the reference to Christ, which the habit 
already noticed, of confounding the church with a set of outward forms, 
had no tendency to encourage, was forgotten, in the the same propor- 
tion rose the estimate which men placed on their own doings, and on 
the merit of good works. This also must be considered as belonging to 
the reaction of the Jewish principle, which had been overcome by the 
independent development of Christianity among the pagans, but which 
afterwards found means of again introducing itself. In the third cen- 
tury, we may observe both modes of contemplating acts of charity 
running along side by side, and occasionally crossing each other; as 
for example, in the tract composed by Cyprian with a view to exhort 
Christians, many of whom had grown cold in brotherly love, to the 
exercise of this virtue—the tract de opere et eleemosynis. To the 
father of a family, who, when invited to some charitable act, excuses 
himself on the plea that he is obliged to provide for a large family of 
children, he says, ‘Seek for your sons another father than the frail 
and mortal one, even an almighty and everlasting Father of spiritual 
children. Let him be your children’s guardian and provider—let him, 
with his divine majesty, be their protector against all injustice of the 
world. You who are striving more to secure for them an earthly than 
a heavenly inheritance, seeking rather to commend your sons to Satan 
than to Christ, incur a double sin, in neglecting to secure for your 
children the help of their heavenly Father, and in teaching them to prize 
their earthly inheritance more than Christ.” 

In times of public calamity, the contrast was strikingly displayed be- 
tween the cowardly selfishness of the pagans and the self-sacrificing 
brotherly love of the Christians. Let us hear how the bishop Dionysius 
of Alexandria describes this contrast, as it was manifested in the different 
conduct of the Christians and the pagans during a contagious sickness, 
which, in the reign of the emperor Gallienus, raged in that great capi- 
tal. “« Τὸ the pagans, this pestilence appeared a most frightful calamity 
that left nothing to hope for; not sotous. We regarded it as a special 
trial and exercise for our faith. It was true of most of our brethren, that, 


ΟΝ 


258 CHRISTIAN BROTHERLY LOVE. 


in the fulness of their brotherly love, they spared not themselves. Their 
only anxiety was a mutual one for each other; and as they waited on 
the sick without thinking of themselves, readily ministermg to their 
wants, for Christ’s sake, with them they cheerfully gave up their own 
lives. Many died, after others, by their care, had been recovered from 
the sickness. Some of the best among our brethren, presbyters, dea- 
cons and distinguished men of the laity, thus ended their lives — so that 
the manner of their death, beng the fruit of such eminent piety and 
mighty faith, seemed not to fall short of martyrdom. Many who took 
the bodies of Christian brethren into their arms and to their bosoms, 
composed their features and buried them with all possible care, after- 
wards followed them in death. But with the heathens it was quite 
otherwise ; those who showed the first symptoms of the disease, they 
drove from them; they fled from their dearest friends. The half-dead 
they cast into the streets, and left the dead unburied, making it their 
chief care to avoid the contagion, which however im spite of every pre- 
caution they could hardly escape.” } 

In like manner, the Christians at Carthage distinguished themselves 
by their disinterested conduct from the pagan world, during the pesti- 
lence which at a somewhat earlier period, in the reign of Gallus, rav- 
aged North Africa. The pagans in a cowardly manner deserted their 
own sick and dying. The streets were covered with dead bodies, which 
none dared to touch. Avarice alone overcame the fear of death; 
abandoned men took advantage of the misfortunes of others to plunder 
them. Meantime the pagans, instead of being led by this calamity to 
reflect on their own guiltiness and corruption, accused the Christians, 
those enemies of the gods, as the cause of 10.232 But Cyprian exhorted 
his church to look upon the desolating scourge as a trial of their faith.? 
‘How necessary is it, my dearest brethren,” said he to them, “ that 
this pestilence which appears among us, bringing with it death and 
destruction, should try men’s souls — should show whether the healthy ° 
will take care of the sick; whether relations have a tender regard for 
each other; whether masters will take home their sick servants.” It 
was not enough, however, to satisfy a bishop who took the Great Shep- 
herd for his example, that the Christians should simply show the spirit 
of brotherly love towards each other. He called his church together 
and addressed them as follows: “If we do good only to our own, we 
do no more than the publicans and heathens. But if we are the chil- 
dren of God, who makes his sun to rise and sends his rain on the just 
and on the unjust, who scatters his gifts and blessmgs not barely on 
his own, but even on those whose thoughts are far from him, we must 
show it by our actions, striving to be perfect even as our Father in 
heaven is perfect, blessing those that curse us, and doing good to them 
that despitefully use us.” Animated by his fatherly words, the mem- 
bers of the church quickly divided the work among them. ‘The rich 
gave of their substance, the poor contributed their labor; and in a 


1 Euseb. 1. VIL ο. 22. 2 Cyprian, ad Demetrianum. 3 Lib. de mortalitate. 


RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO GOVERNMENT. 259 


short time, the bodies which filled the streets were buried, and the city 
delivered from the danger of a universal infection. 

There were opposite sinful tendencies which Christianty taught men 
to avoid, and between which the development of the Christian life had 
to make good its way. In these times of despotism it was no rare 
thing to find, united with a servile spirit that gave to the creature the 
honor which is due to God alone — with a slavish obedience that sprung 
only from fear, a contempt for the laws of the state where they bore 
hard on selfish interests and the restraint of fear was removed. But 
Christianity, by the posztive spirit which went forth from it, secured men 
against both these errors. By it was rendered an obedience that had 
its root in the love of God and pointed ultimately to him,— therefore a 
free obedience, equally removed from the slavish fear of man on the 
one hand, and lawless self-will on the other. The same spirit of Chris- 
tianity which inculcated obedience to man for the sake of God, taught 
also that God should be obeyed rather than man, that every considera- 
tion must be sacrificed, property and life despised, in all cases where 
human authority demanded an obedience contrary to the laws and ordi- 
nances of God. Here was displayed in the Christians that true spirit 
of freedom, against which despotic power could avail nothing. We 
have already had occasion, in the first section of this history, to observe 
the effects of the Christian spirit in both these directions. In this sense, 
Justin Martyr says,! ‘‘ Tribute and customs we seek uniformly, before 
all others, to pay over to your appointed officers, as we have been 
taught to do by our Master, Matth. 22: 21. Therefore we pray to 
God alone; but you we cheerfully serve in all other things, since we 
acknowledge you as rulers of men.” Tertullian boldly asserted, that 
what the state lost in its revenue from the temples by the spread of 
Christianity, would be found to be made up by what it gained in the 
way of tribute and customs, through the honesty of the Christians, when 
compared to the common frauds resorted to in paying them.? He gives 
to those words of Christ in Matthew 22: 21, which were ever on the 
lips and in the hearts of Christians, as a maxim of daily life, the follow- 
ing interpretation —in opposition to those who understood them, as he 
supposed, in too wide and indefinite a sense:—‘‘ Let the image of 
Cesar, which is on the coin, be rendered to Cesar; and the image of 
God, which is in man, be given to God—hence give the money to 
Cesar, but yourself to God; for what will be left for God if all belongs 
to Cesar?” 8 

The principles by which men were bound to act in this case, could 
be easily laid down in theory, and easily deduced from the Holy Scrip- 
tures and from the nature of Christianity. Hence, in theory, all 
Christians were agreed; but there was some difficulty in applying these 
principles to particular cases, and in answering the question in every 
instance, how the line was to be drawn between what belonged to Caesar 
and what belonged to God—between what might be considered, in 


1 Apolog. 11. tum vectigalibus pereat fraude et mendacio 
2 Apolog. c. 42: Si ineatur (ratio,) quan- vestrarum professionum. 
8 De idololatria, ο. 15. 


260 POSITION OF CHRISTIANITY, WITH 


reference to religion, matters of indifference, and what not. The pagan 
religion was, in truth, so closely interwoven with all the arrangements 
of civil and social life, that it was not always easy to separate and dis- 
tinguish the barely civil or social from the religious element. Many 
customs had really sprung from a religious source, whose connection, 
however, with religion had long been forgotten by the multitude, and, 
remembered only by a few learned antiquarians, lay too far back to be 
recalled in the popular consciousness! The question here arose, 
whether such customs should, like others, be considered as in themselves 
indifferent ; whether men might be allowed in such matters to follow 
the barely social or civil usages, or whether they should set aside all 
other considerations on the ground of the connection of such customs 
with paganism. 

Again, Christianity, from its nature, must pronounce sentence of 
condemnation against all ungodliness, but at the same time appropriate 
to itself all purely human relations and arrangements, consecrating and 
ennobling, instead of annihilating them. But the question might arise 
in particular cases, as to what was purely human, and adapted there- 
fore to be received into union with Christianity ; and what had sprung 
originally out of the corruption of human nature, and, being in its 
essence ungodly, must therefore be rejected. Christianity having ap- 
peared as the new leaven in the old world— and being destined to pro- 
duce a new creation in an old one that had grown out of an entirely 
different principle of life, the question might the more readily occur ; 
which of the already existing elements needed only to be transformed 
and ennobled, and which should be purged wholly away? In what 
already existed, there might be many things which, through the partic- 
ular turn and direction they had assumed in the corrupt world, might 
seem utterly at variance with the essence of Christianity ; but which, at 
the same time, by receiving another turn and direction — by being ap- 
plied in another way, might reaily admit of being easily brought into 
harmony with it. Now there might be some, who, in condemning the 
abuse of these things, might also deny the possible good use of them; 
and others, who, in conceiving of their possible good use, might be led 
to approve the existing abuse of them. 

Finally, many customs may have existed, which would never have 
found any place in a state of things that had grown out of Christianity 
— which in their origin and nature were alien to pure Christianity — 
but which still, under the influence of the Christian spirit, might be so 
modified and applied, as to be divested of that which made them wholly 
incompatible with the religion of the gospel. That religion which aimed 
nowhere to produce violent and convulsive changes from without, but 
led to reforms by beginning in the first place within, — whose peculiar 
character it was to operate positively rather than negatively —to dis- 
place and destroy no faster than it substituted something better, might, 


1 Consult, for example, what Tertullian concerning the religious meaning and ref- 
and Clement of Alexandria have been able erence of the custom of crowning, — things 
to draw from the stores of their own learn- which assuredly would not easily occur to 
ing and the works of other literary men, men in common life. 


REFERENCE TO EXISTING INSTITUTIONS. 261 


by virtue of this its law of action, suffer many of the existing customs 
to remain just as they were, in their old defective forms, aiming simply 
to infuse into them a new spirit, in trust that this would eventually 
throw off the unbefitting exterior, and create all things new. 

Hence, notwithstanding that Christians were agreed as to general 
principles, disputes might arise among them with regard to the applica- 
tion of these principles in particular cases; according as they were led 
by their different positions and tendencies of mind to take a different 
view of the circumstances — disputes similar to those which at various 
periods afterwards were not unfrequently arising, relative to the man- 
agement of missions among foreign tribes of men, to the organization of 
new churches, and to the disposition of matters not essential (ἀδιάφορα ) 
Men were liable to err here on both extremes, — on that of too lax an 
accommodation to, or on that of too stern a repulsion of, existing 
usages. The aggressive or the assimilating power of Christianity, 
which should both be intimately united to secure the healthy develop- 
ment of life, might one or the other be allowed an undue predominance. 
The few excepted, who had already progressed farther in the genuine 
liberty of the gospel, who to deep Christian earnestness united the pru- 
dence dnd clearness of science, these few excepted, the better class of 
Christians were generally more inclined to the latter than to the former 
of these extremes; they chose rather to reject many of those customs, 
which as pagans they had once practised in the service of sin and false- 
hood, but which were capable also of another application, than run 
the risk of adopting with them the corruptions of heathenism; they 
were glad to let go everything which was associated in their minds with 
sin or with pagan rites; they chose rather to do too much, than to for- 
feit a tittle of that Christianity which constituted their jewel, the pearl 
for which they were willing to sell all they had; as in general it is 
more natural for men, in the. first ardor of conversion, the first glow of 
genuine love, to go to excess in opposing the world, than in yielding to 
it. The church at large has to pass through periods of development 
as to this matter, analogous to those of the individual Christian. Hence, 
in the commencing development of the Christian life, the extreme ag- 
gressive element must first predominate. 

As regards the controversy between the two parties described, one 
class appealed to the rule, that men are bound to render unto Cesar 
the things that are Czesar’s, — that in matters pertaining to civil order, 
they are bound to obey the existing laws,— that they ought not un- 
necessarily to give offence to the heathens, nor afford them any occasion 
for blaspheming the name of God,— that in order to win all to em- 
brace the gospel, it was necessary to become all things to all men. The 
other party could not deny that these were scripture principles; but, 
said they, while we are to consider all outward, earthly possessions 
as belonging to the emperor, our hearts and our lives certainly must be- 
long wholly to God. ‘That which is the emperor’s, ought never to be 
put in competition with that which is God’s. If the injunction that we 
should give the heathen no occasion to blaspheme the Christian name, 
must be so unconditionally understood, it would be necessary to put off 


262 FORBIDDEN TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 

Christianity entirely. Let them continue to blaspheme us, provided 
only we give them no occasion for so doing by our unchristian conduct, 
provided they blaspheme in us only what belongs to Christianity. We 
should indeed, in every proper way, become all things to all men ; but 
yet in no such sense as to become worldly to worldly men; for it is also 
said, “If I yet pleased men, 1 should not be the servant of Christ.’’ 1 
We see plainly that each of these two parties were correct in the princi- 
ples they would maintain ; the only question to be determined was, where 
these principles found their right application. 

While one of these classes believed that they ought to avoid every 
thing which excited attention among the pagans, and which might in- 
vite them to resort to persecuting measures, the other condemned all 
such prudence and reserve, as a disposition that was either ashamed or 
afraid of public confession. Clement of Alexandria rebuked those who, 
whenever they met in the street, publicly saluted each other with the 
fraternal kiss, and would thus every where draw attention to themselves 
as Christians. He calls it a foolish provocation of the pagans.2 He 
charges them with falsely wearing that Christian love for a show, which 
is an inward sentiment, and of not knowmg how to suit their actions 
to the time ; in doing which, it must be adrhitted, he makes a wrong 
application of the words of Paul in the fifth chapter to the Ephesians.’ 

Whoever followed a trade or occupation which was contrary to the 
generally received Christian principles, was not admitted to baptism, 
till he had pledged himself to lay it aside.4 He must enter on some 
new occupation to earn the means of subsistence ; or if not in a situation 
to do this, he was received into the number of the poor maintained by 
the church. ΤῸ these occupations were reckoned all that stood in any 
way connected with idolatry, or which were calculated to promote it ; 
those, for instance, of the artists and handicraftsmen who employed 
themselves in making or adorning images of the gods. There were 
doubtless many, who, wishing to pursue these trades for a subsistence, 
excused themselves on the ground, that they did not worship the idols, 
that they did not consider them as objects of religion, but simply as 
objects of art; though, in these times, it assuredly argued a peculiar 
coldness of religious feeling, to distinguish thus what belonged to art 
and what belonged to religion. Against such excuses Tertullian ex- 
claimed with pious warmth,® —‘‘Assuredly you are a worshipper of idols, 
when you help to promote their worship. It is true, you bring to them 
no outward victim; but you sacrifice to them your mind; your sweat is 
their drink-offering, — you kindle for them the light of your skill.” With 
these employments were reckoned the various kinds of astrology and of 


1 Tertullian, de idololatria. 

2 Strom. III. ἢ 257: Οἱ κατὰ τὰς ὅδους 
τῶν ἀγαπήτων ἀσπασμοὶ παῤῥησίας ἀνοήτου 
γέμοντες, καταφανῶν τοῖς ἐκτὸς εἶναι βου- 
λομένων οὐδὲ ἐλαχίστης μετέχουσι χάριτος. 

8 That they should μυστικῶς φιλοφρονεῖ- 
σϑαι ἔννοϑεν, ἐξαγοραζομένους τὸν καιρόν. 


4 Apostol. Constit. 1. VIII. c. 81. Also, 


Council of Elvira, can. 62: Si auriga et 
pantomimus credere voluerint, placuit, ut 
prius actibus suis renuntient, et tunc demum 
suscipiantur, ita ut ulterius ad ea non re- 
vertantur. Qui si facere contra interdic- 
tum tentaverint, projiciantur ab ecclesia. 

5 De idololatria, c. 6. 


GLADIATORIAL EXHIBITIONS. 908 


magic, a species of self-deception or of fraud which was at that time so 
prevalent and so lucrative. 

A remarkable proof, how far the moral and humane feelings of our 
nature could be blunted by the force of education and custom, how a 
narrow-hearted political tendency could suppress the sentiment of a 
common humanity, is presented in that favorite sport of the Roman peo- 
ple, the bloody gladiatorial shows ; exhibitions given them by men who 
claimed to be cultivated, and which many even of the legislators, ἡ 
statesmen and self-styled philosophers, countenanced and encouraged. 
But the feeling of universal philanthropy, roused into life and action 
by Christianity, must have struggled, from the first, against this cruel 
custom, justified and sanctioned as it was by the established laws and 
by the prevalent habits of thinking among the Romans. Whoever fre- 
quented the gladiatorial shows and the combats of wild beasts, was, by 
the general principle of the church, excluded from its communion. Ire- 
nzeus names it with abhorrence as the last denial of the Christian ehar- 
acter, when certain individuals (belonging to the wildly fanatical and 
antinomian sects of the Gnostics) did not even refrain from participat- 
ing in those bloody shows, alike hateful to God and to men.? Cyprian, 
describing the joy of a Christian who has just escaped from the polluted 
heathen world, and looks back upon it from his new position, says:? “ If 
you cast your eye on the cities, you behold an assembly of men, pre- 
senting a more melancholy sight than any solitude. A combat of gladi- 
ators is in preparation, that blood may appease the lust of cruel eyes. 
A man is killed for the amusement of his fellow men; murder is turned 
into an art, and crime not only perpetrated, but taught as a profes- 
sion.”” Tertullian says to those pagans who defended the gladiatorial 
sports,? and who probably drew one of their arguments from the fact, 
that criminals condemned to death by the laws were sometimes em- 
ployed as the actors in them: “ It is well, that criminals should be pun- 
ished ; as who else than a criminal can deny ? And yet no innocent man 
ean find pleasure in witnessing his neighbor’s punishment; it behooves 
him rather to grieve, when a man, his fellow, has become so guilty as to 
subject himself to so cruel a death. But who is my voucher, that it is 
always the guilty who are thrown to the wild beasts, or condemned to 
other kinds of death ; that innocence also does not sometimes meet with 
the same fate, through revenge on the part of the judge, weakness in 
the advocate, or the force of torture? The gladiators at least, as you 
must allow, come to the combat, not as criminals, but as an offering to 
the public pleasure. And however the case may be with those who 
are condemned to the gladiatorial combats, yet consider what is this — 
that punishment, whose tendency should be to reform those who are 
guilty of minor offences, should tend in fact to make them mur- 
derers ?” 

But it was not the participation in these cruel sports alone, which to 
the Christians appeared incompatible with the nature of their calling ; 


1 Jrenzus, 1. I. c.6: Ὡς μηδὲ τῆς παρὰ ἀπέχεσϑαι ἐνίους αὐτῶν. 
ϑεῷ καὶ ἀνϑρώποις μεμισημένης τῆς τῶν 2 Ep. ad Donat. 
ϑεριομάχων καὶ μονομαχίας ἀνδροφόνου ϑεᾶς 8 .1)6 spectaculis, c. 19. 


264 PUBLIC SPORTS. 


the same censure extended to all the different public exhibitions of that 
period ; to the pantomimes, the comedies and tragedies, the chariot and 
foot races, and the various amusements of the circus and the theatre. 
Such was the prevailing and passionate fondness of the Romans at that 
time for theatrical entertainments, that many were known to be Chris- 
tians simply from the fact that they absented themselves wholly from 
the theatre! The spectacles, in the first place, were considered as an 
appendage of idolatry, by virtue of their origin from pagan rites and of 
their connection with several of the pagan festivals. Among the pomps 
of idolatry or devil-worship, (πομπὴ διαβόλου,) which the Christians, when 
enrolled at their baptism into the service of God’s kingdom, were 
obliged to renounce, (the sacramentum militize Christi,) these spectacles 
were particularly included. In the next place, many things occurred 
in them which were revolting to the Christian sense of propriety; and 
where this was not the case, yet the occupying of one’s self for hours 
with mere nonsense — the unholy spirit which ruled in these assemblies 
—the wild uproar of the congregated multitude, seemed unsuited to 
the holy seriousness of the Christian, priestly character. The Christians 
did, in truth, consider themselves as priests, consecrated, in their whole 
life, to God; as temples of the Holy Spirit; every thing, therefore, 
which was alien to this Spirit, for which they should always keep in 
readiness the dwelling in their hearts, must be avoided. ‘‘ God has 
commanded,” says Tertullian,” “ that the Holy Spirit, as a tender and 
gentle Spirit, should, according to its own excellent nature, be treated 
with tranquillity and gentleness, with quiet and peace ; — that it should 
not be disturbed by passion, fury, anger, and emotions of violent grief. 
How can such a spirit consist with the spectacles? For no spectacle 
passes off without violently agitating the passions. When one goes to 
the play, one thinks of nothing else than to see and to be seen. Can 
one, while listening to the declamation of an actor, think on the sen- 
tence of a prophet, or in the midst of the song of an effeminate stage- 
player, meditate on a psalm? If every species of immodesty is abomi- 
nable to us, how should we allow ourselves to hear, what we cannot feel 
at liberty to speak ; when we know that every idle and unprofitable word 
is condemned by our Lord?” 

To Tertullian, who was inclined to look upon all art as a lie, a coun- 
terfeiting of the original nature which God created, the whole system 
of spectacles appeared merely as an art of dissimulation and falsehood. 
“The Creator of truth,” said he,? “loves nothing that is false,—all 
fiction is, to him, falsification. He who condemns every thing in the 
shape of hypocrisy, cannot look with complacency on him who dissimu- 
lates voice, sex, age, love, anger, sighs or tears.”’ 

Weak minded individuals, who allowed themselves to be so far car- 
ried away by the power of prevailing custom, which contradicted their 
Christian feelings, as to visit such scenes, might be wounded by impres- 
sions thus received, and permanently robbed of their peace. 


1 De spectaculis, c. 24: Hine vel maxime 2 De spectaculis, c. 15. 
ethnici intelligunt factum Christianum, de L. ¢. 
repudio spectaculorum. 


PUBLIC SPORTS. 265 
We find examples of a distempered state of mind, like the demonia- 
cal, which had been brought on by such inward distraction.’ Others, 
after they had been prevailed upon once or twice by the love of 
pleasure, and in spite of their conscience, to indulge in these amuse- 
ments, contracted a new taste for them, and by their passionate fond- 
ness for the theatre, were, in the end, gradually drawn back again to 
heathenism.? Δ ; 

The pagans and the more thoughtless class of Christians were in the 
habit of urging the seriously disposed with arguments like the follow- 
ing: Why should they withdraw themselves from these public amuse- 
ments? Such outward pleasures, addressed to the eye and ear, might 
be quite consistent with religion in the heart. God is not injured by 
man’s enjoyment, which in its proper time and place may be partaken 
of without sin, as long as the fear and the reverence of God remain in 
the heart.2 Thus Celsus invites the Christians to join in the public fes- 
tivals. ““ God,’’ he says to them, “is the common God of all, — he is 
good, stands in need of nothing, is a stranger to all jealousy. What 
then should hinder men, however much they may be devoted to him, 
from participating in the sports of the people?”’* Thus it is, that the 
cold frivolity of a worldly mind, when it comes in contact with a char- 
acter of deeper moral earnestness, commonly assumes the airs of the 
philosopher. ΤῸ such arguments Tertullian replies, the very point to 
be shown is, how these amusements can agree with true religion and with 
true obedience towards the true God. 

Others, infected with the passion for these trifles, who were seeking 
for reasons by which to hush their conscientious scruples as Christians, 
argued that nothing was made use of in the public spectacles but 
God’s gifts, which he had bestowed on men that they might enjoy 
them. No particular passage of scripture could in fact be shown 
where the shows were expressly forbidden. As to the chariot race, 
there could assuredly be nothing sinful in it, smce Elijah rode in ἃ char- 
ἰοῦ to heaven. The music and dancing of the theatre could not be for- 
bidden, for we read in the scriptures of choirs, stringed instruments, 
cymbals, trumpets and shawns, harp and psaltery ; we see king David 
dancing and playing before the ark ; and the apostle Paul, in exhorting 
Christians, borrows images from the stadium and the circus. At this 
sophistry Tertullian exclaims, ‘‘ Ah, how adroit a reasoner does human 
ignorance imagine itself, particularly when it fears that it may lose 


1 For examples, see Tertullian de specta- 
culis, c. 26: A woman who visited the the- 
atre, came home from there in the sad con- 
dition of a person demoniacally possessed. 
The evil spirit, having been adjured to tell 
why it had taken possession of the soul of 
a Christian, said, or rather the patient, who 
imagined herself to be speaking in the 
name of the demon: “I in this did perfect- 
ly right, for I found her where my own 
kingdom is.” Another, the night following 
her visit to the theatre, had a frightful yis- 
ion, and it was perhaps in consequence of 


VOL. I. 23 


the alarm into which she was thrown by it, 
that five days afterwards she died. 

2 L. c. 6. 26: Quot documenta de his, qui, 
cum diabolo apud spectaculo communican- 
do, a Domino exciderunt! 

“2d: cna. Th 

4 Orig. c. Cels. 1. VIII. ¢. 21: 'O ye μὴν 
ϑεὸς ἅπασι κοινὸς ἀγαϑός τε καὶ ἀπροσδεὴς, 
καὶ ἔξω φϑόνου. Ti οὖν κωλύει τοὺς μά- 
λιστα καϑωσιωμένους αὐτῷ καὶ τῶν δημο- 
τελῶν ἑορτῶν μεταλαμβώνειν ; 

ὅ The tract de spectaculis, among the 
works of Cyprian. 


᾿ς 
266 PUBLIC SPORTS. 


some of the pleasures and amusements of the world.” In answer to 
the first of these arguments he says: ‘‘ To be sure, all things are God’s 
gifts; but the question is, for what end has God given them, and how 
may they be so used as to answer their true end? What is the origi- 
nal creation, and what the abuse of sin? for there is a wide difference 
between nature in its original purity, and nature corrupted, between 
the Creator and the Creator’s counterfeiter.”’ In reply to the second, 
he says: ‘‘ Though in scripture there may be found no express prohibi- 
tion of theatrical exhibitions, yet it contains the general principles, 
from which this prohibition follows of itself. All which is there said 
generally against the lusts of the flesh and of the eye, must be applied 
also to this particular kind of lust. When we can maintain that wrath, 
cruelty and rudeness are permitted in scripture, then may we be at 
liberty to visit the amphitheatre. If we are such as we call ourselves, 
then let us, if we can, take delight in the shedding of human blood.” 
Agamst such as wrested the scriptures after the manner above 
described, the author of the treatise “‘On Spectacles,” in the works 
of Cyprian, uses the following language: “‘I can truly say, it were 
better that such persons knew nothing of the scriptures than to read 
them thus; for the language and illustrations employed to exhort men 
to the virtue of the gospel, they pervert to the defence of vice ; for it 
was so written for the purpose of inflaming us with a livelier zeal in 
things profitable, while the heathens display so much earnestness on 
trifles. Reason itself can draw from the general rules laid down im 
scripture those conclusions, which are not expressly unfolded by the 
scriptures themselves.! Let each take counsel only of himself, —let 
each confer only with that person whom, as a Christian, he ought to 
represent; he will then never do any thing unbecoming the Christian, 
for that conscience which depends on itself and not on another, will then 
preponderate.”’ 2 

Tertullian invites the Christians to compare with those empty pleas- 
ures of the pagan world, the true, spiritual pleasures which had be- 
come theirs through faith.? ‘‘ Tell me, pray, have we any other desire, 
than that which was also the desire of the apostle, to depart from the 
world, and be with the Lord? Your pleasures are in the direction of 
your wishes.. But why are you so unthankful, that you are not satisfied 
with, that you do not recognize, the pleasures so many and so great, 
which even now are bestowed on you by the Lord. For what is there 
more joyous than reconciliation with God, your Father and Lord; than 
the revelation of truth, the knowledge of error, the forgiveness of mul- 
titudes of past sins? What greater pleasure than the despising of such 
pleasures, the contempt of the whole world; than true freedom, the 
pure conscience, the guiltless life, and fearlessness of death ; than that 
you can tread under foot the gods of the pagan world, that you can 
expel evil spirits, heal diseases, and pray for revelations? These are 
the pleasures, these the entertainments of the Christian; holy, everlast- 


1 Ratio docet, qu scriptura conticuit. geret. Plus enim ponderis habebit consci- 
2 Unusquisque cum persona professionis entia, que nulli se alteri debebit, nisi sibi. 
sux loquatur et nihil unquam indecorum 3 De spectaculis, c. 29. 


4 

PUBLIC SPORTS— SLAVERY. 267 
ing, not to be purchased with money. And what must those be which 
eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and which it hath not entered 
into the heart of man to conceive ἢ In like manner, the author of the 
above cited treatise in the works of Cyprian remarks: ‘‘ He can never 
lock with wonder on the works of man, who has come to know himself 
as a child of God. It were letting himself down from his noble preém- 
inence, to look with wonder upon any thing else than the Lord. Let 
the faithful Christian apply himself with all diligence to the holy scrip- 
tures, and in them he will find the worthier spectacles of faith, — ex- 
hibitions which even he who has lost his eyesight may enjoy.” 

If the mere attending as a looker on at these theatrical entertain- 
ments was considered a wrong thing by the Christians, much more would 
they reprobate the profession of an actor. In the time of Cyprian, 
there was the case of an actor who became a Christian, and then for the 
sake of a living set up a school to instruct boys in the art which he 
formerly practised. The bishop Cyprian was asked whether such an 
individual could be suffered to remain in the communion of the church, 
and he declared strongly against it. If a man, said he, is even forbid- 
den (Deut. 22: 5) to put on the garment of a woman, and a curse is 
pronounced on any one who does this, ‘‘ how much more criminal must 
it appear, to form the man, by an immodest art, to effeminate and un- 
seemly gestures, to falsify the image of God by the tricks of the devil.” 
“‘Tn case such an one,”’ he adds, ““ pleads the necessity of his poverty, 
he may assuredly find relief from that necessity amongst the rest who 
are maintained by the church, provided that he can be satisfied with 
a homelier but more innocent fare. He must not, however, suppose, 
that he is to be hired to leave off sinning, since he does this not for our 
sake, but for his own. If the church where he resides is too poor to 
support him, let him come to Carthage ; here he may receive whatever 
is necessary for his support in food and clothing, provided only he teach 
not others who are without the pale of the church what is pernicious, 
but learn himself, within the church, what tends to salvation.” 1 

Among those social relations which were alien to the nature of Chris- 
tianity, and which Christianity found existing at the time of its first 
propagation, belonged slavery. By the estrangement of humanity from 
God, its original unity was disturbed. Mankind, destined to be one, 
split asunder into a multitude of nations, each striving to assert itself 
as the whole, and each taking an opposite direction to the other in its 
course of development. Thus the consciousness of possessing a common 
human worth was lost } and it became possible for man to be placed in 
that relation to his fellow in which nature alone should stand to human- 
ity, and his own nature to the individual.? A relation so unnatural 
could find its justification only by assuming the position, that the differ- 


1 Ep. 61, ad Euchrat. 

2 So says he who has most distinctly de- 
fined the ethical and political conceptions 
which presented themselves at the position 
gained by the ancient world. So says 
Aristotle, Eth. Nicomach. 1. [X. ¢.13. The 
relation between master and slave is like 


that between the artisan and his tools, the 
soul and the body, the man and his horse 
or Ox; ὁ δοῦλος ἔμψυχον ὄργανον, τὸ δ᾽ 
ὄργανον ἄψυχος δοῦλος. In this relation, 
to speak of a δίκαιον, a φιλία, would be out 
of place. 


268 SLAVERY. 

ence among nations, — which took place at a later period, and origin- 
ated in sin, —that difference, by virtue of which there exists so great 
a disparity of intellectual and moral power, was something original. 
Hence men could no longer recognize the fundamental identity of hu- 
man nature, and believed one class destined by nature itself to be the 
tools of another, and without any will of their own. Thus was this re- 
lation a necessary result of the position held by antiquity, when state 
and nation constituted the absolute form for the realization of the high- 
est good; and thus it could happen, that the nation which was most 
ardent for civil liberty, still employed thousands only as slaves.1 And 
though their situation was often rendered more tolerable through the 
influence of manners and the pure sentiments of humanity, — which, 
breaking through unnatural restraints, would introduce a heartier fellow- 
ship between master and slave,?—— yet the contradiction between this 
whole relation and man’s essential dignity could not thus be set aside ; 
and in general it still continued to be the prevailing habit, to regard 
slaves not as men gifted with the same rights as all others, but as things. 
In a judicial process, slaves who were acknowledged to be implicated in 
no guilt, might still be subjected to all the tortures of the rack, for the 
purpose of extorting confessions from them. If a master was murdered 
by one of his slaves, the terrible severity of the Roman laws required 
the sacrifice of all the slaves, male and female, which were in the house 
when the crime was committed; and this, too, whatever might be their 
number, and even though they were not liable to the slightest sus- 

icion.® 

f But Christianity brought about that change in the consciousness of 
humanity, from which a dissolution of this whole relation, though it 
could not be immediately effected, yet by virtue of the consequences 
resulting from that change, must eventually take place. This effect 
Christianity produced, first by the facts of which it was a witness; and 
next by the ideas which, by occasion of these facts, it set in circulation. 
By Christ, the Saviour, belonging to all mankind, the antagonisms 
among men resulting from sin were annulled; by him the original one- 
ness was restored. ‘These facts must now continue to operate in trans- 
forming the life of mankind. Masters as well as servants were obliged 
to acknowledge themselves the servants of sin, and to receive in the 
same manner, as a gift of God’s free grace, their deliverance from this 
common bondage, — the true, the highest freedom. Servants and mas- 
ters, if they had become believers, were brought together under the 
same bond of an heavenly union, destined for immortality ; they be- 
came brethren in Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor free, mem- 


1 See above, p. 46, the way in which Aris- 
totle secks to justify this relation, to show 
that it is one aimed at by nature herself. 

2 Even Aristotle, Eth. Nicomach. 1. IX. 
c. 13, makes this distinction in reference to 
the relation between master and slave: 
ἡ μὲν οὖν δοῦλος, οὐκ ἔστι φιλία πρὸς αὐτὸν, 
ἡ δ᾽ ἄνϑρωπος, δοκεῖ γὰρ εἶναι τι δίκαιον 
παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς πάντα τὸν δυνάμενον 


κοινωνῆσαι νόμον καὶ συνϑῆκης καὶ φιλίας 
δὴ καϑ' ὅσον ἄνϑρωπος. 

8 Tacitus, Annal. 1. XIV. c. 42, et seq. 
relates how, in a case of this sort, when the 
blood of so many innocent persons of every 
age and sex was to be shed, the compassion 
of the people was roused, and it was neces- 
sary to use force to prevent an insurrec- 
tion. 


SLAVERY. 269 


bers of one body, baptized into one spirit, heirs of the same heavenly 
inheritance. Servants often became teachers of their masters in the 
gospel, after having practically exhibited before them the loftiness of a 
divine life, which must express itself even under the most constraining 
of relations, and shine forth the more conspicuously by the contrast.! 
The masters looked upon their servants no longer as slaves, but as their 
beloved brethren; they prayed and sang in company; they could sit 
at each other’s side at the feast of brotherly love, and receive together 
the body of the Lord. Thus, by the spirit and by the effects of Chris- 
tianity, ideas and feelings could not fail of being widely diffused, which 
were directly opposed to this relation, so consonant with the habits of 
thinking that had hitherto prevailed. Christianity could not fail to give 
birth to the wish, that every man might be placed in such a relation as 
would least hinder the free and independent use of his intellectual and 
moral powers, according to the will of God. Hence the apostle Paul, 
speaking to the servant, says, (1 Cor. 7: 21,) “If thou mayst be made 
free, use it rather.” Yet Christianity nowhere began with outward 
revolutions and changes, which, in all cases where they have not been 
prepared from within, and are not based upon conviction, fail of their 
salutary ends. The new creation to which Christianity gave birth, was 
in all respects an inward one, from which the outward effects gradually, 
and therefore more surely and healthfully, unfolded themselves to their 
full extent. It gave servants first the true, inward freedom, without 
which the outward and earthly freedom is a mere show, and which, 
wherever it exists, can be cramped by no earthly bond, no earthly yoke. 
The apostle Paul says, ‘ He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, 
is the Lord’s freeman.” Tertullian, wishing to show how much supe- 
rior this heavenly freedom is to the earthly, observes,” “In the world, 
they who have received their freedom, are crowned. But thou art ran- 
somed already by Christ, and indeed bought with a price. How can 
the world give freedom to him, who is already the servant of another ? 
All is mere show in the world, and nothing, truth. For even then 
thou wast free in relation to man, being redeemed by Christ; and now 
thou art a servant of Christ, although made free by aman. If thou 
deemest that the true freedom which the world can give thee, thou art, 
for that very reason, become once more the servant of man, and the 
freedom which Christ bestows, thou hast lost, because thou thinkest it 
bondage.” The bishop Ignatius of Antioch writes to the bishop Poly- 
carp of Smyrna,’ “ Be not proud towards servants and maids; but 
neither must they exalt themselves; but they must serve the more zeal- 
ously for the honor of God, so that they may receive from God the 
higher freedom. Let them not be eager to be redeemed at the expense 
of the church, lest they be found slaves of their own lusts.” * One of 


1The example of Onesimus often re-. of hatred to this religion, sent him off to 
curred. Tertullian refers to cases in which the house of correction. Apologet. c. 3: 
a master, who had for a long time patiently Servum jam fidelem dominus olim mitis ab 
endured the vices of a slave; but who, on  oculis relegavit. 
observing that he had suddenly reformed, 2 De corona militis, c. 13. 
and being at the same time told that Chris- 8 Cap. 4. 
tianity had wrought this change in him, out 4 The genuineness of the letter is here of 


20" 


270 CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES. 

the imperial slaves, Euelpistus by name, who was arraigned with Justin 
Martyr and other Christians before the tribunal, expressed himself 
thus: ‘I too am a Christian; I have obtamed my freedom from 
Christ ; and through the grace of Christ, I am a sharer of the same 
hope.” } 

On the question whether a Christian could properly hold any civil or 
military office, especially the latter, opinions were divided. As the pagan 
religion of the state was closely interwoven with all political and social ar- 
rangements, every such office might easily place one in situations where 
joming in the pagan ceremonies was a thing not to be avoided. For this, 
all Christians were agreed, no necessity whatever constituted an excuse. 
On this point, Tertullian’s remark was assuredly spoken from the soul of 
every believer, — “6 To be a Christian is not one thing here and another 
there. There is one gospel and one Jesus, who will deny all them that 
deny him, and confess all them that confess God. With him the beliey- 
ing citizen is a soldier of the Lord, and the soldier owes the same duties 
to the faith as the citizen.” 2 

But independent of this was the question, whether such an office, 
considered in itself, was compatible with the Christian calling; which 
was answered by one party in the affirmative, by another in the nega- 
tive. We must here take into view the circumstances in which the 
church found itself placed. The prevailing idea of the Christian life 
was —to follow in humility, in self-denial and the renunciation of all 
earthly good, a Redeemer who had made his outward appearance in 
poverty and a low estate,—had veiled his glory under the form of a 
servant. The glory of the Christian was with his Saviour in heaven ; 
as to his earthly appearance, what was lowly, what was without pomp 
or show, like the appearance of his Saviour, whom he loved to follow in 
every particular, best suited his wishes. He despised the power and 
the glory of this world, above which he felt himself elevated by the 
consciousness of sharing in another power and another glory. It is true, 
this renunciation of earthly things consisted essentially in the temper 
of the heart; and this, under different external circumstances, might 
still remain the same ; the outward possessions of earthly property, of 
earthly splendor, such as the temporal relations might require, the ex- 
ercise of earthly power and authority in an earthly calling, were not 
thereby necessarily excluded ; all this might be, and indeed was to be, 
sanctified by Christianity. But the first glow of conversion did not 
allow those with whom the living feeling was the predominant power, 
soberly to distinguish what pertained simply to the idea and disposition 
in itself and what to the manifestation of it and the outward conduct. 
They were inclined to take the figure — of following their Lord, who ap- 
peared in the form of a servant — in an outward sense, to refer it to an 


on the supposition that fidelis is the true 
reading, — a correction warranted perhaps 
by what Tertullian has just before said re- 


no importance. At all events, we find a 
witness of the Christian mode of thinking 
in the first century. 


1 Acta Mart. Justini. 

2De corona militis, ὁ. 11: Apud hunc 
tam miles est paganus fidelis, quam paga- 
nus est miles infidelis. I have translated 


specting the fides pagana. Still the com- 
mon reading gives also a good sense: The 
unbelieving soldier, who violates the duties 
of Christian fidelity, is to him as a pagan. 


CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES. 271 
identity of outward circumstances with those in which he had lived. 
Thus wealth, worldly power and glory, — which too they so often saw 
arrayed against the kingdom of God,—seemed to be shut out from 
them, and the first fervor of their zeal led them to disdain all this as 
alien to their calling! It is in this spirit Tertullian says:* “Thou art 
bound, as a Christian, to follow thy Lord’s example. He, the Lord, 
went about in humility and loneliness, without a certain home, for he 
says, ‘The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head ;’ in poor ap- 
parel, or he would not have said, ‘ Behold, they that wear soft clothing 
. are in kings’ houses ;’ without beauty or comeliness of appearance, as 

Isaiah had foretold, (cap. 53.) If he exercised his right of authority 
over none, not even his own disciples, for whom he performed the most 
menial service ; if, finally, conscious of his own royal dignity, he re- 
fused to become a king, he gave his disciples the most perfect example 
to shun all that is lofty and great in earthly power and dignity. For 
who was better entitled to use these things than the Son of God? 
What fasces, and how many of them, must have gone before him ; 
what purple flowed from his shoulders ; what gold gleamed on his brow 
—had he not judged that the glory of this world was alien both to him- 
self and to his! What he rejected, therefore, he condemned.” ὃ 

Many Christians, again, from a conscientiousness in itself worthy of all 
respect, thought themselves bound to take passages hke Matth. 5: 39, 
in the literal sense. That tone of mind very generally prevailed, which, 
in leading men to take such words of Christ as positive commands, hin- 
dered them on this very account from understanding them rightly, 
according to their spirit,—as the expression of that which is rooted in 
the essence of Christianity, of that new life and law of living which 
proceeds from Christ by an inward necessity. That which ought to 
have been applied as referring immediately to the disposition alone, 
was referred to the outwardness of the act. It revolted their Chris- 
tian feelings to suffer themselves to be employed as instruments of pain 
to others, to serve as the executors of laws which, in all cases, were dic- 
tated and animated by the spirit of rigid justice, without any mixture 
of mercy or love.* 

In general, the Christians became accustomed by their circumstances 
at that time, to consider the state as a hostile power, standing in oppo- 
sition to the church; and it was as yet, in the main, quite remote from 
their ideas to expect that Christianity could and would appropriate to 


1 Hence the pagan in Minucius Felix, c. 
8, describes the Christians as men who, half 
naked themselves, despise honor and the 
purple, honores et purpuras despiciunt, ipsi 
seminudi. 

2 De idololatria, c. 18. 

8 Tertullian, one of the sternest represen- 
tatives, it must be allowed, of this mode of 
thinking, and in whom it appears, like ev- 
erything else that had seized and animated 
him, to have been pushed to the utmost ex- 
treme, says, (Gloriam seculi) quam damna- 
vit, in pompa diaboli deputavit. 


* Tertullian, where he treats this matter, 
in the first place separates those cases in 
which a Christian conld not be allowed 
under any circumstances to administer a civil 
office: Jam vero que sunt potestatis, neque 
judicet de capite alicujus vel pudore, feras 
enim de pecunia, neminem vinciat, nemi- 
nem recludat aut torqueat, si hac credibile 
est fieri posse. The council of Elvira, can. 
56, decreed that magistrates, during the 
years in which, as Duumvirs, they had to de- 
cide on matters of life and death, ought not 
to attend church. 


272 CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICES. 
itself, also, the relations of the state. The Christians stood over against 
the state, as a priestly, spiritual race; and the only way in which it 
seemed possible that Christianity could exert an influence on civil life, 
was (which it must be allowed was the purest way) by tending continu- 
ally to diffuse more of a holy temper among the citizens of the state. 
When Celsus called on the Christians to take up arms like other sub- 
jects, for the protection of the emperor’s rights, and fight in his ranks, 
Origen replied: ‘‘ We are rendering the emperors a divine assistance, 
when we put on a divine armor, wherein we follow the command of the 
apostle; 1 Tim. 2: 1. The more devont the man, the more is it in 
his power to render the emperor a far better service than can be done 
by ordinary soldiers. Again we might thus reply to the heathen: 
Your priests keep themselves pure, that they may present the cus- 
tomary offerings to the gods with hands unstained by blood. In war, 
you do not compel them to take the field. As priests of God it is 
their duty to fight, by prayer to him, for those who are engaged in a 
just war and for the lawful emperor, that all opposition to those who do 
right may be put down. ‘The Christians render greater service to their 
country than other men, by forming the hearts of the citizens, and 
teaching them piety towards that God on whom the well-being of the 
state depends, and who receives those who in the meanest cities have 
led a good life, into a city which is heavenly and divine.” To another 
proposal made by Celsus to the Christians, namely, that they should 
undertake the administration of civil affairs in their country, Origen 
replies: ‘‘ But we know, that in whatever city we are, we have another 
country, which is founded on the word of God; and we require those 
who by their gift of teaching and by their pious life are competent to 
the task, to undertake the administration of the offices of the church.” 
They, on the other hand, who maintained that the Christians were 
at liberty to assume the civil and military offices, appealed to examples 
from the Old Testament. But here the difference betweén the two 
stages of religious development was held up in reply. Tertullian main- 
tains against such, that for the higher stage of Christianity, the claims 
rise also higher. Again, the defenders of the military profession quoted 
in their defence the instance of John the Baptist, who did not bid the 


1 So far from Tertullian’s mind was the 
thought, that the emperors themselves would 
at some future day be Christians, that in 
Apologet. c. 21, he says: Sed et Cesares 
credidissent super Christo, si aut Ceesares 
non essent seculo necessarii aut si Christi- 
ani potuissent esse Cxsares. Comp. above, 
p. 126. 

2 In vindication of the translation given 
above to the passage at the end of the 
eighth letter against Celsus, 1 must add a 
few critical remarks. In Origen’s words, 
the reading εἰς τὸν πολιέα ϑεὸν seems to 
me to be the correct one,—the reading εἰς 
τὸν τῶν bAwr Bedyv, false. It admits of be- 
ing easily explained how the predicate, 
which was an unusual one in the Christian 
sense, might be altered into the phraseolo- 


gy common among the Christians ; but not 
so easily how the latter could be changed 
into the former. But that Origen himself, 
speaking from his own Christian position, 
should apply the term πολιεύς to God, can- 
not appear singular, as the comparison with 
the Ζεὺς πολιεύς was hovering before his 
mind. The word πόλις, which occurs so 
often in this sentence, favors the supposition 
of such an allusion. If this reading is 
adopted, the allusion makes it probable that 
ἀναλαμβάνοντες should be read instead of 
ἀναλαμβάνοντα. 

8 De idololatria, c. 18: Scito non semper 
comparanda esse vetera et nova, rudia et 
polita, ceepta et explicita, servilia et libe- 
ralia. 


CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM. 273 


soldiers that came to him to relinquish their former calling, but pre- 
scribed to them certain rules, by which they might pursue it in a man- 
ner well-pleasing to God ; but, it was replied to them, that John stood 
on the dividing line between the two economies. But when they 
brought forward in their defence the example of the centurion, whose 
faith Christ himself had commended, (Luke 7,) and especially the ex- 
ample of the believing Cornelius; the force of such an appeal could be 
more readily felt by their opponents, and Tertullian himself, that zeal- 
ous antagonist of the military profession amongst Christians, believed it 
could not be wholly condemned, in the case where such as had become 
Christians while they were soldiers, persevered in the calling they had 
once chosen, so far as it could be done consistently with their steadfast- 
ness in the faith.1 Against the profession of arms was also quoted the 
command to Peter, in Matth. 26: 52, to put up again his sword into 
its place.2 This command, the opponents of the military callmg, in 
despite of the context and of the manifest end for which it was given, 
would consider as addressed to all Christians. 

Christianity, beginning with the consciousness of redemption, the 
central point of all that is distinctively Christian, aimed to assimilate 
and to appropriate whatever belongs purely to man and to his worldly 
relations, for the kingdom of God. All this was to be pervaded with 
the divine life, all this was to be ennobled by it. This Christian mode 
of appropriating the world manifested itself in opposition to the method 
in the two previous stages of human development; one of which was 
a secularizing of the spirit, a confounding it with the world and a deifi- 
cation of the worldly, in paganism; the other, opposition to the world, 
arising out of the consciousness of the inward schism of sin, when the 
world presented itself to the consciousness only as that which is without 
God and contrary to God—the Jewish, legal position. Contemplated 
from both these positions, the Christian life was unintelligible in its true 
import and significancy. Contemplated from the legal position, it ap- 
peared as something too free, verging near to paganism; and from the 
heathen position, as something too unfree, too constrained. The Chris- 
tian life could not fail to be reproached as a being righteous overmuch, 
as the zmmodica superstitio, the nimium pietatis,? —sheer pietism. The 
Christians must have seemed a race that hated the light, that were dead 
to the world, and hence of no use in it.4 

To this charge, laid against the Christians, Tertullian replies :° “* How 
is it possible they should be such, who live in the midst of you, have 
the same food and clothing, the same necessaries of life as yourselves ? 
For we are no Brahmins, or Indiai gymnosophists, no dwellers in the 
woods, no recluses retired from the haunts of men. We well under- 
stand what thanks we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we despise 
not the enjoyment of his works. We only moderate that enjoyment, 


1 De corona milit. c. 2. of his letters, the pagan husband says of 
2 De idololatria, c. 19: Omnem postea his wife, a Christian, “ quae, dum nimia pia 
militem Dominus in Petro exarmando dis- fuit, facta est impia.” 
cinxit. 4 See the words cited above, on page 92: 
8 In an epitaph which Gilbert Burnet dis- “natio latebrosa et lucifuga,” and the rest. 
covered at Lyons, and published in the first 5 Apologet. ο. 42. 


274 CHRISTIAN 
that it may not degenerate into excess or abuse. With you, therefore, 
we inhabit this world, not without markets, baths, inns, workshops, 
fairs, and whatever else is considered necessary to the intercourse of 
life. We also pursue with you the business of navigation, oF war, of 
agriculture, of commerce; we share in your employments, and con- 
tribute of our labor, to your profit, for the public service.” 1 

Yet while it was true, that the Christians by no means withdrew 
themselves from the intercourse of life, they were, at the same time, in 
the frequent habit of setting apart certain days for the purpose of self: . 
examination and quiet devotion, for the purpose of renewedly conse- 
erating their lives to God; so that they might return back, with fresh 
zeal and vigor and renovated powers of holy living, to their ordinary 
avocations. These days of holy consecration, of penitence and prayer, 
which individual Christians appointed for their own use, were often- 
times also a sort of fast-days. That they might be less disturbed by 
sense whilst their minds were intent on holy things, they were accus- 
tomed on such days to confine their bodily wants within stricter limits 
than usual, or else to fast entirely ; where we must take into considera- 
tion the peculiar nature of that hot climate, in which Christianity first 
began to spread. Whatever they saved by their abstinence on these 
days, was appropriated to the maintenance of the poor brethren. There 
were also many, who, in the warmth of their first love, after being bap- 
tized, immediately gave a large portion of their earthly property, or all 
that they had, to the church fund or to the poor, feeling themselves 
constrained to express, in the strongest manner, their contempt of the 
earthly things by which their hearts had been hitherto enslaved ; to de- 
clare most decidedly, — what now had full possession of their hearts, — 
the wish to sacrifice, to give away anything, so they might but win the 
heavenly pearl. It was to them as though the words of our Lord were 
addressed directly to themselves: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell 
that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven; and come and follow me.’’ Within the bosom of the church, 
_ they led a quiet, retired life, maintained themselves by the labor of 
their hands, and remained unmarried, that, without being disturbed by 
earthly cares, they might devote themselves to prayer, to the study of 
the scriptures, to holy meditations, and to active labors for the kingdom 
of God; and all that remained from the earnings of their industry, 
after barely satisfying the most necessary wants of life, they devoted to 
objects of Christian charity. Such Christians were called the Abste- 
nients, the zealous seekers after Christian perfection, continentes, ἀσκῆται.3 
There were many others, again, who, through the influence of a pious 


1 How far remote the idea of the later 
monachism lay from the apprehension of 
Christians generally, is evident from a pas- 
sage in Irensus, where he is speaking of 
their dependence for the means of support 
on the heathens among whom they lived, 
1. IV. c¢. 30: Etenim, si is qui tibi hae im- 
putat, separatus est a gentilium coetu, et 
nihil est alienorum apud eum, sed est sim- 


pliciter nudus, et nudis pedibus et sine domo 
in montibus conversatur, quemadmodum 
aliquot ex his animalibus, que herbis ves- 
cuntur, veniam merebitur, ideo quod igno- 
ret necessitates nostra conversationis. 

2’ Ασκεῖν, ἀσκήῆτης, a current word among 
pagans and Christians in this period, to de- 
note a peculiarly rigid moral discipline. 


ASCETICISM. 275 
Christian education, had from the earliest years imbibed such a love for 
divine things, as made them solicitous to loosen to the utmost every tie 
which bound them to the earth. Individuals of this class were to be 
found belonging to both the sexes;—the females were called distinc- 
tively πάρϑενοι, virgins.} 

Amongst the pagans themselves, it was then the custom of those who 
led lives cohsecrated to meditation, to be ascetics m the sense above 
given. Philosopher and ascetic were synonymous expressions.? The 
term “ philosophy ” was to denote the direction and bent of the whole 
life. But it must be admitted, that among the pagans this had already 
become also a mask for hypocrisy, as for example, with the notorious 
pseudo-eynics. Now it sometimes happened, that these pagan ascetics 
were led, in their earnest strivings after perfection, to embrace Christ- 
ianity; and after having become Christians, still adhered to their former 
habits of life, which, in themselves, contained nothing repugnant to 
Christianity ; or that others, in whom Christianity first produced a more 
serious turn of life, adopted these habits, as a token of the change that 
had been wrought in them. They could avail themselves of the atten- 
tion they attracted by publicly appearing in the garb of these philo- 
sophical ascetics, — the philosopher’s cloak,? — and of the respect paid 
to them by the multitude on account of their mode of life, to enter into 
philosophical and religious conversation with those who, out of respect 
or curiosity, gathered round them in the public walks or places of re- 
sort; and thus to present to them Christianity as the new and heavenly 
philosophy,* which had come from the East. It was assuredly a picture 
taken from the very life of those times, where we are told by Justin 
Martyr,° that early one morning, as he made his appearance on the 
public walk, he was presently accosted by several with the salutation, 
**Good morrow, philosopher;”’ © whilst one of them added, that he had 
received it as a lesson from his master in philosophy, never to slight, 
the philosopher’s cloak, but to welcome with every civility those that 
appeared in it, and endeavor to draw them into conversation. This 
led to a dialogue on the marks of true religion, and on Christianity. 
“¢ Joy to thee,” exclaims Tertullian to the philosopher’s cloak,’ “a bet- 
ter philosophy has deigned to wrap itself in thy folds, since thou hast 
began to be the garb of the Christian.” 

While spiritual pride could so easily attach itself to this mode of 
life, the spirit of Christian love and humility, in such a form, shines 
forth with the more splendor, as in the example of that Alcibiades, 


2 See 6. g. Artemidor. oneirocrit. IV. 
where he speaks of an ᾿Αλέξανδρος ὁ φιλό- 
σοφος, ἔμελε δὲ αὐτῷ, ὄντι ἀνόρι ἀσκῆτῃ, οὔτε 


1 Of such Tertullian speaks, de cult. fe- 
min. 1. 11. c.9: Aliqui abstinentes vino et 
animalibus esculentis, multi se spadonatui 


obsignant propter regnum Dei;— and Jus- 
tin Mart. Apolog. IL: Πολλοί τινες καὶ 
πολλαὶ ἑξηκοντοῦτοι καὶ ἑβδομηκοντοῦτοι, 
οἱ ἐκ παίδων ἐμαϑητεύϑησαν τῷ Χριστῷ, 
ἄφϑοροι διαμένουσι, ---- which, indeed, is not 
to be so understood as if all these had from 
on first purposely adopted such a mode of 
e. 


γάμου, odTe κοινωνίας, οὔτε πλούτου ---- and 
V.18: ᾿Εφιλοσόφησεν εὐτόνως καὶ τοῖς λό- 
γοις καὶ τῇ ἀσκήσει χρησάμενος ἀκολούϑος. 

8 ηρίβων, τριβώνιον, pallium. 

4 Φιλοσοφία τῶν βαρβάρων. 

5 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. 

6 Φιλόσοφε, χαῖρε! 

7 In his tract de pallio. 


276 CHRISTIAN 


who was one of the imprisoned confessors at Lyons.1 Having accus- 
tomed himself, as an ascetic, to live on bread and water, he continued 
to observe the same habits in the prison; when, by the inward voice of 
the Spirit, it was revealed to Attalus, one of the other confessors, that 
Alcibiades was wrong in refusing to enjoy what God had created, and 
thus giving occasion of offence to other Christians. To this admoni- 
tion, Alcibiades immediately submitted, and without further scruple 
partook indiscriminately of all that was set before him, giving God 
thanks.” 

Now, though such ascetics were fully penetrated with a Christian 
spirit, — a spirit of love and humility, — yet we cannot fail to per- 
ceive, even here, a one-sided tendency, which, in the earlier stages of 
the development of Christian life, might easily become excessive. 
Christianity was designed to be the world-subjecting principle. It was 
to take up into itself and appropriate to its own ends all that belongs 
to man, —all that is of the world. But to brmg this about, it was 
necessary that it should first enter mto a conflict with what had hith- 
erto been the world-subjecting principle, — into a conflict with sin and 
the principle of heathenism and everything, connected therewith, con- 
cerning which necessary conflict we have had occasion to speak else- 
where. The clearing away of these hindrances must therefore be the 
first aim of Christianity; although indeed this was an object that could 
not be really accomplished without the positive appropriation of the 
purely human element. In the development, in time, the negative, 
aggressive tendency must needs appear first; and of this there might 
easily come to be an undue predominance, while the positive appropri- 
ating element, without which the problem of Christianity could never be 
resolved, might retreat out of sight. Hence a one-sided ascetic ten- 
dency easily introduced itself into the earliest stages, ito the first 
stadium, of the development of the Christian life, and more particu- 
larly in the case of those who embraced Christianity with their whole 
soul. Wherever this religion awakened in the first place disgust at the 
worldly pursuits which had previously swallowed up the life, enkindled 
the holy flame of love for the divine, of aspiration after eternal life, 
this first movement would readily assume an ascetic shape. With this, 
other elements might now intermingle, that had formed themselves, in- 
dependent of Christianity, out of the previous process of the world’s 
development, and which, without the creative influence of Christianity, 
would have taken a much wider sweep, and which could be finally sub- 
dued only by the might of this new principle of life. The sprightly, 
youthful life of the pagan world had passed over at length into the 
sense of inward disunion, of schism, and had given place to the dualis- 
tic and ascetic tendencies coming from the East. Accordingly, Christ- 
ianity at its first appearance found such tendencies already existing, and 
these, which found a point of contact and union in the deep-felt breach, 
would have pressed onward to a still more extravagant length, if the 
consciousness of redemption proceeding from Christianity had not, in 


1 See above, p. 112, and the following. 2 Euseb. 1. V.c. 3. 


ASCETICISM. 27T 
proportion as it unfolded itself, deprived them more and more of this 
point of union. But beyond a doubt, this already existing tendency to 
@misconceived renunciation of the world and of sense, might mix in with 
the one-sided negative tendency, which, as we have seen, would first 
become prominent in the development of Christian life, and might in 
this way assume a Christian shape and coloring. 

Thus arose an undue estimation of the ascetic, contemplative life — 
of celibacy — which could go to the extreme of awarding to such life a 
much more exalted stage of future blessedness.1. It was here, that the 
mistaken apprehension of our Saviour’s language to the rich found its 
support — that a perfection, surpassing that ordinary standard of the 
Christian life which is occupied in fulfilling the duties of one’s earthly 
calling, was denoted by those words — which perfection consisted m 
the renunciation of every earthly good, (the germ of the doctrine of 
the concilii evangelici.) Now in this manner it became possible, that 
an opposition which belonged to the fundamental principles of antiqui- 
ty, —but which by the consciousness of redemption, of the princi- 
ple of the divine life destined to enoble all that belongs to humanity, 
was overcome and banished,—should imperceptibly gain admission 
once more into the evolution of Christianity itself;-—- we mean, that 
opposition between the common and the higher, the practical and the 
contemplative life— between divine and human virtue. It is clear, 
how this apprehension must have coincided with the notion of a caste of 
priests, preéminently consecrated to God, who must hold themselves 
aloof from all intercourse with the world; and so too the opinion might 
have had its birth, that celibacy belonged to the perfection of the spirit- 
ual order.” 

This falsely conceived opposition to the world had already become 
the mask for a worldly temper, which would affect the appearance of 
holiness, or sought to gain an easier life at the expense of the church.® 
Cyprian had to write a tract of admonition and warning against the 
showy dress and display which had crept in among the rich virgins, at 
Carthage, who had consecrated themselves to God. And thus it hap- 
pened, that in disdaining what is in harmony with nature, — which is also 
what corresponds to Christianity, —men devised unnatural forms of rela- 
tion between the two sexes; and in this case, nature, so proudly dis- 
dained, could easily exercise a dangerous reaction, and sensuality cor- 
ruptly intermingle with the spiritual state ; as in the cohabitation of such 
virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely 
spiritual connection.° 


1 As is done expressly by Origen, Homil. 
XTX. in Jerem. ὁ 4. Comp. Cyprian, de 
habitu virginum. 

2 The council of Elvira, (A. D. 305,) — 
from which, however, no inference can be 
drawn with regard to the general practice 
of the church. This council, where the 
one-sided ascetic spirit spoken of above, 
prevailed to an eminent degree, decreed 
already, can. 33, that bishops, presbyters 
and deacons, living with their wives, should 
be deposed from their places. 

24 


VOL. I. 


3 See what Tertullian, who was now a 
violent, over-heated accuser of the catholic 
church indeed, but who must have felt that 
he had.some ground for such charges, says 
against many virgines: /Emulatio illas non 
religio producit ; aliquando et ipse venter, 
Deus eorum, quia facile viryines fraternitas 
suscipit. De idololafria, ο. 14. 

4 Comp. the tract de habitu virginum. 

5'The συνείσακτοι, as they were after- 
wards called, subintroductz. Against them, 
Cyprian, ep. 62,ad Pompon. Though Cy- 


278 ASCETICISM OPPOSED BY 

And while thus the secluded life of ascetics and ecclesiastics was ex- 
tolled above the common life of Christians, another mischievous conse- 
quence resulted. They who were occupied in the common business of 
life, forgot the greatness of their Christian calling, and thought they 
mais entitled to lower very much the requisitions as to their own daily 

iving. 

As early as the time of Clement of Alexandria there were those who, 
on being advised not to put themselves on a level with the pagans in 
their rage for the public shows, but to ponder well what belonged to the 
seriousness of the Christian calling, were accustomed to repel such ex- 
hortations, and excuse themselves by saying, ‘‘ We cannot all be philos- 
ophers and ascetics; we are ignorant people; we cannot read; we un- 
derstand nothing of the holy scriptures; why should we be subjected 
to such rigorous demands?” ! 

Yet we observe many indications, too, that a sound Christian spirit 
opposed itself to this false ascetic tendency. Such we find in an ancient 
writing known by the name of the Shepherd, which is said to have 
been composed by a certain Hermas, and had great authority in the 
first centuries. In regard to fasting, it is here said,* ‘““Above all, exer- 
cise thy abstinence in this, to refrain both from speaking and from hear- 
ing what is wrong; and cleanse thy heart from all pollution, from all 
revengeful feelings, and from all covetousness; and on the day thou 
fastest, content thyself with bread, vegetables and water, and thank 
God for these. But reckon up what thy meal on this day would have 
cost thee, and give the amount to some widow, or orphan, or to the 
poor. Happy for thee, if, with thy children and whole household, thou 
observest these things.”” Clement of Alexandria notices the fact, that 
many kinds of pagan worship required celibacy and abstinence from 
meat and wine in their priests; that there were rigid ascetics among 
the Indians, namely the Samaneans, and hence argued that usages 
which may exist also in other religions and even be combined with 
superstition, cannot, in themselves considered, be peculiarly Christian. 
He then adds, — “‘ Paul declares that the kingdom of heaven consists 
not im meat and drink, neither therefore in abstainmg from wine and 
flesh, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. As 
humility is shown, not by the castigation of the body, but by gentle- 
ness of disposition, so also abstinence is a virtue of the soul, consisting 
not in that which is without, but in that which is withm the man. Ab- 
stinence has reference not to some one thing alone, not merely to pleas- 
ure, but it is abstinence also to despise money, to tame the tongue, and 
to obtain by reason the dominion over sin.”’ ὃ 


prian elsewhere speaks, even in extravagant 


13th canon, that such fallen virgins who re- 
terms, of the obligations which were con- 


fused to return back to their former condi- 


nected with the entrance into such a mode 
of life as a, connubium spiritale cum Dom- 
ino, yet he expresses himself here with be- 
coming moderation: Si autem perseverare 
nolunt vel non possunt, melius est, ut nu- 
bant, quam in ignem delictis suis cadant. 
But the council of Elvira decreed, in their 


tion, should be refused communion, even in 
the article of death. 

1’AAN’ ob πάντες φιλοσοφοῦμεν, γράμμα- 
ta οὐκ ἔμαϑου. Clemens Pedagog. 1. III. 
#265. 

2 Lib. TI, Similitud. V. 

8 Clemens Strom. 1. IIL. f. 446, et seq. 


HERMAS AND CLEMENT. 279 


When those people of whom we have spoken above, excused them- 
selves from the more severe requisitions regarding their daily walk, 
with the plea, we are not all philosophers, not of the spiritual order, he 
replies to them: But are we not all striving after life? What sayest 
thou? How art thou then a believer? How lovest thou God and thy 
neighbor? Is that not philosophy? Thou sayest, I have never learned 
toread. But if thou hast not learned to read, thou canst not excuse 
thyself thus, for not having heard; for there is no need of any one’s 
teaching thee this. (All hear the preached word, hear the scriptures 
read in the church assemblies.) But faith is not the possession of the 
wise of this world, but of the wise in God. Faith is taught also with- 
out writing ; and its writing, which is adapted even to the knowledge 
of the ignorant, is still divine, and is called love. Even the business 
of the world may be managed in an unworldly, in a godly manner.” ἢ 
Thus Clement insists on the common spiritual and priestly calling of all 
believers, and he requires even of those engaged in trades, and of pub- 
licans, that they should exhibit philosophy in their practice. It was 
for the purpose of correcting the opinion of those who considered the 
renunciation of all worldly goods as true Christian perfection, misun- 
derstanding Christ’s language to the rich young man, that the same 
Clement wrote his beautiful tract on the question, “‘ What must be the 
rich man’s character, in order that he may be saved.’’? In this tract, 
he endeavors to show that in Christianity the disposition of the heart 
is the essential thing. ‘Our Saviour,’ says Clement, “ does not, as 
many groundlessly assume, command us to throw away our earthly 
goods, but to banish the opinzon of money, the passion for it — that 
canker of the soul — the cares, the thorns of worldly life, which choke 
the seed of the divine life. What does our Lord teach as something 
new, as the only life-giving doctrine, of which those who came before 
him knew nothing? What is it, that is peculiarly his own, and the new 
creation? Not some outward act, that others also have done; but 
something higher, more divine, more perfect, intimated only by the out- 
ward act, that all which 1s foreign, should be torn up, root and branch, 
and cast forth from the soul. For even those before him despised out- 
ward things, and in fact gave away their earthly goods; but the in- 
ward passions of the soul only became the stronger, for they were filled 
with vanity, pride and contempt for other men, — as if they had done 
something themselves beyond the reach of humanity. A man may have 
thrown away his earthly possessions and still retain the desire of them 
in his heart ; thus subjecting himself to the double disquietude of hav- 
ing to regret his prodigality and of feeling himself deprived of the 
necessaries of life. What means would be left of communicating one 
to another, if none had the means to bestow? And were this the doc- 


1 Πίστις δὲ οὐ σοφῶν τῶν κατὰ κόσμον, not be exactly rendered,) κατὰ ϑεὸν ἀπά- 
ἀλλὰ τῶν κατὰ ϑεόν ἐστι τὸ κτῆμα, ἡ δὲ γειν οὐ κεκώλυται. 


καὶ ἄνευ γραμμάτων ἐκπαιδεύεται. καὶ TO 2 Καὶ ταυτῇ φιλοσοφούντων οἱ ἀγοραῖοι 
σύγγραμμα αὐτῆς, τὸ ἰδιωτικὸν ἅμα καὶ καὶ οἱ κάπηλοι. Pedagog. 1. III. f. 255. 
ϑεῖον, ἀγάπη κέκληται. ᾿Αλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἐν κοσ- 8 Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος ; § 11. 


μῷ κοσμίως, (a play upon words which can- 


280 MONTANISTIC SPIRIT OPPOSED. 

trine of our Lord, how could it fail to be at variance with many other 
glorious doctrines of his? Earthly property should be considered in the 
light of a staff, an instrument for good uses, to be turned to the proper 
account by those who know how to use it rightly.” — 

Clement recognized a divine order and arrangement in the unequal 
distribution of property, which was to serve as a material for Christian 
virtue. Community of goods appears to him as a thing repugnant to 
the divine plan. “As food does not advantage us in God’s sight,” 
says he, ‘so neither does the married or the unmarried life without 
knowledge, but virtuous action done with knowledge.” 2 

When the Montanists would have imposed new fasts and new laws of 
abstinence on the church, the spirit of evangelical freedom among the 
Christians took strong ground against them. They were accused of 
not duly distinguishing between the economies of the Old and of the 
New Testament; of making laws where, according to the spirit of the 
gospel, all should be free, where every one should act without con- 
straint, according to his own peculiar temperament and his own indi- 
vidual necessities. The only fasts prescribed by God was fasting from 
bosom sans.? ι 

Like others whose language we had occasion to cite above, Commo- 
dian also rebuked the extravagant estimation in which martyrdom was 
held as an opus operatum. He showed, that whoever was a martyr in 
disposition, whoever exercised love, humility, patience, was equal to the 
martyr without shedding a drop of blood.t ‘‘ Many err,” said he, 
‘when they say, we have conquered the enemy by our blood; and 
they will not conquer him, if he comes to assault them Cif he plunges 
them into temptations of another kind.)® Thou, then, who wouldst 
become a martyr by the confessions of thy mouth, robe thyself in time 
of peace with all goodness, and rest secure.”’ 

If the ascetic tendency was but a transient moment of excess on one 
side in the development of the Christian life; we see on the other hand, 
from the first, in that which presents the strongest contrast to it, in the 
ennobled family relation, the power of the Christian principle of 118 in 
its healthy development. And this great effect resulted first from the 
fact that the*true import of marriage was realized by Christianity ; — 
its import as the harmonious union of two individuals separated by sex, 
in a higher spiritual oneness of life, by the communication of a divine 
life destined to reconcile all antitheses. Connected with this, was the 
fact, that wherever Christianity found entrance, the equal dignity and 
worth of the female sex, as possessing a nature created in the image of 


Mons (which gives no good sense) patiens fueris, in- 
tellige te martyrem esse. 
5 Instruct. 62: 
Multi quidem errant dicentes, sanguine nostro, 
Vicimus iniquum, quo manente, 
(Which may be referred either to the near- 
est subject iniquus, as I have rendered, or 


1 Ὡς ἐξ ἐναντίων ὁ κόσμος σύγκειται, 
ὥσπερ ἐκ ϑερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ, ξηροῦ τε καὶ 
ὑγροῦ, οὕτω κἀκ τῶν διδόντων κἀκ τῶν 
λαμβανόντων. Stromat. |. III. f. 449. 

2 Stromat. 1. IV. f. 533. 

8 See Tertullian, de jejuniis. 

4 Instruct. 48 : 


Multa sint martyria, que fiunt sine sanguine fuso. 
Alienum non cupere, velle martyrium habere, 
Linguam refreenare, humilem te reddere debes, 
Vim ultra non facere, nec factam reddere contra, 


the more remote sanguis:—they do not 
want that victory which is won without 
blood.) 

Tu ergo, qui queeris martyrium tollere verbo, 

In pace te vesti bonis, et esto securus. 


DOMESTIC LIFE OF CHRISTIANS. 981 


God and allied to the divine no less than the male, was brought dis- 
tinctly before the consciousness ; and that the sex was invested with the 
rights belonging to it—in opposition to the principle of the ancient 
world, particularly in the East, where the woman was placed in an al- 
together subordinate relation to the man.! Thus Clement of Alexandria 
gives prominence to the Christian import of marriage and of the family 
life, in opposition to those who were given to the excessive ascetic tend- 
ency. ‘The genuine Christian,” says he, “has the apostles for his 
example; and in truth, it is not in the solitary life, one shows himself 
a man ; but he gets the victory over other men, who, as a husband and 
father of a family, withstands all the temptations that assail him in pro- 
viding for wife and children, servants and substance, without allowing 
himself to be turned from the love of God. The man with no family 
escapes many temptations; but as he has none save himself to care 
for, he is of less worth than the man, who has more to disturb him, 
it is true, in the work of his own salvation, but- accomplishes more in 
social life, and in truth presents in his own case a miniature of provi- 
dence itself.”* Describing the Christian matron, he says:* ‘The 
mother is the glory of her children ; the wife, of her husband ; both are 
the glory of the wife, and God is the glory of them all.” And Tertul- 
lian: * ‘¢ What a union is that between two believers, having in common 
one hope, one desire, one order of life, one service of the Lord? Both, 
like brother and sister, undivided in spirit or body, nay, in the true 
sense twain in one flesh, kneel, pray and fast together, mutually teach, 
exhort, and bear with, each other; they are not separated in the 
church of God, and at the Lord’s supper; they share each other’s 
troubles, persecutions, joys; neither has any thing to hide from the 
other; neither avoids the other; there is free liberty to visit the sick, 
to sustain the needy; the harmony of psalms and hymns goes up be- 
tween them, and each vies with the other in singing the praise of their 
God. Christ rejoices to behold and hear such things, and sends them 
his peace. Where there are two, there he is also; and where he is, the 
spirit of evil cannot enter.” 

It was required of the Christian mistress of a family, that by the 
sobriety of her whole demeanor, by the decency and simplicity of her 
dress,> she should show the spirit that ruled within, and thus let her 
very appearance shine as a light, in an age characterized by excessive 
display, luxury and corruption of manners. 

But here again there were two opposite parties. While to some, 
poverty of apparel seemed inseparably connected with the essence of 
humility, and to be implied in the idea of the servant form of the 
Christian life, others said, “ it is enough to have the disposition which 
becomes Christian women. God looks on the heart — the outward ap- 
pearance is nothing. Why make a display of the change that has 
been wrought in us? Far rather are we bound to furnish the heathens 


1 Also in the Ethic. magn. of Aristotle, 4 Ad uxorem, ]. II. c. 8. 

1. I. ὁ. 34: Χεῖρον ἡ γυνῆ τοῦ ἀνδρός. 5 Comp. Commodian. instructiones, 59,— 
2 Stromat. |. VII. ἢ. 741. the satiric remarks directed against the gau- 
8 Pedagog. 1. III. f. 250. dy apparel of the Christian women. 


24* 


282 INTERMARRIAGE OF 


no occasion for blaspheming the Christian name and to accuse Christ- 
ianity of being irreconcilable with the customs of the world.! These 
earthly goods are in our possession ; why may we not use them? Why 
may we not enjoy what we have? For whom were these precious ob- 
jects created, if not for us? Who are to enjoy the costly articles if 
all prefer the cheap?”? To the latter argument, Clement of Alexan- 
dria replied: ‘ Even though all things are given us, though all things 
are allowed us; though all things are lawful for us, yet, as the apostle 
says, all things are not expedient. God has created our race for doing 
good and communicating; he has created every thing for all; every- 
thing, therefore, is a common good; and the more wealthy should not 
make of it an exclusive possession. Such reasoning, therefore, is not 
humane, does not correspond with our social affections. Love will 
rather speak thus: ‘I have it—why should I not bestow it on the 
needy ?’’’8 

Tertullian says: “‘ What reasons can you have for going about in 
gay apparel, when you are removed from all with whom this is required ? 
You do not go the round of the temples, you ask for no public shows, 
you have nothing to do with pagan festivals. * You have no other than 
serious reasons for appearing abroad. It is to visit a sick brother, to 
be present at the communion, or a sermon; and if offices of courtesy or 
friendship call you among pagans, why not appear in your own peculiar 
armor, — especially as you are to mix with unbelievers, — that so the 
difference may be seen between the servants of God and of Satan, that 
you may serve for an example to them, and that they may be edified 
by you?” 

A ἀμθείνηε strictly to that religious and moral point of view in which 
the marriage relation was first presented by Christianity, many be- 
lieved that where there was no union of hearts by the bond of religion, 
where there was rather disunion in regard to the highest concerns of 
the inward life, the true significancy of marriage could not be realized. 
Hence they discountenanced all marriage relation between Christians 
and pagans. ‘Tertullian labors to show how inevitably the pious Chris- 
tian woman, who regarded Christianity as the soul of her life, who be- 
longed to the church as one of its living members, and felt herself 
happy in its communion, must, in a thousand ways, be checked and 
disturbed in her religious duties and injured in her feelings, by living 
with a heathen. “Is there a meeting for prayer,” says he, ‘‘ the hus- 
band will devote this day to the use of the bath; is a fast to be ob- 
served, he will on this day make a banquet for his friends. Never will 
more hindrances arise from the business of the household, than precise- 
ly when the duties of Christian charity call the wife to go abroad. 
(Next follows the passage, which we have already quoted, relating to 
those duties of the Christian mistress of a family, in the performance of 
which she is hindered by her pagan husband.) What shall her hus- 


1 Tertullian de cultu feminarum, particu- in the works above referred to, and by Cy- 

larly 1. II. ¢. 11. prian, de habitu virginum. Perhaps Ter- 
2 Clemens Peedagog. 1. ΤΊ. ο. 12. tullian and Cyprian had both read this 
8 The same thing is said by Tertullian, work of Clement. 


CHRISTIANS AND PAGANS. 283 
band sing to her, or she to her husband? Would she like to hear any- 
thing from the theatre, or from the tavern? What mention is there of 
God, what invocation to Christ ? Where is the nourishment for faith 
by the quoting of scripture in their conversation?! Where is there re- 
freshment of spirit ; where, the divine blessing ?”’ 

In the cases just mentioned, the question related to a marriage that 
was to be contracted, where as yet no pledge had been given. It was 
different, where a connection, which was not to be dissolved but sanc- 
tified by Christianity, already existed, and one of the parties became a 
convert. This case Tertullian expressly distinguishes from the former. 
“Tt is different with those, who, when they came to the faith, found 
themselves already connected in marriage with pagans. If such a 
marriage is valid with God, why should it not go on with his blessing, 
so that it may continue to be spared from many afflictions, disquietudes 
and stains, enjoying, as it does on one side, the protection of divine 
grace. But where one enters voluntarily and uncalled into forbidden 
relations, that is another thing.’’ ‘The manner in which his wife was 
converted to Christianity,’ continues Tertullian, ‘‘may have a strong 
impression on the heathen husband himself, so that he may be cautious 
how he disturbs her too much, or watches her too narrowly. He has 
witnessed a great event, he has seen the proofs of what God has wrought, 
he knows that she has become better for the change. Thus are those 
the more easily gained over to the faith, to whom the grace of God is be- 
come familiar.” It is true, the observance of such a change did not 
always make this favorable impression. Many a blind devotee to pa- 
ganism, when he observed ‘that his wife, whose manners he was_ before 
obliged to watch with an anxious scrutiny, had become all at once so 
domestic and exemplary, — but at the same time that Christianity had 
produced the change,—spurned from him the wife whose vices he 
had before tolerated. The case sometimes occurred, too, where the 
Christian woman, who was married to a vicious heathen, and _previous- 
ly, when a heathen herself, had been the pander of his vices, was now 
as a Christian forbidden by her conscience to persist in this course. 
She endeavored first by exhortations and remonstrances to lead him in 
a better way. But as these would be indignantly rejected, she found 
herself compelled, in order to avoid participating in his sinful life, to 
obtain a separation from him; and this proved the occasion of not a 
few persecutions, excited by exasperated husbands.” 

It resulted from this Christian point of view in the consideration of 
marriage, that it early became a custom to add the sanction of the 
church to the civil contract. The presiding officers of the church and 
the deaconesses were convoked. It was to be understood that the mar- 


1 Ubi fomenta fidei de scripturarum in- 
terjectione? according to the reading in 
Rigaltius’ edition. According to the read- 
ing in that of Pamelius, “interlectione,’” — 
“by the intermingled reading of the Holy 
Scriptures” It hardly admits of being de- 
termined which is the correct reading. As 


the whole passage relates to quotations in 
conversetion, the first reading is to the 
point. And even if this is the right one, it 
follows from it that husband and wife must 
possess a familiar acquaintance with the 
Bible. 

2 See Justin Mart. apolog. II. 


284 PRAYER. 


riage was contracted by the will of God, and not by the impulse of 
passion, and that all was done to the glory of God.! Bride and bride- 
groom sat down together at the Lord’s table and partook of the com- 
munion. They presented a common offering to the church, and in 
return, the blessing of God was specially implored on this new marriage 
in the prayer of the church connected with the communion. What im- 
portance was attached by the Christians to the sanction of the church, 
appears from the following passage of Tertullian:? “In what language 
can we express the happiness of that marriage which is concluded by 
the church, sealed by the communion, and consecrated by the benedic- 
tion ; which the angels announce and God the Father ratifies.” 

The soul of the whole Christian life was considered to be prayer. 
Even they who otherwise differed widely in bent of mind, or habits of 
thinking on many important points, were agreed in acknowledging this. 
Where the spirit of Christianity brings together the most opposite na- 
tures, it would be difficult to find a stronger contrast, than that between 
the practical realism of Tertullian, so inclined to reduce everything to 
forms of sense, and the speculative turn of Origen, who was quite too 
prone to sublimate everything into spirit. But both appear equally 
penetrated with a living Christianity, when they come to discourse of 
prayer ; both seem to speak from their own inward experience, and in 
both, the essential Christian spirit presses through all individual pecu- 
liarities. Tertullian, in accordance with a prevailing view of those 
early Christian times, contemplates prayer as an exercise of the priestly 
office of Christians. ‘It is the spiritual sacrifice,’ says he,® ““ which 
has superseded the sacrifices of the old covenant, Is.1: 11. This pas- 
sage informs us what God does not seek; but the gospel teaches us 
what he does seek —‘ The hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for God is a 
spirit.” We are the true worshippers and the true priests, who pray in 
the spirit, and thus offer the sacrifice which is befitting God’s nature, 
and well-pleasing in his sight, — that sacrifice which he has sought. 
And what is there, which the God who seeks this prayer can withhold 
from the prayer that springs from the spirit and from truth? How 
much do we read, hear, believe of the proofs of its efficacy!” He 
then proceeds to describe the peculiar efficacy of Christian prayer ; 
to show how it should correspond to the peculiar nature of the religious 
constitution under the New Testament; how Christian prayer reveals 
its true power, not in delivering men miraculously in the hour of death 
and of suffering, but in making them capable of enduring death and suf- 
fering with composure and cheerful resignation. “ By virtue of im- 
parted grace it dulls not the sense of pain, but arms him who suffers 
the pain with strength to bear it. The prayer of the Christian draws 
down no retribution from heaven, but it averts God’s anger ; it watches 
for its enemies; it intercedes for the persecutors; it obtains the for- 
giveness of sins; it dispels temptations; it comforts the feeble-minded ; 


1 Tenat. ep. Il. ad Polycarp, § 5. first by Muratori, T. III. Anecdotor. bibl. 
2 Ad uxor. 1. IL. ὁ. 8. Ambros. 
8 Cap. 28, de orat. in the piece published 


PRAYER. 285 


it refreshes the strong. Prayer is the bulwark of faith.” Origen 
says,! “‘ How much has each one among us to say about the efficacy of 
prayer, when we would thankfully record the benefits received from 
God! Souls which had long lain barren, and which became conscious 
of their dearth, rendered fruitful by the Holy Spirit through persever- 
ing prayer, have given forth words of salvation full of the intuitions of 
truth. What mighty enemies, aiming at the overthrow of our divine 
faith, have, time and again, been brought to shame! Our confidence 
was in those words, ‘ Some trust in chariots and in horses, but we will 
remember the name of the Lord our God ;’ and verily we experienced, 
that the horse is a vain thing for safety. The power, also, of bewilder- 
ing arguments, which might indeed stagger many who are accounted 
believers, has been often vanquished by him who trusts in prayer. 
How many instances are there of those who have fallen into tempta- 
tions difficult to be overcome, but suffered no injury in them, and come 
forth unharmed, without being even touched by the smell of the hostile 
flames! And what shall I further say? How often has it happened, 
when they have been thrown before ravenous beasts or exposed to ma- 
lignant spirits and cruel men, they have reduced them to silence by 
their prayers, so that their teeth could not touch us, who were the mem- 
bers of Christ! We know that many, who had departed from the pre- 
cepts of our Lord, and lay already in the jaws of death, have been res- 
cued by the prayer of penitence.”’ 

The same Father contemplates prayer in its inseparable unity with 
the entire life, when he says: “‘ He prays without ceasing, who suita- 
bly unites prayer with action; for active duty is an integrant part of 
prayer; since it would be impossible to understand the words of the 
apostle, ‘ Pray without ceasing,’ in any practicable sense, unless we 
represented to ourselves the whole life of the believer as one entire 
and connected prayer,’ of which prayer, commonly so called, forms but 
ὃ part.” 

MWe recognize here a mode of thinking grounded in the essence of 
primitive Christianity, intimately connected with the consciousness of 
the universal Christian priesthood, which distinguishes the Christian 
standing ground as well from the pagan as from the Jewish — the view 
of prayer as an act embracing the whole life — making the entire Chris- 
tian life a continuous prayer. In this reference, Origen says in his 
exposition of the Lord’s prayer :* “‘ We ought not to think that a set of 
words has been taught us which we are to repeat at certain stated sea- 
sons for prayer. If we duly understand what was said in regard to the 
duty of ‘ praying without ceasing,’ then our whole life—if we do thus 
pray without ceasing —must express ‘ Our Father which art in heaven ;’ 
such a life having its conversation, not on earth, but always in heaven, 
and we being thrones of God, inasmuch as the kingdom of God has its 
seat in all who bear the image of the Man from heaven, and have thus 


1 De orat. § 13. 8 Ei πάντα τὸν βίον τοῦ ἁγίου μίαν συ- 
2 De orat. c. 12. ναπτομένην μεγάλην εἴποιμεν εὐχῆν. 
4 De orat. c. 22 


286 SEASONS OF PRAYER. 


become heavenly themselves.”” Clement of Alexandria says :! “ Prayer, 
if I may speak so boldly, is intercourse with God. Although we do 
but lisp, although we address God without opening the lips, in silence, 
we cry to him in the inward recesses of the heart ; for when the whole 
direction of the inmost soul is to him, God always hears.”? Again, 
when he is wishing to present the ideal of a devout Christian, arrived 
at the maturity of knowledge, the same writer says: “¢ He will pray in 
every place, but not openly, to be seen of men. He prays in every 
situation, in his walks for recreation, in his intercourse with others, in 
silence, in reading, in all rational pursuits. And although he is only 
thinking on God in the little chamber of the soul, and calling upon his 
Father with silent aspirations, God is near him and with him, while he 
is yet speaking.’”4 

Tertullian’s description, above quoted, of the blessedness of a Chris- 
tian marriage, shows that uniting together in spiritual songs and the 
reading of scripture belonged to the daily edification of Christian fam- 
ilies. In like manner Clement cf Alexandria recommends union in 
prayer and the reading of the Bible,° as a daily morning employment 
for Christian heads of families. The controversial writings of Tertul- 
lian concerning matters of church life and morality, where he conceives 
of laymen as his opponents, prove that even they were well acquainted 
with the scriptures, and were used to judge concerning the relations of 
life from them. 

The Christians were, in general, accustomed to fall in with the cus- 
tomary seasons of prayer already fixed upon among the Jews; namely, 
the third, the sixth and the ninth hours of the day, as it was then 
divided ; or at nine, at twelve and at three in the afternoon; not that 
they wishéd to confine the duty of prayer to any stated times, but as 
Tertullian explained,® “for the purpose of remimding those of their 
duty who might be drawn away from it by their worldly business.’’ 
Yet the Christians were accustomed to sanctify with prayer all the 
more important portions of the day, and all the more important trans- 
actions of life, whether relating to the mind or the body; since even 
the concerns of the world were to be made holy by receiving a heavenly 
direction. ‘It behoves the faithful,’’ says Tertullian, “‘ neither to take 
food, nor to enter a bath, without interposing a prayer; for the nour- 
ishing and refreshing of the spirit should have precedence of the nour- 
ishing and refreshing of the body, the heavenly of the earthly.” Thus 
too, a Christian, who had received into his house a brother from a dis- 
tant land, and entertained him with all the bodily refreshments in his 
power, was not to dismiss him without prayer; he was to treat him no 
otherwise than if he saw in the stranger the Lord himself; and the 
guest was not to look upon the earthly refreshment which he had re- 
ceived from his brother as of more value than the heavenly which he 


1 Stromat. 1. VII. ἢ. 722. 4 Ὁ δὲ ἐγγὺς ἔτι λαλοῦντος πάρεστιν. 
2 Πᾶσαν γὰρ τὴν ἐνδιάϑετον ὁμιλίαν ὁ 5 Ἑὐχὴ καὶ ἀνάγνωσις. Pedagog. 1, ΤΠ. 
ϑεὸς ἀδιάλειπτως ἐπαΐει. f. 194. Ὁ. 


8 Stromat. 1. VIL. f. 728. 6 De orat. c. 25. 


COMMON PRAYER. POSTURE IN PRAYER. 287 
bestowed on him at parting.! On pressing emergencies, affecting either 
the church in general, or individual members of it in whom all felt a 
special interest, the whole church assembled for prayer; and all gen- 
eral deliberations were opened with prayer. It was in prayer, that the 
brotherly fellowship, the mutual sympathy of the members of the One 
Body was to be specially expressed ; each was to pray in the spirit of 
all, and to present the interests of all the brethren, which he regarded 
as his own, before the great Head of the Church, and through him, be- 
fore Eternal Love. Thus Cyprian, in his exposition of the Lord’s 
prayer, says, “‘ The teacher of peace and of mutual fellowship was de- 
sirous, not that each individual should pray for himself alone, but that 
each should pray for all. We say not, my Father, but our Father ; 
nor do we pray, each for the forgiveness of Ais own sins alone, nor for 
himself alone, that he may not be led into temptation, and that he 
may be delivered from the evil. Ours is a common prayer; and when 
we pray, we pray not for individuals, but for the whole church, be- 
cause, being members of the church, we are all one. ‘That God who 
is the Author of peace and of union, would have each individual pray 
for all, even as he, in one, has borne us all.” And when Cyprian, the 
bishop, in the pressure of persecution, was encouraging his church to 
prayer, he wrote to them: — “ Let each of you pray to God, not for 
himself alone, but for all the brethren, as the Lord’ has taught us to 
ray.” 
i Convinced that the things of God were to be understood only in the 
light of God’s Spirit, and that the heavenly fountain was opened to 
man by prayer, the Christians regarded this exercise as the necessary 
means to the knowledge of divine things and to the nght understand- 
ing of scripture. When Origen, that great teacher of the church, who 
had availed himself of every human aid accessible in his time for the 
understanding of the scriptures and for the unfolding of the doctrines 
therein contained, and turned to this purpose all the resources of his 
vast learning and profound speculations, was exhorting his disciple, the 
young Gregory, (afterwards called Thaumaturgus,) to diligent “ seek- 
ing and knocking” in the study of scripture, he added, ‘‘ Be not con- 
tent, however, with seeking and knocking, to gain insight into the things 
of God ; prayer is the most necessary means of all. Inciting us to 
this, our Saviour did not say alone, ‘ Knock and it shall be opened to 
you ; seek and ye shall -find ;’ but also, ‘ Pray and it shall be given 
ou.’ | 
On those days which were specially consecrated to the remembrance 


1 The passage in Tertullian, de orat. c. 26, 


unbelief, if he valued the parting prayer, 
which is not without its difficulties, I will 


the blessing of the Christian brother his en- 


here present translated: “But he himself 
too, (the brother from abroad,) after having 
been entertained by the brethren,” —I sup- 
pose in this place exceptus should he read 
instead of exemptis, — must not value the 
earthly refreshments more highly than the 
heavenly; for thy faith would at once be 
sentenced ; (i.e. he would thereby evince his 


tertainer, as of no account compared with 
the bodily refreshment bestowed ;) or how 
shalt thou say, according to the Lord’s pre- 
cept, Peace be with this house! unless thou 
returnest to those in the house the blessing, 
(previously received from them.) 

2’ Αναγκαιοτάτη γὰρ καὶ ἢ περὶ TOU νοεῖν 
τὰ ϑεῖα εὐχή. 


288 POSTURE IN PRAYER. PUBLIC WORSHIP. 


of Christ, the Risen, the Christians were accustomed to pray standing 
erect, to signify that Christ had raised up to heaven those who were 
fallen and sunk in the mire of the earth; on all other days they prayed 
kneelmg. Yet Origen warned Christians against the self-delusion 
which in the outward form forgot the temper of the heart; he pointed 
them from the latter to the former, and labored to show that the latter 
was utterly without significance unless connected with the former; was, 
in itself considered, an indifferent matter. ‘‘ Before one stretches out 
his hands to heaven,” he says,! “‘ one must lift his soul upward ; and 
before one raises up his eyes, one must lift up his spirit to God; for 
there can be no doubt, that among a thousand possible positions of the 
body, outstretched hands and uplifted eye are to be preferred above all 
others, as imaging forth those directions of the soul which are befitting 
in prayer. We are of opinion that this posture should be preferred 
where there is nothing to forbid it; for there are certain circumstan- 
ces, as sickness, where one may pray even sitting or lying. And under 
certain circumstances, as for example, on board ship, or im situations 
which would not allow one to retire for the purpose of offering up the 
suitable prayer, one may pray, without seeming to do so. And since 
the bowing of the knee is required when a man is confessing before 
God his own sins and implormg the forgiveness of them, he should 
know that this posture is the sign of a bowed down and humble spirit.” 
Origen supposes the passage in Philip. 2: 10, to refer to such a spirit- 
ual bowing the knee in self-humiliation at the name of Jesus. Tertul- 
lian and Cyprian explain, that prayer does not consist in the pomp of 
outward gestures, but in the direction of the heart to God. “God 
hears not the voice, but the heart,” says Cyprian. ‘‘ He who discerns 
the thoughts of men, needs not to be reminded of their ery; thus Han- 
nah, in the book of Kings, presents the type of the church. She sup- 
plicated God, not with noisy prayer, but in the silent depths of the 
heart. Her prayer was in silence, but her faith was known to God.” 

In Commodian’s Collection of rules for the Christian life, we find this 
laid down with the rest: that prayer, not accompanied with works of 
Christian love, is nothing.” 

We now pass from the consideration of the Christian life generally, 
and of family devotion, to the forms of public worship. 


II. Public and Common Worship of God. 
1. Character of the Christian Worship generally. 


That in which the peculiar character of the Christian worship was 
really grounded, and by which it was clearly distinguished from every 
other kind of religious cultus, was that same fundamental intuition out 
of which the entire Christian life originally sprang,—the idea of the 
universal Christian priesthood — of that worship of God in spirit and in 
truth, which is confined to no special time or place, and to no particular 


1 Cap. Bi. Aut si benefactis ores miseratur egenis, 
2 Instruct. 79: Ne dubites quin quod petieris detur oranti. 
Orantem si cupias exaudiri de ccelo, Tu sane si nudus benefactis Deum adores, 


Rumpe de latibulis nequitise vincla ; In totum ne facias sic orationes inepte. 


PUBLIC WORSHIP. 289 


class of actions, but embraces in like manner all the actions of the 
whole life. This distinguishing character of the Christian worship 
developed itself, among the communities of pagan Christians founded 
by the Apostle Paul, first, in contradistinction to Judaism, and after- 
wards, in opposition likewise to paganism. Later indeed, and as the 
result of that revolution of Christian views which we adverted to in 
speaking of the history of the church constitution, a reaction of the 
Jewish principle began to manifest itself in the forms of worship, as the 
opposition to that principle became more feeble. The simple and spir- 
itual character of the Christian worship was, from the first, a very 
singular and striking phenomenon to the pagans— particularly the 
fact that nothing of that outward pomp and show was to be seen in it 
which in all other religions was considered to be so essential — “‘ no tem- 
ples, no altars, no images!” When Celsus taunted the Christians on 
this peculiarity, Origen replied: ‘In the highest sense, God’s temple 
and image are in the humanity of Christ ; — next, in all actuated by 
the spirit of Christ ;—living images these, with which no Jupiter of 
Phidias is worthy to be compared!’’! Christianity led men to with- 
draw from the bustle of the world to the still retirement of the sanc- 
tuary within, there to pour out their hearts before Him who chose this 
for his peculiar dwelling ; but it also kindled in the hearts of individuals 
flames of love which sought after communion, after the means of mutu- 
ally lending strength to one another, and rising upward in one common 
holocaust to heaven. ellowship in prayer and devotion was consid- 
ered a means of promoting holiness, since it was known that the Lord 
was present with his Spirit, in the midst of those who were assembled 
together in his name; but nothing could be more distant from the 
thoughts of Christians generally than to attribute any special sacredness 
to the place of meeting. Such a fancy seemed to savor of paganism ; and 
it was the less possible for Christians to be led into such a mistake at 
the beginning, because their earliest places of assembly were ordinary 
rooms in private houses, such as any member of the church, who had a 
dwelling suited to the purpose, could furnish. Thus Gaius of Corinth 
is called, Rom. 16, the host of the whole church; because the church 
was accustomed to assemble in a room of his house. Origen says :? 
“ ΠῊ 6 place where believers assemble for prayer has something about 
it wholesome and profitable ;”’ but it is the importance of this spiritual 
fellowship only, which he aims to impress. ‘‘ Christ, with the host of 
angels,” he supposes, “‘attends the assembly of the faithful; and hence 
such assemblies for prayer should not be despised or neglected, since 
they had a peculiar power for him who joins in them with a sincere 
heart.”’ ‘It is not the place, but it is the congregation of the elect, 
which I call the church,” says Clement of Alexandria.? Tertullian re- 
marks : * “‘ We may pray in every place which the occasion or which 
necessity may furnish; for the apostles who prayed to God and sang 
his praise in the prison, within the hearing of the keepers, surely did 


1 ¢, Cels. 1. VIII. § 17. ἰσμα τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκκλησίαν κάλω. Stro- 
2 De οτδί. 6. 31. mat. 1. VII. f. 715. B. 
8 Οὐ γὰρ viv τὸν τόπον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἄϑρο- * De orat. c. 24. 


VOL. I. 


290 WORSHIP. PLACES OF ASSEMBLY. 

nothmg contrary to the commands of our Lord, any more than did 
Paul, when in the ship and before the eyes of all, he consecrated the 
Lord’s supper.” Acts 27. 

It could not fail to happen, indeed, that the principle which tended to 
make religion an outward thing, confined to particular times and places, 
—which principle Christianity had overcome, — would once more find 
entrance into the Christian life ; but the power of the pure Christian spirit 
caused itself to be felt against such depravations when they threatened 
to spread farther. Of such a thing Clement of Alexandria testifies 
when he says:! ‘* The disciples of Christ ought so to appear and so to 
shape their conduct in their daily living, as, for the sake of propriety, 
they strive to appear in the church; they should really de, and not 
merely seem to be such,—so gentle, so devout, so amiable. But I 
know not how it is that, with the place, they change their appearance 
and their manners, just as it is said of the polypus, that it changes its 
color with the roots to which it clings. They lay aside the spiritual 
demeanor which they assumed in the church, as soon as they leave it, 
and put themselves on a level with the multitude with whom they 
mingle. They convict themselves of insincerity, and show what was 
really the temper of their hearts, by laying off their assumed mask of 
decorum. ‘They profess to honor the word of God, but leave it behind 
them in the place where they heard it.” 


2. The Places of Assembly used by the Christians. 


We have already said that the place where the congregations assem- 
bled was at first a room in the house of some member of the church. 
In large towns, where such a place of assembly could not accommodate 
all, it became necessary that smaller portions of the community dwell- 
ing at a distance, should choose other places for their meeting on the 
Sunday. When aman distinguished for the talent of communicating 
doctrinal instruction settled down in a town, he also might form a circle 
in the church, who would assemble at his dwelling for the purpose of 
hearing his spiritual discourses. ‘Thus the passages in Paul’s epistles 
concerning churches in the house of Aquilas and of others will become 
intelligible ; 2 and to this Justin Martyr alluded, when, in the audience 


1 Pedagog. 1. III. f. 257. 

2 The church in his house, 7 κατ᾽ οἶκον 
αὐτοῦ ἐκκλησία. In such passages, the re- 
ference certainly cannot be to places of as- 
sembly for entire congregations, since in 
several instances this 7 κατ᾽ οἷκόν τινος 
ἐκκλησία is expressly distinguished from 
the whole community; 1 Cor. 16: 19 and 
20, — the church at Ephesus assembling in 
the house of Aquilas and Priscilla, is first 
mentioned, and then besides, a// the breth- 
ren, which, according to the above supposi- 
tion, would be the same thing. Coloss. 4: 
15, is another case of the same sort. Again, 
an objection presents itself against this ex- 
planation, from the fact that the same 
Aquilas should have the church meet in 


his house, when he resided at Rome, his or- 
dinary home, and when he abode at Ephe- 
sus; comp. Rom. 16: 5, and 1 Corinth. 16: 
19. But it is very unlikely, that the com- 
munity would have constantly changed its 
place of meeting on the arrival of Aquilas. 
It is more easy to conceive, that men, who, 
like the tent-maker Aquilas, were obliged, 
on account of their occupation, to provide 
themselves with large and commodious 
dwellings wherever they took up their resi- 
dence, were in the habit of giving up one 
apartment of their house for the assembling 
of a portion of the community; especially 
when such a person was also fitted, as prob- 
ably Aquilas was, by his gift of teaching, 
to conduct the exercises of small assemblies, 


WORSHIP. IMAGES EXCLUDED. 291 
which he had with the prefect of Rome, in answer to the question, 
“Where do you assemble?” he replied, “‘ Where each man can and 
will. You believe, doubtless, that we all meet together in one place. 
But it is not so; for the God of the Christian is not confined to one 
spot, but his invisible presence fills heaven and earth, and in all places 
he is worshipped by the faithful.” Justin then adds, that whenever he 
came to Rome, it was his custom to take up his residence in one partic- 
ular spot, where those Christians who were instructed by him,’ and who 
wished to hear his discourses, were accustomed to assemble. Other 
places of assembly he had not visited. 

Gradually such arrangements were made in these places of assembly, 
as the proprieties of Christian worship required. An elevated seat was 
constructed for the reading of the scriptures and the delivering of the 
sermon ;2 and a table set for the distribution of the supper, to which, so 
early as the time of Tertullian — perhaps not without some mixture of 
the foreign Old Testament idea of sacrifice, at least not without furnish- 
ing a pretext for the speedy admission of this idea— was given the 
name of altar; ara, altare. As the communities became larger and 
wealthier, church buildings were erected expressly for the use of the 
Christians. This appears to have been the case as early as the third 
century, for mention is made already of the ϑρησκεύσιμοι τὸποι, (places of 
worship,) of the Christians, in the edict of Gallien.® In the time of the 
outward prosperity of the church, under the reign of Diocletian, many 
splendid church structures had already arisen in the large cities. 

The use of images was originally foreign to the worship and excluded 
from the churches of the Christians ; and so im general, it continued to 
be in this period. The confounding of religion and art in paganism, 
made the early Christians suspicious of art. As at the pagan position 
the sense for the beautiful had often appeared at variance with, and 
even opposed to, the moral taste, so the early warmth of Christian zeal 
was inclined to reverse the relation. The religious consciousness easily 
took an opposite direction to the zsthetic principle of the ancient world; 
and the Holy disdaied the beautiful form which had been allied to the 
unholy. The idea of the appearance of the godlike in the form of a 
servant, an idea so well suited to the oppressed condition of the afflicted 
church of this age, men were inclined to push to an undue extreme, 
rather than to seek to ennoble the divine by the beautiful form. This 
exhibits itself more particularly in the universal opinion of the primitive 
church, according to which Christ veiled his intrinsic divine majesty 
under an uncomely appearance, which served to conceal it; an opinion 
for which they found authority in the Messianic passage, Is. 53: 2, too 
literally understood. Thus Clement of Alexandria admonishes the 


in the capacity of a διδάσκαλος. Comp. Assemani Bibliotheca oriental. T. I. f. 391, 


above, p. 185, and my History of the Plant- 
ing, &c., Bd. I. S. 208. 

1 This was accordingly ἡ κατ᾽ οἶκον τοῦ 
*lovotivov ἐκκλησία. 

2 Suggestus, pulpitum. 

8 See above, p. 140, and the following. If 
any confidence is to be placed in the narra- 
tive of the Chronicle of Edessa, cited in 


(see above, p. 80,) there was a Christian 
church structure in Edessa as early as the 
year 302; and if the explanation of that 
passage by Michaelis, Orientalische und ex- 
egetische Bibliothek, Theil. X., S. 61, is 
made out, this church was separated thus 
early into three parts, according to the pat- 
tern of the Jewish temple. 


292 WORSHIP. IMAGES EXCLUDED. 
Christians against placing too high a value on beauty of person, by 
reference to the example of Christ. ‘‘ Our Lord himself is said to have 
been without comeliness in his outward appearance; and who is better 
than our Lord? But if he did not reveal himself in that personal 
beauty which is perceptible to sense, he appeared in the true beauty 
both of soul and of body; of the soul, in goodness; and of the body, 
in its destination for an imperishable existence.’’? 

Church teachers of the most opposite bent of mind, those inclined to 
& more sensuous and those to a more spiritual mode of conceiving 
divine things — Realists and Idealists, who, on account of these different 
intellectual tendencies, might be expected to have different views in 
relation to this matter, as we find that different views of the same did 
result from such diverse intellectual tendencies in later times — were 
yet united on this pomt by their common repugnance to that practice 
of confounding the natural with the divine in paganism, and by their 
efforts to preserve pure and uncontaminated the worship of God in 
spirit and in truth. Clement of Alexandria is as little favorable to 
religious images as Tertullian. ‘‘ We must not cling to the sensuous,” 
he remarks, when speaking against the pagamuse of images, ‘* but we 
must rise to the spiritual. The familiarity of daily sight lowers the 
dignity of the divine, and to pretend to worship a spiritual essence 
through earthly matter, is to degrade that essence to the world of 
sense.”’ Itis evident from these remarks how foreign, on the whole, 
to the notions of Christians in this age must have been images of Christ. 
Pagans, like Alexander Severus,? who recognized something of a divine 
nature in Christ, and sects which confounded paganism with Christiani- 
ty, were the first to introduce images of Christ; as, for example, the 
gnostic sect of the Carpocratians, who placed such images beside the 
busts of Plato and Aristotle. 

It was not in the church, but in the family, that religious images 
first came into use among the Christians. In their daily intercourse 
with men, the Christians saw themselves everywhere surrounded by 
the objects of the pagan mythology, or, at least, by objects offensive to 
their moral and Christian sentiments. Representations of this sort 
covered the walls in shops, were the ornaments of drinking vessels, and 
seal-rings, on which the pagans frequently had engraven the images of 
their gods, so that they might worship them when they pleased. It 
was natural that in place of these objects, so offensive to-their religious 
and moral sentiments, the Christians should wish to substitute others 
more agreeable to them. ‘Thus they preferred to have on their goblets, 
the figure of a shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shouldér, which was 
the symbol of our Saviour, rescuing the repentant sinner, according to 
the gospel parable.? And Clement of Alexandria says, in reference to 


1 Pedagog. 1. IL. c. 1: Tov κύριον αὐτὸν 
τήν ὄψιν αἰσχρὸν γεγονέναι, διὰ ᾿Ησαΐου τὸ 
πνεῦμα μαρτυρεῖ. 

2 Husebius says, likewise, hist. eccles. 1. 
VII. c. 18, that pagans were the first to pro- 
vide themselves, according to their heathen 
notions, with painted images of Christ, 


Peter and Paul, as benefactors of mankind, 
This admits of being easily explained from 
the religious eclecticism of that period. 

ὃ Tertullian, de pudicitia, ὁ. 7: Proce- 
dant ipse picture calicum vestrorum. Cap. 
10: Pastor, quem in calice depingis. The 
figure of Christ on the cup seems not to 


SEASONS OF WORSHIP. 293 
the seal-rings of the Christians! “ Let our signets be a dove, (the sym- 
bol of the Holy Spirit,) or a fish,? or a ship sailing towards heaven, (the 
symbol of the Christian church and of the individual Christian soul,) 
or a lyre, (the symbol of Christian joy,) or an anchor, (the symbol of 
Christian hope,) and he who is a fisherman will not be forgetful of the 
Apostle Peter, and of the children taken from the water ;* for no 
images of gods should be engraved on the rings of those who are for- 
bidden all intercourse with idols; no sword nor bow, on the rings of 
those who strive after peace ; no goblets, on the rings of those who are 
the friends of sobriety.” Yet religious emblems passed from domestic 
use into the churches, perhaps as early as the end of the third century. 
The walls of them were painted in this manner. The council of Elvira, 
in the year 303, opposed this innovation as an abuse, and forbade “ the 
objects of worship and adoration to be painted on the walls.” * The 
visible representation of the cross may, doubtless, have early found its 
,way among the Christians, both in their domestic and ecclesiastical life. 
This token was peculiarly common with them. It was the sign of 
blessing when they rose in the morning and when they retired at night, 
when they went out and when they came in; employed indeed in all 
the transactions of daily life. It was the sign which the Christians un- 
consciously made, in all cases of sudden surprize.® It was a sensible 
expression of the truly Christian idea, that all the transactions of Christ- 
lans, as well as their whole life, should be sanctified by the faith in 
Christ crucified, by being referred to him; that this faith was the most 
effectual means of obtaining the triumph over, and securing protection 
against all evil. It was but too easily, however, that men confounded 
this idea with the symbol which represented it; and the efficacy of the 
faith in Christ crucified was transferred to the outward sign, and a 
supernatural, sanctifying, protecting power, attributed to this— an 
error, the vestiges of which may be traced as far back as the third 
century. 

We now pass from the consideration of places of public worship, to 
that of the seasons of worship and the festivals of the Christians. 


3. Seasons of Public Worship and Festivals. 


What we have said in general respecting the essential character of 
Christian worship, is also to be applied to the feasts in particular ; 
namely, that the spirit of universality in Christianity abolished all sep- 


of this canon cannot be settled with entire 


have been pleasing to the Montanistic asce- t 
certainty. There is a two fold ambiguity. 


ticism. 


1 Pedagog. |. III. f. 246 and 247. 

2 The same allusion as in the case of the 
fishermen,— also an allusion to the ana- 
gram of Christ's name, IXOYZ = Ἰησοῦς 
Χριστός, Θεοῦ Ὑἱός, Σωτήρ. 

8 The Christians, whom the divine teach- 
er, the ϑεῖος παιδαγωγός, ---- Christ, leads 
through baptism to regeneration. 

4 Ne, quod colitur et adoratur in parieti- 
bus depingatur. Concil. Illibert. can. 36. 
It must be admitted, that the interpretation 

* 


The phrase “quod colitur et adoratur,” 
may be understood as referring to objects 
of religion generally, or more strictly to ob- 
jects of proper worship, to images of Christ, 
or symbolical representations of God, —of 
the Trinity. The term “walls,” may also 
be understood in two different senses, either 
as referring to the walls of the house or 
those of the church. ; 

5 Comp. Tertullian, de corona milit. ¢. 3. 


294 SEASONS OF WORSHIP. 


arative and particularizing limitation; the Christian worship of God 
claiming for itself the entire life flowing out from a commerce with 
heaven, that clung no longer to the elements of the world, was no longer 
to be confined either to any particular place or to a particular time. In 
the New Testament fulfilment, i. e., the keeping holy of the enttire life 
as a life consecrated every day alike to God, the Old Testament law 
of the Sabbath must find its resolution. Not barely the observance 
of Jewish feasts, but all forms and modes of particularizing the Chris- 
tian life by reference to certain times, is reprobated by the apostle 
Paul, as a Jewish practice,! a descent to servile dependence on the ele- 
ments of the world. But if men did, notwithstanding, now select certain 
days for the purpose of associating with them the remembrance of the 
great facts connected with the history of Redemption, to which the 
whole Christian life was ever to be referred, for the purpose of making 
these occasions central points of Christian fellowship, yet this was by 
no means inconsistent with that Christian tendency and intuition which 
were at bottom. It was only a descent from the elevation of the pure 
spirit, at which even the Christian, still partaking of a double nature, 
cannot always sustain himself, to the position of sensuous weakness, — 
a descent which must become the more necessary, in the same propor- 
tion as the fire of the first enthusiasm, the glow of the first love, 
abated. But even in this respect, as well as in reference to the idea of 
the priesthood, the particularizing spirit of the Old Testament dispen- 
sation introduced a disturbing influence, by fastening itself on that 
which had sprung originally from the purer development of the Christian 
life. 

When the Montanists were wishing to introduce new fasts by law, 
which were to be confined to stated times, what Paul had written in 
the epistle to the Galatians against the Jewish observance of times 
was very justly quoted against them; but Tertullian, the defender of 
Montanism, whom we have described above as standing on the dividing 
line between the early Christian, the purely evangelical period, and the 
Christian Jewish period which was now about to commence, already 
shows himself incapable of rightly distinguishing the two positions, that 
of the Old and that of the New Testament; for he conceives the 
Judaizing spirit, reprobated by St. Paul, to consist simply in the ob- 
servance of Jewish festivals, and not in the whole relation correspond- 
ing to the Jewish position of particular days,— whatever days they 
might be, — to the religious consciousness. According to his view, it 
would savor in no respect of Judaism, if feasts which had reference to 
what is simply Christian, were placed in such a relation to the religious 
consciousness.” 

The weekly and yearly festivals of the Christians originated in the 
same fundamental idea, which formed the centre of the whole Chris- 


1See my History of the Planting, etc, galium solennitatum observantes sumus; 


Bd. L., S. 215, ff. illas enim Apostolus dedocet, compescens 
2 Against this objection of conforming to veteris Testamenti in Christo sepulti perse- 
Jewish practices, — “ Galaticari,’ Tertulli- verantiam. Quodsi nova conditio in Chris- 


an, de jejuniis, ec. 14, replies: Galaticamur to, jam nova et solennia esse debebunt. 
plane, si Judaicarum ceremoniarum, si le- 


THE SABBATH. 295 
tian life, — the idea of imitating Christ, the’ crucified and the risen, — 
imitating him in his death, by appropriating through faith and repent- 
ance the effects of his death, by dying to self and to the world, —imi- 
tating him in his resurrection, by rismg with him, in faith and through 
the power. which he imparts, to a new and holy life, consecrated to 
God, commencing here in the germ, and unfolding itself to maturity in 
another world. Hence, the jubilee was the festival of the resurrection ; 
and the preparation for it, the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings with 
penitence and crucifixion of the flesh, was the day of fasting and peni- 
tence. Accordingly in the week, the jubilee or festival of joy was Sun- 
day; the preparation for it were the days of fasting and prayer conse- 
erated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, and of what pre- 
ceded them, on Thursday and Friday. Accordingly, the yearly festi- 
vals were in remembrance of the resurrection of Christ, and of his 
works after his resurrection and ascension ;— the preparation for these, 
were the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings and the fasts. Having 
presented this general view, we shall now proceed to consider, more in 
detail, the several weekly and yearly festivals. 

The opposition to Judaism early led to the special observance of Sun- 
day in place of the Sabbath. The first intimation of this change is in 
Acts 20: 7, where we find the church assembled on the first day of the 
week ;1 a still later one is in Rev. 1: 10, where by the “ Lord’s day,” 
can hardly be understood the day of judgment. Thus in the catholic 
epistle ascribed to Barnabas, at the close of the 15th chapter, Sun- 
day is designated as the day of jubilee in remembrance of Christ’s res- 
urrection and ascension to heaven,? and of the new creation which then 
commenced ; and in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians it is pre- 
supposed,® that even the Jews who had come over to Christianity sub- 
stituted Sunday in place of the Sabbath. As the Sabbath was regard- 
ed as representing Judaism, Sunday was contemplated as a symbol of 
the new life consecrated to the risen Christ and grounded in his resur- 
rection. Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy, by being exempted 
from fasts, and by the circumstance that prayer was performed on this 
day in a standing and not in a kneeling posture, as Christ, by his resur- 
rection, had raised up fallen man again to heaven. But as we have 
already observed in Tertullian a confounding of the Jewish with the 
Christian view of feasts, so we find also in him indications of the trans- 
fer of the law of the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday; for by him, attend- 


Ε 


1See my History of the Planting, etc., Sunday: “ ἐν ἡ καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκ- 


Vol. I. p. 215, f. 

2 Considering the close connection in 
which the resurrection of Christ and his as- 
cension to heaven stood with each other in 
the Christian consciousness, — since his res- 
urrection was regarded as but a transition 
point to his entire exaltation above the 
region of earth in this new, glorified form 
of existence, — I cannot lay so great stress 
on the manner in which the writer of this 
letter expresses himself with regard to 


pov καὶ φανερωϑεὶς ἀνέβη εἰς τοὺς οὐρα- 
vov¢.”” Nor can I think myself authorized 
to infer from it, either that according to the 
author’s opinion, Christ’s ascension also oc- 
curred on Sunday, or that he conceived the 
fact to have been that Christ rose to heaven 
immediately after his first appearance to 
Mary, as the risen Saviour. 

8 Chap. 9: Μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ 
κατὰ κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες. 


296 SEASONS OF WORSHIP. 
ing to any business on Sunday seems to have been regarded as 
sinful. 

Again, the Friday of every week — this day in particular — and 
the Thursday were specially consecrated to the remembrance of the 
sufferings of Christ and of the preparatory circumstances. On these 
days there were meetings for prayer, and fasts till three o’clock in the 
afternoon ; yet nothing in regard to these arrangements was defined by 
law. Every one took a part in these observances according to his own 
particular necessities and his inclination. Such fasts, united with 
prayer, the Christians, — who were fond of comparing their calling to a 
militia Christi, — called stationes,? as if they constituted the sentry 
duties of the soldiers of Christ;—- hence both these days were named 
dies stationum.® 

Those churches, however, which were composed of Jewish Christians,‘ 
though they admitted, with the rest, the festival of Sunday, yet re- 
tained also that of the Sabbath ; and it was from these that the custom 
became general in the Eastern church of distinguishing this day, as 
well as Sunday, by the exclusion of fasts and by the standing position 
in prayer; while in the Western, and especially in the Roman church, 
where the opposition against Judaism predominated, the custom, on the 
other hand, grew out of this opposition, of observing the Sabbath also 


as a fast day.® 


1 Asis to be inferred from Tertullian’s 
language, de orat. ὁ. 23: Solo die domini- 
co resurrectionis non ab isto tantum (the 
bowing of the knee,) sed omni anxietatis 
habitu et officio cavere debemus, differentes 
etiam negotia, ne quem diabolo locum demus. 

2 We find the word statio used in this 
sense, first in Hermas Pastor, 1. III. Simil- 
tud. V.— often in Tertullian. Statio was 
the technical designation for this half-fast, 
as contradistinguished from the proper 
jejunia. Tertullian, de jejuniis, c. 14. 

8 Feria quarta et sexta, probably = feria 
diei quartze, sextie ; hence the signification 
of the word feria in the Latin phraseology 
of the church. 

4From the language of the passage, 
which has already been cited, Ignat. ep. ad. 
Magnes: Οἱ ἐν παλαιοῖς mpayyacw ἀνα- 
στραφέντες, --- μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ 
κατὰ κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες, it might be in- 
ferred, indeed, that the Jewish Christians 
had substituted Sunday in place of the Sab- 
bath ; the inference, however, thus general- 
ly expressed, assuredly cannot be true. 

5 Tertullian, de jejun. c. 14: Quanquam 
vos etiam sabbatum si quando continuatis, 
nunquam nisi in Paschate jejunandum. He 
objects, as a Montanist, to his Roman op- 
ponents, that they had deprived the Sab- 
bath of its due celebration, and sometimes 
continued the fast on Friday over into the 
Sabbath, when properly the only exception 
to be made here was in the case of the pass- 
over. The same practice of continuing the 
fast on Friday over into the Sabbath, which 


This difference in customs became striking whenever 


Tertullian the Montanist here attacks, we 
find mentioned by Victorinus, bishop of 
Petabio in Pannonia, (now Pettau in Stei- 
ermark,) near the close of the third centu- 
ry, in the fragment on the History of the 
Creation, first published by Cave hist. lit. 
He calls this continuation “ superpositio 
jejunii.” Fasting on the Sabbath appears 
in this case to have been a preparation for 
the jubilee of the communion on Sunday, 
as opposed to the Jewish celebration of the 
Sabbath, which had been abrogated by 
Christ. Hoc die solemus superponere ; id- 
circo, ut die dominico cum gratiarum ac- 
tione ad panem (the sacrament of the sup- 
per,) exeamus. Et parasceve superpositio 
fiat, ne quid cum Judeis sabbatum obser- 
vare videamus. Galland. bibl. patr. T. IV. 
and Routh reliquiz sacre, Vol. III. pag. 
237. Oxon. 1815. 

The council of Elvira opposed to the er- 
ror of the Sabbath celebration, such a con- 
tinuation of the fast on Friday over into 
the Sabbath; Can. 26: Errorem placuit 
corrigi, ut omni sabbati die superpositiones 
celebremus. This canon may, without ques- 
tion, be differently understood, according as 
we refer the phrase “errorem corrigi,” to 
something not expressly stated, but sup- 
plied by the mind, or to the following con- 
text. If it is referred to the last, the coun- 
cil must be understood as declaring itself 
expressly opposed to these superpositiones. 
But the analogy of the whole style of ex- 
pression in the other canons of this coun- 
cil would rather favor the first interpreta- 


FASTS AND FESTIVALS. 297 
members of Eastern churches passed their Sabbaths in churches of the 
West. But too soon, the principles of the apostolic church, which, 
amidst all the differences in outward things, abode firmly by the unity 
of faith and of spirit in the bond of love, was departed from, and unz- 
formity in such matters was required. ‘Tertullian, previous to his con- 
version to Montanism, spoke on this disputed point with Christian mod- 
eration. He said of the few advocates of the Eastern custom,! ‘ The 
Lord will bestow his grace, so that they will either yield, or else fol- 
low their own opinion without giving offence to others.” As early as 
the beginning of the third century, the learned Hippolytus was led to 
write on this controversy between the Eastern and Western church.? 

From the same point of view originated the first yearly festivals 
among the Christians; yet here, that opposition between the communi- 
ties composed of Jewish and those composed of Gentile Christians, 
which had such important influence on the unfolding of the life of the 
church as well as of its doctrines, was strongly manifested at the very 
beginning. The former retained, with the whole Jewish ceremonial 
law, all the Jewish festivals, although gradually they ascribed to them 
such Christian import as might naturally present itself. On the con- 
trary, among the churches of Gentile Christians, there were probably, 
from the first, no yearly festivals whatever, as may be inferred from 
the epistles of St. Paul.? This then must have been the case also with 
the churches .of Asia Minor, which assuredly were founded by the 
Apostle Paul. But from these churches started the controversies in the 
second century respecting the time of the passover; and they appealed 
to the authority of an ancient usage introduced by the Apostle John. 
In regard to this point, thus much of truth may doubtless lie at bot- 
tom; that the changes which took place in these churches, after the 
times of St. Paul, in the particular form of worship and the introduc- 
tion of the annual feast, — which we must assume, and search for its 
cause, — might be derived from the Apostle John, whose longer resi- 
dence in Minor Asia must have had a lasting influence on the state of 
the churches there. As it regards him, it is im itself probable, that as 
he had been accustomed heretofore to celebrate the Jewish annual fes- 
tival, and as the feast of the passover, which called to mind the great 
facts of which he had been an eye-witness, must have had a peculiar 
significancy for him, he may have introduced its celebration when he 
took up his permanent residence among the churches of that region. 
Thus is it explained how it happened that men were guided there wholly 
by the chronology of the Jewish passover. 


tion. Ata later period, when the point of 1 De orat. c. 23. 


view from which the subject was regarded 
in the early Christian times, had passed out 
of mind, and the cause of that custom in 
the Roman church of fasting on the Sab- 
bath was no longer obvious, fables were in- 
vented in explanation of the matter; as, for 
example, that Peter had fasted on this day 
to prepare himself for the dispute with 
Simon Magus. 


2 Cfr. Hieronymus ep. 72, ad Vital. 

3 The passage, 1 Corinth. 5: 7, contains 
in no sort, any allusion to a-celebration of 
the passover in the Corinthian church, which 
was peculiar to the Christians; but simply 
opposes that cleansing of the heart which 
is the result of faith, to the outward Jewish 
celebration of the feast. Comp. my Histo- 
ry of the Planting, &c., Vol. I. p. 230. 


298 SEASONS OF WORSHIP. 

Now in modern times, it has become the prevailing opinion,}! that the 
paschal supper which the Christians of Asia Minor observed in remem- 
brance of the last paschal supper of Christ, was the point by which 
they determined the time of the Christian paschal supper. But it may 
be questioned, whether the most reliable and the oldest document on this 
controversy, — the letter of the bishop Polycrates of Ephesus,?—favors 
this view.? From the language used in this document, it might much 
rather be inferred, that in the churches of Asia Minor, the Christians 
who followed the Johannean tradition, went on the supposition, that the 
14th day of the month Nisan ought to be regarded as the day of 
Christ’s passion. Hence it was believed that this day ought ever to be 
appropriated to the remembrance of Christ’s passion, since also the 
paschal lamb, slain by the Jews on this day, was considered a foretype 
of the offering of Christ. At all events, then, it is settled, that im Asia 
Minor the celebration of the passover was established wholly according 
to the Jewish chronology. Hence it might come about, that the remem- 
brance of Christ’s passion was celebrated on another day of the week 
than Friday, the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection on another day 
than Sunday. When, on the other hand, in the course of the second 
century, annual feasts were introduced also into the Western churches, 
men proceeded from an altogether different pomt in determining their 
times. Following the same method according to which the weekly fes- 
tivals had been arranged, Christians held it necessary that a Friday 
should always be consecrated to the memory of Christ’s passion, a Sun- 
day to the memory of Christ’s resurrection. 

This difference of outward use existed at first, without being deemed 
of sufficient importance, — since it was an external thing, — to be made 
a matter of dispute; it was still kept in mind, that the kingdom of 


1 The first start to which was given by 
the Dissertation published by myself in the 
2d Hefte des Kirchenhistorischen Archiv’s 
von Vater, J. 1823. See the history of the 
treatises on this subject, —a subject ren- 
dered obscure and difficult by the deficien- 
cy of ancient accounts and the ambiguity 
of the term Pascha, — in Illgen’s Zeitschrift 
fiir die historische Theologie, Bd. II. 4tes 
Stiick. J. 1832, by Dr. Rettberg. 

2 Euseb. 1. V.c. 24. The fragment, pre- 
served to us in the Chronicon paschale 
Alexandrinum, from a work by Apollina- 
ris of Hierapolis, on the feast of the Pass- 
over, of which I have made much use in 
the Dissertation just referred to, is, to say 
the least, suspicious; since in the ancient 
lists of the writings of Apollinaris, in Eu- 
sebius, in Jerome and in Photius, no such 
work is mentioned ; and it were singular if 
in the district where he wrote, the usage of 
the church in Asia Minor was not followed. 

8 Polycrates, in the letter referred to, says 
of his predecessors: Πάντες ἐτήρησαν τὴν 
ἡμέραν τῆς τεσσαρεςκαιδεκάτης τοῦ πάσχα 
κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. This, to say the least, 
would be singularly expressed, if it is to be 


understood as referring only to the paschal 
supper to be held on the evening of this 
day, which supper, according to the gospel 
narrative relating to the last paschal sup- 
per of Christ, it was believed should be 
held at the beginning of the Jewish feast of 
the passover, on the fourteenth day of the 
month Nisan. Afterwards it is said: Πών- 
TOTE THY ἡμέραν ἤγαγον οἱ συγγενεῖς μου, 
ὅταν τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων ὁ λαὸς ἤρνυε τὴν ζύμην. 
What sense would this afford, if the sub- 
ject of discourse were the paschal supper ἢ 
It is, in fact, evident of itself, that the pas- 
chal supper could be held only on the day 
when the Jews removed the leaven from 
their houses. This would be idem per idem. 
On the other hand, every thing is consist- 
ent, if we suppose, that the writer is speak- 
ing of the celebration % remembrance of 
Christ’s passion, on the fourteenth of the 
month Nisan. The source of proof ap- 
pealed to here was the gospel, by which 
may be understood either the evangelical 
history generally, or the gospel of John in 
particular. 

4 Comp. Justin M. Dial. 6. Tryph. Jud. 
f. 259, and f. 338, ed Colon. 


CONTROVERSY CONCERNING THE PASSOVER. 299 
God consists neither in meat nor drink, nor any other kind of external 
action. | 

This diversity, together with several other differences, between the 
church of Asia Minor and the church of Rome, first came into discus- 
sion when, in the year 162, the bishop Polycarp of Smyrna made a 
visit to Anicetus bishop of Rome.! Polycarp alleged that he himself 
had observed such a passover with the Apostle John, whose disciple he 
was. Anicetus alleged, that his predecessors (in a church consisting of 
Gentile Christians from the school of Paul, and in which there were 
originally no yearly feasts at all”) had introduced nothing of that sort. 
But as it was not supposed that the apostles were agreed in respect to 
such outward matters, nor that they would have considered uniformity 
in regard to such things as necessary, 1t was believed that without pre- 
judice to the fellowship and unity of Christians, a difference on these 
points might be suffered to remain. As a token that the bond of 
Christian brotherhood was not to be disturbed by such, and, as it seems, 
other still more important points of difference, Anicetus permitted Poly- 
carp to preside in the church in place of himself, at the celebration of 
the Lord’s supper. 

If two books which, about the year 171, the bishop Melito of Sardis 
wrote upon the passover,’ referred to this dispute, it must about this 
time have broken out anew; yet it does not admit of being proved, that 
the work contained any reference of that sort. The typical explanation 
of the Jewish passover might also have led to the composition of such a 
work, independent of this controversy. 

But about the year 290, when Victor was bishop of the Roman 
church,* the controversy broke out afresh. On the one side stood the 
church of Rome, together with the churches of Czesarea in Palestine, 
of Jerusalem, of Tyre and of Alexandria; on the other were the 
churches of Asia Minor, headed by the bishop Polycrates of Ephesus. 

The Roman bishop, actuated by that hierarchical spirit, which, as we 
have already observed, had already begun to show itself in the Roman 
church,° published sentence of excommunication against the churches of 


1 At any rate, if we may judge from the 
language of Irenzus, cited by Eusebius, 
the object of, Polycarp’s journey to Rome 
was not to settle the disputes respecting 
the feast of the passover. No disputes on 
this question had as yet arisen; and the 
conversation upon it was only cursorily in- 
troduced, while the parties were speaking 
on the points in which the churches dif- 
fered. Neither is it by any means clear, 
although it is possible, that the object of 
the journey was to discuss those other dif- 
ferences. More importance has been some- 
times attributed to this visit, than it can 
be proved historically to have had. 

2 The matter is obscure, as we have in 
our hands only a disconnected fragment of 
the letter of Irenzus. Perhaps there was 
not as yet even then in the Roman church 
any yearly feast; perhaps the difference 
at that time had reference to this very point, 


— the conflict between the ancient rites ac- 
cording to Paul, and the more recent ones 
according to John. I speak here only by 
way of conjecture. 

3 Euseb. |. IV. c. 26. 

4 TI once inferred, from the fact that Ire- 
nzeus, in his letter to Victor, holds up only 
those Roman bishops who preceded Soter, 
as patterns of toleration, that a change had 
already taken place under the latter; but 
if we mark how the phrases in Irenzus, 
οἱ (πρὸ) Σωτῆρος πρεσβύτεροι and οἱ πρό 
σου πρεσβύτεροι, answer to each other, it 
becomes evident that no stress can be laid 
on the former of them. Jrenzus means 
simply to say, that difference, and withal 
that tolerance, did not first begin under the 
last bishops, but existed already before 
Soter. 

5 See above, p. 214. 


300 ORIGIN OF THE FEASTS OF 
Asia Minor, on account of this trivial point of dispute; but this un- 
christian proceeding could not fail to encounter decided resistance, in 
an age when some portion of the gospel spirit still remained. Irenzeus, 
in the name of the churches at Lyons and Vienna, wrote him a letter, 
in which he sharply rebuked this method of procedure. He endeav- 
ored to make Victor ashamed of his conduct, by comparing it with the 
example of his predecessor, Anicetus, and declared to him, “ΚΞ Notwith- 
standing these differences, we live together in peace, and our disagree- 
ment with regard to the regulation of fasts serves only to make our 
unity of faith the more clearly evident.’’ In the same letter, or another 
document originating in the same controversy, he said, “ The apostles 
have directed us to let no man judge us in meat or in drink, or in re- 
spect of a holy day, or of the new moon or of Sabbath days. Why 
then these disputes, why these divisions? We observe fasts, but with 
the sour leaven of malice and cunning, rending the church of God; we 
observe the externals, so as to let go those weightier matters of faith 
and love. We have learned from the prophets, however, that such feasts 
and such fasts are an abomination to the Lord.” : 

As Friday was customarily considered a day of penitence and fasting 
preparatory to the celebration of the resurrection Sunday, it was the 
practice of these churches, where one Friday in the year was conse- 
crated to the remembrance of the passion, and one Sunday to the re- 
membrance of: the resurrection of Christ, to make this Friday a day of 
penitence and fasting preparatory to the greatest Christian festival, the 
celebration of the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sun- 
day. Yet with respect to the duration of this season of fasting, nothing 
was determined. In order to imitate the temptation of Jesus during 
forty days in the wilderness, this fast was extended in some districts 
to forty hours, which led afterwards to the forty days,’ or Quadragesi- 
mal fast. i 

After the feast of the resurrection followed the feast of Pentecost, 
(Whitsuntide,) in remembrance of Christ risen and glorified, as he 
thus revealed himself to the faithful, and at length actively manifested 
himself, in a self-subsistent community of divine life, in the effusion 
of the Holy Spirit. All this was embraced as one included sum of the 
activity and self-revelation of the ascended and glorified Redeemer, in 
this prolonged celebration of fifty days. It is evident from this, how 
closely connected in the Christian consciousness of this period were the 
conceptions of Christ ascended and glorified.? This entire period was 
observed as Sunday ; that is, there was never any fasting ; prayers were 
made in the standing and not in the kneeling posture; it was perhaps 





1 Jrenzus, in Euseb. 1. V. ο. 24. 

2This mode of contemplating the sub- 
ject was still adopted also by Origen, and 
accounts for the manner in which he places 
in juxtaposition with the weekly feasts, the 
mapackevai and κυριακαΐ, the yearly feasts, 
the πάσχα and the πεντηκοστὴ, regarding 
the feast of the resurrection as the point at 
which the feast of pentecost began. Hence 


he observes : “ Whoever in sincerity of heart 
ean say, God has raised us up and set us 
with him in heavenly places, celebrates con- 
stantly the feast of pentecost.” (Ὁ dv- 
νάμενος μετὰ ἀληϑείας λέγειν, συνανέστη- 
μὲν τῷ Χριστῷ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ συνήγειρε καὶ 
συνεκάϑισεν ἡμᾶς ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν 
Χριστῷ, ἀεί ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς τῆς πεντηκοστῆς 
ἡμέραις.) Orig. ο. Cels. 1. VIIL ο. 22. 


CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY. 301 
the case also, (in many of the churches at least,) that the congrega- 
tions daily assembled and celebrated the communion. Afterwards, two 
special events were selected out of this whole period, the ascension of 
Christ, and the effusion of the Holy Spirit, to which the celebration of 
Pentecost was confined. 

These feasts, as it appears from the passage cited out of Origen, 
were the only ones generally observed in this period. That fundamen- 
tal view of the whole Christian life, which referred everything to the 
sufferings, resurrection and glory of Christ, and the accommodation or 
opposition to the Jewish observances, were reasons that these in partic- 
ular constituted the only general festivals. The idea of a birth-day 
festival was foreign to the Christians of this period generally ; they re- 
garded the second birth as the man’s true birth. So far as it con- 
cerned the birth of the Saviour, the case must have been somewhat 
different, indeed. By him, human nature was to be sanctified from its 
earliest development. But this fact could not at first present itself im 
so prominent a point of light to the early Christians, so many of whom 
had embraced Christianity when now advanced in years, and after a 
decisive crisis of their life. It was, moreover, only by degrees that 
Christianity could pass over into all the relations of domestic life. Be- 
sides, it was, in truth, unknown at what definite time the celebration of 
the remembrance of Christ’s birth should be placed, as nothing definite 
was ascertained respecting the date of his birth. The case was entire- 
ly different with those more ancient annual feasts. 

Yet we find even in this period some trace, probably, of the festival of 
Christmas. The history of it is closely connected with the history of 
another kindred festival, the festival of the manifestation of Jesus im 
his character as the Messiah, his consecration to the office of Messiah 
at his baptism by John and the beginning of his public ministry, called 
afterwards the ἑορτὴ τῶν ἐπιφανιῶν, τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ Χριστοῦ. We find in 
later times, that these festivals spread in opposite directions ; the for- 
mer extended itself from the West to the Kast, and the latter from the 


East to the West.? 


1 We might infer from Tertullian, de 
orat. c. 23, where he had said that worldly 
business on Sunday was deferred, and 
where he subsequently transfers the entire 
celebration of Sunday to the pentecost, that 
the former practice was observed also 
through the whole of Pentecost; which, 
however, can hardly be credited. De Idol- 
olatria, c. 14, he says, wishing to withhold 
Christians from taking any part in the 
heathen festivals: Excerpe singulas sollen- 
nitates nationum, Pentecosten implere non 
poterunt The first trace of a limitation 
of the pentecost to one day, is to be found 
perhaps in the 43d canon of the council of 
Elvira. This certainly very obscure canon 
seems most naturally to admit of being un- 
derstood as meaning that some had selected 
out of the whole time of pentecost merely 
the feast of ascension. On the other hand, 
by the pentecost the council understands 


VOL. I. 26 


Clement of Alexandria simply notices, that the 


only the feast of the effusion of the Holy 
Spirit: and hence requires, that it should 
be celebrated fifty days after Easter. It 
charges the former, who did but wrongly 
apply the name of pentecost, of departing 
from the authority of Scripture. Ut cuncti 
diem Pentecostes post Pascha celebremus, 
non quadragesimam, nisi quinquagesimam. 

2 The feast of Epiphany, considered as 
the feast of Christ’s baptism, stood in high 
consideration towards the close of the fourth 
century, at Antioch, while the introduction 
of the Christmas festival, coming from the 
West, met there with a good deal of oppo- 
sition. Several Eastern churches, where 
men became first acquainted with the fes- 
tival of Christmas in the last part of the 
fourth century, or still later, but where the 
feast of Christ’s baptism had been longer 
known, afterwards united both feasts to- 
gether; just as in the Western churches a. 


302 ACTS OF WORSHIP. 

Gnostic sect of the Basilidians kept the latter festival in his time at 
Alexandria. It can hardly be admitted, however, that this sect in- 
vented the festival, interested as they were in observing it on the 
ground of their doctrines ; for we cannot suppose that the catholic 
church would ever have received it from the Gnosties. They had most 
probably borrowed it from Jewish Christian churches in Palestine 
or Syria. With Jewish Christians it probably origmated ; for to their 
peculiar mode of thinking, this moment in the life of Jesus must have 
appeared most important. The Gnostics afterwards gave it their own 
interpretation. Clement speaks, at the same time, of individuals who 
were disposed to calculate not only the year but also the day of the 
nativity of Jesus, and indeed scems to censure such inquiries as idle 
and unprofitable, in which, moreover, it was impossible to arrive at any 
certainty. He does not state indeed that they observed the day which 
they attempted to determine, as a festival; yet it is probable that the 
day which they took so much pains to reckon, they also observed ; and 
the general shaping of the passage in Clement would seem to indicate 
that this was his meaning.’ He could not have alluded, however, to 
the Gnostics, of whom he speaks afterwards, fér with their system the 
festival of Christmas stood in direct contradiction. Thus these two 
feasts answer to two stages of Christian intuition, a lower and a higher ; 
that which attached itself immediately to Judaism, and the Christian 
stage carried forward to an independent development; the view of 
Jesus as the anointed of the Holy Spirit, armed with divine powers 
for his work as the Messiah, and of Jesus as the god-man, the Word 
become flesh, whose humanity was from the beginning filled with the 
divine essence. We pass now to consider the several acts of Christian 
worship. 

4. The several acts of Christian Worship. 


The nature of the single acts of Christian worship will be evident 
from what we have remarked respecting its essence generally. As the 
elevation of the spirit and heart of the united church to God was the 
end of the whole, so instruction and edification by uniting in the com- 
mon contemplation of the divine word, constituted, from the first, a 
principal part of Christian worship. ‘The mode in which this was done, 
might, like the form of the church constitution, be closely connected 
with the arrangement of the assemblies of the Jewish communities in 
the synagogues.” As in the synagogue assemblies of the Jews the 
reading of portions from the Old Testament formed the basis of reli- 
gious instruction, so the same practice passed over into the Christian 


somewhat different meaning was given to 
the recent feast of Epiphany, which came 
to them from the East. The Donatists re- 
fused to adopt the feast of Epiphany, con- 
sidering it as an innovation coming from 
the astern church. Quia nec orientali ec- 
clesiaw, ubi apparuit illa stella, communi- 
cant. Augustini Sermo, 202, § 2. These 
are only preliminary remarks, introduced 
here in confirmation of the con jecture above 


expressed; the subject will be resumed in 
the following period. 

1 Clemens Stromat, 1. 1. f. 340: Evot δὲ 
οἱ περιεργότερον TH “γενέσει τοῦ σωτῆ- 
ρος ἡμῶν οὐ μόνον τὸ ἔτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν 
ἡμέραν προστιϑέντες" οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Βασιλείδου 
καὶ τοῦ βαπτίσματος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν 
ἑορτάζουσι. 

2 566 my History of the Planting, etc., 
Vol. I. p. 39. 


READING THE SCRIPTURES. SERMONS. 303 
assemblies. The Old Testament was read first, particularly the pro- 
phetic parts of it, as referring to the Messiah; next, the gospels, and 
finally the apostolic epistles. 

_ The reading of the scriptures was of the greater consequence, since 
it was desired to make every Christian familiar with them; and yet, 
on account of the rarity and high price of manuscripts, and the pov- 
erty of a great proportion of the Christians, or because all could not 
read, placing the Bible itself in the hands of all was out of the ques- 
tion. The frequent hearing of the word must therefore, in the case of 
many, be a substitute for their own reading it. The scriptures were 
read in a language that all could understand. ‘This, in most of the 
countries belonging to the Roman empire, was either the Greek or the 
Latin. Various translations of the Bible into Latin made their appear- 
ance at a very early period ; since every one who had but a slight knowl- 
edge of Greek, felt the want of thus making himself familiar with the 
word of God in his native tongue. In places where the Greek or the 
Latin language was understood by only a part of the community, the 
men of education, the rest being acquainted only with the ancient dia- 
lect of their country, which was the case in many cities of Egypt and 
Syria, church interpreters were appointed, as they were in the Jewish 
synagogues,” who immediately translated what was read into the pro- 
vincial dialect, that it might be universally understood.® 

As early as the third century it was the practice, as we learn from 
the complete liturgies of the fourth which are known to us, for the dea- 
cons, before the Anagnost began to read, to exhort the community in a 
certain customary form of words, to attention and devotion in listening 
to the divine word.+* 

The reading of the scriptures was followed, as in the Jewish syna- 
gogues, by short, and originally very s¢mple addresses, in familiar lan- 
guage, such as the heart prompted at the moment, which contained the 
exposition and application of what had been read. On this point, Jus- 
tin Martyr expresses himself as follows: ° ‘‘ The presiding officer of the 
church gives a word of exhortation, and incites the people to exemplify 
in their lives the good things they had listened to.” It was among 
the Greeks, who were more given to the culture of rhetoric, that the 
sermon first began to take a wider scope, and to assume an important 
place in the acts of worship.® 


1 Augustin. de doctrina christiana, 1. IT. 
e. 11. 

2 The D723, Dragomans. 

8 “Ἑρμηνευταὶ γλώσσες εἰς γλῶσσαν, ἢ ἐν 
ταῖς ἀναγνώσεσιν, ἢ ἐν ταῖς προσομιλίαις. 
Epiphan. exposit. fid. Cathol. ο. 21. Ῥτο- 
copius, the martyr, in the persecution of 
Dioclesian, united in his own person, at 
Scythopolis in Palestine, the offices of 
Anagnost, exorcist, interpreter, (from the 
Greek into Syriac.) See his Acta. 

* As we may see from the words of Com- 
modian, against the speaking, particularly 
of the female sex, in the church: 


Buccina preconum clamat, lectore legente, 
Ut pateant aures, et tu magis ohstruis illas. 


ΠΤ, Cds 70) 

5 Apolog. II. 

6 When Sozomen, hist. eccles. 1. VII. c. 
19, who wrote in the first half of the fifth 
century, says that the practice of preaching 
did not exist in the Roman church, the re- 
mark could in no case have reference to 
the early times ; but, supposing the statement 
is to be depended upon, it would simply 
amount to this, that by the predominance 
of outward show and liturgical pomp, the 
sermon was finally pushed out. But the 
fact may have been, that this Kastern writer 


304 CHURCH PSALMODY. THE SACRAMENTS. 


Church psalmody, also, passed over from the synagogue into the Chris- 
tian church. The Apostle Paul exhorts the primitive churches to sing 
spiritual songs. For this purpose were used the psalms of the Old 
Testament, and partly hymns composed expressly for this object, espe- 
cially hymns of praise and of thanks to God and to Christ; such hav- 
ing been known to Pliny, as in customary use among the Christians of 
his time. In the controversies with the Unitarians, at the end of the 
second and the beginning of the third centuries, the hymns were ap- 
pealed to, in which from early times Christ had been worshipped as 
God. The power of church melody on the heart was soon acknowl- 
edged; and hence such as were desirous of propagating peculiar opin- 
ions of their own, like Bardasanes or Paul of Samosata, seized upon this 
as an instrument well adapted to their purpose. 

The visible church required visible signs, for the spiritual facts on 
which its inward essence rests. Hence Christ, who meant to found a 
visible church, instituted two outward signs, as symbols of the invisible 

fellowship between him, the Head of the spiritual body, and its mem- 
bers, the believers, and of the union of these members not only with 
himself, but with one another — visible meane of representing the in- 
visible heavenly benefits to be communicated by him to the members of 
this body ; and with the believing use of these signs, furnished to the 
outward man of sense in behalf of the tnward spiritual man, was to be 
connected the enjoyment of that fellowship and of those heavenly ben- 
efits. As in Christianity and all Christian life, there is nothmg which 
stands separate and insulated, but all forms one whole, radiating from a 
common centre, so in the present case, what is represented by these 
outward signs was to be something which should proceed on through 
the whole inward, Christian life; something which from one single mo- 
ment of that life should be diffused over the whole of it; and again, 
from other single moments, should be specially awakened and carried 
still further onward. Such was baptism, the sign of the first entrance 
into fellowship with the Redeemer and with the church, the first appro- 
priation of the benefits which he bestowed on mankind — the forgive- 
ness of sins and the inward union of life thence resulting — the partici- 
pation in a sanctifying, divine spirit of life; and such was the Lord’s 
supper, the sign of a constantly progressive perseverance in this fellow- 
ship and in the appropriation and enjoyment of these benefits; both 
representing the essentials of the whole Christian life within, in its first 
rise and its progressive development. The whole peculiar spirit of the 
Christian worship invariably stamped itself upon the mode in which 
these outward signs of divine realities were administered ; and again, 
the mode of their administration powerfully reacted upon the character 
of the worship. The connection of the moments represented by these 
outward signs with the whole of the Christian life, the union of the in- 
ward and divine things with the outward transactions, were present to 
the lively Christian feelings of the early believers; but it was here a 


was deceived by false accounts from the the Roman church did not occupy so im- 
West. And the mistake may have arisen portant a place in the worship, as in the 
from some observation, that the Sermon in Greek church. 


BAPTISM. PREPARATION FOR IT. 305 
source of great practical mischief, —just as we observed in the case of 
the doctrine concerning the church, — that men neglected duly to sep- 
arate and distinguish in their conceptions, what was connected together 
in their feelings. It was from the same source that the outward con- 
ception, not merely of the church, but also of those symbols which were 
so closely connected with the being of the church, proceeded. And 
one kind of outward conception reacted upon the other. 

We shall speak first of baptism. At the beginning, when it was im- 
portant that the church should rapidly extend itself, those who confessed 
their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, (among the Jews,) or their belief 
in one God, and in Jesus as the Messiah, (among the Gentiles,) were 
immediately baptized, as appears from the New Testament. Gradually 
it came to be thought necessary, that those who wished to be receivec 
into the Christian church, should be subjected to a more careful pre 
paratory instruction, and to a stricter examination.! This whole class 
were denominated κατηχούμενοι, ἀκροαταί, auditores or audientes. By these 
appellations they were designated as those who were receiving their 
first instruction in Christianity, and who could only be permitted to 
hear the reading of the scriptures and the preaching of the word. The 
period of probation must have been determined by the different condi- 
tions of individuals; yet the Council of Elvira decided generally on a 
period of two years. Originally there was but one common name for 
all who had not as yet received baptism, but were in the state of pro- 
bation and preparation. But as different stages and gradations were 
here distinguished, these were also designated by particular names. 
Accordingly in Origen we find these catechumens distinctly separated 
into two divisions. 1. Those who were for the first time receiving pri- 
vate instruction, and 2. Those who were admitted to the meetings of 
the church, and who were immediately prepared for baptism.? 


1 The assertion advanced by Dr. Rothe, had been taught, and bind themselves to 


in his interesting tract, (De discipline ar- 
cani, que dicitur, in ecclesia Christiana ori- 
gine. Heidelberg, 1841,) that the instruc- 
tion and examination of catechumens re- 
lated in the first place to matters of practice 
only, and that an important change took 
place when, at a later period, the instruction 
and examination was directed to matters of 
theory, —this assertion I cannot think es- 
tablished on good and sufficient grounds. 
Both were, from the beginning, united to- 
gether, as Christianity required. This is 
clear also from the passage in the greater 
Apology of Justin Martyr, § 61, where he 
says of those who are preparing themselves 
for baptism: Ὅσοι ἂν πεισϑῶσι καὶ πιστεύ- 
wow ἀληϑῆ ταῦτα τὰ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν διδασκόμενα 
καὶ λεγόμενα εἶναι καὶ βιοῦν οὕτως δύνασ- 
Yat ὑπισχνῶνται. Here instruction in doc- 
trine is assuredly presupposed, and the cor- 
responding conduct of the life derived from 
it, and both supposed to be so united with 
each other, that those who wished to re- 
ceive baptism should declare themselves 
convinced of the truth of the doctrines they 
* 


rule their lives by them, — the same method 
of uniting doctrine and practice which must 
prevail at all periods in the instruction of 
catechumens. It is beyond my power to 
conceive what conclusion can be drawn 
from the words of Celsus, ]. III. ο. 50, with 
regard to the instruction of catechumens ; 
for these words are totally foreign to the 
subject, having reference simply to the 
mode which the Christians adopted of seek- 
ing first to gain access to the uneducated, 
to slaves and youth, and bring them over to 
Christianity. Neither has the relation of 
Clement’s two works (the Pedagogue and 
the Stromata) to each other, any thing to 
do with the present subject; it answers to 
the relation of the πίστις to the γνώσις, 
among the Alexandrians; and the Gnosis 
assuredly could not be taught to catechu- 
mens. Instruction in the fundamental doc- 
trines of Christianity is quite another thing. 

2 Origen, c. Cels, 1. III. ¢. 51, says that to - 
those who wished to embrace Christianity, 
private instruction was first imparted, (by 
this circumstance he explains their name, 


306 APOSTOLIC CREED. 

For the private instruction of these catechumens, a distinct office 
was instituted in the church. At Carthage the duty was devolved, 
after a period of probation, on some individual who had distinguished 
himself among the church readers. At Alexandria, where it often 
happened that men of education, even the learned, and those habitu- 
ated to philosophical reflection, applied to receive instruction in Chris- 
tianity, 1t was necessary that the catechists should be men of liberal 
education, qualified to meet the objections and doubts of pagans, and 
to follow them on their own position. Able and learned laymen were 
therefore selected here; and this class of catechists led afterwards to 
the formation of an important theological school among the Christians. 

Some traces of a confession of faith, which was made at baptism, 
are to be found even in the New Testament.2 Such confessions of 
faith were afterwards more fully drawn out, in opposition to Jews, to 
pagans and to heretics. These confessions were intended to embrace 
those essentials of Christianity, wherein all the churehes were agreed. 
It was believed that the doctrine expressed in these confessions of faith 
proceeded from the apostles; that it was the doctrine which they 
preached in living words and in their writings; but it was by no means 
the opinion in the beginning, that the apostles had drawn up any such 
confession in words. In this sense it was called the κήρυγμα ἀποστολικόν, 
the παράδοσις ἀποστολικῆ ; the misconception of this phraseology after- 
wards gave birth to the fiction, that the apostles had verbally composed 
such a confession.? This formula of confession was then designated by 
the distinctive term of Symbolum. It may be a question, whether, in 
this use of the word Symbolum, the allusion was to its general meaning 
of ‘‘a sign,” in the sense that the words of the confession were a 
characteristic, representative sign of the faith, or whether a particular 
application of this meaning was intended, having reference to the 
σύμβολον στρατιωτικόν, the tessera militaris: so that the confession was, as 
it were, the watchword of the miles Christi, communicated to every 
one on his admission into the militia Christi. So far as we can trace 
the history of the phrase, the first seems to be the more probable sup- 
position ; for where the word Symbolum first occurs in connection with 
baptism, it has only that general signification.+* 


ἀκροαταί.) For when they had sufficiently 
held to their purpose of leading a Christian 
life, they would be introduced into the com- 
munity ; τοτηνικάδε αὐτοὺς εἰσαγούσιν, ἰδίᾳ 
μὲν ποιήσαντες τάγμα τῶν ἄρτι ἀρχομένων 
καὶ εἰσαγομένων καὶ οὐδέπω τὸ σύμβολον 
τοῦ ἀποκεκαϑάρϑαι ἀνειληφότων. The last 
distinction shows evidently that these should 
be distinguished from the baptized, who are 
afterwards spoken of. It was only the 
moral oversight to be extended to the bap- 
tized members of the congregation, which 
forms the subject of discourse afterwards. 
And so Origen describes, not three, but two 
classes of catechumens. 

1 More on this whole subject hereafter, in 
the section relating to the Alexandrian 
school. 


2See 1 Pet. 3: 21.—1 Tim. 6: 12, is 
not so clear, as this might refer to a profes- 
sion voluntarily made by Timothy, from 
the impulse of his own feelings, on a spe- 
cial occasion, when he was chosen and con- 
secrated as a missionary to the heathen. 

8 Rufin. exposit. symbol. apostol. 

4 As, for example, where Tertullian, de 
peenitentia, c. 6, says, that baptism, which 
by its nature should be a symbolum vite, 
becomes to those who receive it without the 
right disposition, a symbolum mortis. So 
in his work, contr. Marcion. 1. V. ὁ. 1, sym- 
bolum is used by him as equivalent to 
mark, sign, generally. So in the letter of 
Firmilianus of Caesarea, where the “sym- 
bolum trinitatis” is expressly distinguished 
from the confession of faith, and employed 


ITS MEANING AND DESIGN. 807 

The very significant word σύμβολον, symbolum, would now give occa- 
sion to many different religious allusions; the one that soon became 
predominant was that which fixed on the favorite comparison among the 
early Christians of their vocation to a military service (militia.) In 
the Alexandrian church, on the other hand, where a taste prevailed for 
tracing analogies with the pagan mysteries, and sometimes, indeed, in 
a way but little suited to the simple character of the gospel, the term 
was compared to the watch-word of the initiated. Others fixed on 
another meaning of the word “ Symbolum,”’ namely, a commercial com- 
pact; as if the pledge of a spiritual fellowship was the thing designed 
to be represented.? Again, the fable recorded by Rufinus,? which 
ascribed the authorship of a confession of faith to the apostles, gave 
currency afterwards to the notion, that this confession had been formed 
by contributions from each of the apostles; and so the meaning of the 
word σύμβολον, συμβολῆ, a contribution, was applied in the present case to 
denote a confession which had grown out of the contributions of the 
several apostles. ὁ 

This confession was put into the hands of the catechumens as a doc- 
ument which contained the essentials of Christianity. Many who had 
been led to embrace the faith after much inquiry, after consulting dif- 
ferent religious writings and reading the scriptures for themselves, of 
course did not need it to keep them in the knowledge of Christianity. 
It could only serve in their case as a means of convincing them, that 
the church with which they wished to become connected, agreed in 
doctrine with the holy scriptures from which they had already derived 
their faith. Thus Clement of Alexandria invites the heathen to con- 
vince themselves what the true Christian doctrine is, by searching the 
scriptures, where it was to be found, if they would but apply their 
mental powers to distinguish the true from the plausible, the doctrme 
really derived from the scriptures from that which merely attached 
itself to them in appearance. 

_ Others, however, obtained their first knowledge of Christianity from 
the instruction contained in the confession of faith and imparted in 
connection with it, without finding themselves in a situation, till some- 
time afterwards, of comparing with the scriptures what they had thus 
received from human tradition. It was of these, the Gnostic Heracleon 
remarked :° “They are led first to believe on the Saviour by the testi- 


as a designation of the formula of baptism, 
(Baptismus) cui nec symbolum trinitatis 
nec interrogatio legitima et ecclesiastica 
defuit. Again, ep. 76, Cyprian, ad Mag- 
num: “eodem symbolo baptizare,” to bap- 
tize with the same formula. Perhaps this 
word was originally nothing more than a 
designation of the formula of baptism, and 
became subsequently transferred to the con- 
fession of faith. 

~1Stromat. |. V. f. 582. The λοῦτρον com- 
pared with the καϑαρσίοις of the pagan 
mysteries. In the designation “ φωτισμός," 
borrowed from the New Testament, we can 
find, however, no reference to the myste- 


ries; for this is assuredly a designation bor- 
rowed from the New Testament. 

2 Augustin, sermo, 212: Symbolum inter 
se faciunt mercatores, quo eorum societas 
pacto fidei teneatur; et vestra societas est. 
commercium spiritualium. 

3 In his expositio in symbolum aposto- 
lorum. 

4 Stromat. 1. VIL. f. 754 et 55° Δὲ αὐτῶν 
TOV γραφῶν ἐκμανϑώνειν ἀποδεικτικῶς. ---’ 
Διακρίνειν τε τῇ καταληπτικῇ ϑεωρίᾳ, (com- 
prehending intuition,) καὶ τῷ κυριωτώτῳ 
λογισμῷ, (right thinking,) τὸ ἀληϑὲς ἀπὸ 
τοῦ φαινομένου. 

5 Orig. Tom. XIII. in Joann. § 52. 


308 ORAL TRADITION OF THE CREED. 
mony of men; but when they come to his own words, they believe no 
longer on the ground of human testimony alone, but for the sake of the 
truth itself; ’’? and in reference to the same class, Clement of Alexan- 
dria says:1 “ The first saving change from heathenism is faith, that is, 
a compendious knowledge of all that is necessary to salvation. On this 
foundation is built the Gnosis, which is a solid demonstration, derived 
from the doctrine of our Lord, of that which has been received by 
faith.’’ Others, who were wholly uneducated, and unable to read any 
writing, could only learn from the mouth of others, and never come 
themselves to the fountain of God’s word; but still the divine doctrine, 
which they imbibed from the lips of others, proved itself independently 
a divine power in their hearts. Where the word but once found ad- 
mission, an independent Christian consciousness was capable of being 
thereby awakened. ‘‘ Many of us,” says Clement of Alexandria, “have 
received the divine doctrine, without the use of writings, in the power 
of God through faith.” 2 

The few words of this confession of faith needed not, of course, to be 
communicated in writing. They were to pass into the heart of the 
catechumen ; to pass from the living word into ‘his life; to be expressed 
by him as the deep conviction of his heart. Was it wished to attach 
to this custom, which arose so naturally, of orally communicating the 
confession of faith, some higher meaning? ‘The interpretation most 
readily presenting itself was, that the Christian doctrine should not 
come to men from without, through the medium of letters, but should 
be written in their hearts by the Spirit of God, and propagate itself 
there as a living principle. Jer. 31: 83.3 In later times a disposition 
to dip into mysteries quite alien from the spirit of the simple gospel, 
which disposition had first found entrance into the Alexandrian church 
from her leaning to an accommodation with the pagan mysteries and 
from the influence of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, gave to this custom 
the meaning, that the most sacred things ought not be entrusted to 
writing, lest they should be produced among the uninitiated, and there- 
by become profaned : *— while yet the scriptures, the holiest tradition 
of the divine, might come into the hands of every heathen; while the 
apologists felt no scruples in presenting before the heathen the inmost 
mysteries of Christian doctrine ! 

This confession of faith was made by the catechumens at baptism, in 
answers to distinct questions.® 


1 Stromat. |. WIT. f. 732, Lit. D. 

2 Stromat. 1. I. f. 319: Of δὲ καὶ ἄνευ 
γραμμάτων δυνάμει τὸν περὶ ϑεοῦ διὰ πίσ- 
τεως παρειλήφαμεν λόγον. 

8 50 Augustin, Sermo 212: Hujus rei 
significand causa, audiendo symbolum dis- 
citur, nee in tabulis vel in aliqua materia, 
sed in corde scribitur. 

4 The like play and parade about myste- 
ries, to which more importance came to be 
attached than they originally possessed, af- 
terwards led to the invention of the obscure, 
vague and unhistorical idea of a disciplina 
arcani, of which, from its very vagueness 


and want of foundation, men could make 
whatever they pleased. 

5 According to the most natural interpre- 
tation, | Pet. 3: 21, has reference already 
to the question proposed at baptism. “Ezre- 
ρώτημα, metonymice for the pledge in an- 
swer to the questions. Tertullian, de coro- 
na milit. c. 3: Amplius aliquid respondentes, 
quam Dominus in evangelio determinayit. 
Again, Tertullian, de resurrect. c. 48, respect- 
ing baptism: Anima responsione sancitur. 
The council of eighty-seven Bishops in the 
time of Cyprian, respecting these questions : 
“ Sacramentnm interrogare,” (sacramentum 


FORM OF RENUNCIATION. 309 

With the oral confession of faith was also connected the avowal of a 
moral engagement. The transaction was looked upon in the following 
light: the candidate for baptism separated himself from the kingdom 
of sin, of darkness, of Satan, which, as a heathen devoted to his lusts, 
he had hitherto served, and came over to the kingdom of God and of 
Christ. He was now, therefore, solemnly to renounce all fellowship 
with that kingdom of which he had before been a subject. Giving his 
hand to the bishop, he solemnly declared,’ that he renounced the devil 
and all his pomps,— meaning particularly by these the pagan shows 
and things of the like nature — and his angels — an expression proba- 
bly based on the notion, that the heathen gods were evil spirits, who 
had seduced mankind.? In accordance with the favorite comparison 
already alluded to, this pledge was regarded as the Christian’s military 
oath, the sacramentum militiz christians, whereby he bound himself to 
live and fight as a miles Dei et Christi. 

This form of renunciation, which we meet with in the second cen- 
tury, should be distinguished from the exorcism, which could not have 
sprung so early out of the prevailing mode of ‘thinking in Christian 
antiquity. It is true, the idea of a deliverance from the dominion of 
the evil spirit in a moral and spiritual respect, of a separation from 
the kingdom of evil, and of a communication by the new birth of a 
divine life, which should be victorious over the principle of evil, is 
to be reckoned among the number of original and essential Christian 
ideas; but the whole act of baptism was to be im truth precise- 
ly a representation of this idea; there was no need, therefore, that 
any separate act should still be added to denote or to effectuate that 
which the whole act of baptism was intended to denote, and to the be- 
liever truly and effectually to represent. The case was different with 
the form of renunciation. ‘This, like the confession of faith, had refer- 
ence to what the candidate was bound, on his part, to do, in order to 
enjoy the benefit of baptism. As in Christianity faith and life are 
closely conjoined, so the renunciation accompanied the confession. 
Hence we find in the second century no trace as yet of any such form 
of exorcism against the evil spirit. But the tendency to confound the 
inward with the outward, the inclination to the magical, the fondness 
for pomp and display, caused that those forms of exorcism which had 
been employed in the case of the energumens or demoniacally possessed, 
should be introduced in the baptism of all heathens. Perhaps the fact 
also had some connection with this change, that exorcism, which in ear- 
lier times was a free charisma, had become generally transformed into 
a lifeless mechanical act, attached to a distinct office in the church. 
In the apostolic constitutions, we find neither the one nor the other. 
The first unequivocal trace of exorcism in baptism is found in the acts 


is here equivalent to doctrina sacra.) In a 
letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, cited in 
Eusebius, 1. VII. c. 9: ᾿Επερωτῆσεις καὶ 
ὑποκρίσεις. Cyprian, ep. 76, ad Magnum, 
cites one of these questions: Credis remis- 
sionem peccatorum et vitam sternam per 
sanctam ecclesiam ? 


1 According to Tertullian, de corona 
milit. c. 3,— twice, — first, before he went 
to baptism, perhaps on his first admission to 
the church assemblies, next at baptism it- 
self. 

2’ Αποτάσσεσϑαι τῷ διαβόλῳ καὶ TH πομπῇ 
καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις αὐτοῦ. 


310 BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 
of the council of eighty-five or eighty-seven bishops, which convened at 
Carthage in the year 256.1 

In respect to the form of baptism, it was in conformity with the 
original institution and the original import of the symbol, performed: by 
immersion, as a sign of entire baptism into the Holy Spirit, of‘being en- 
tirely penetrated by the same.” It was only with the sick, where the 
exigency required it, that any exception was made; and in this case 
baptism was administered by sprinkling. Many superstitious persons,? 
clinging to the outward form, imagined that such baptism by sprinkling 
was not fully valid; and hence they distinguished those who had been 
so baptized by denominating them the clinici. The bishop Cyprian ex- 
pressed himself strongly against this delusion.’ ‘ It is otherwise,” — he 
says, —‘‘ the breast of the believer is washed, the soul of man is cleansed 
by the merits of faith. In the sacraments of salvation, where necessity 
compels and God gives permission, the divine thing, though outwardly 
abridged, bestows all that it implies on the faithful.® Or if any one 
supposes that they have obtained nothing because they have been mere- 
ly sprinkled with the water of salvation, they must not be so deceived 
themselves, as to think that they ought therefore to be baptized over 
again, in case they recover from their sickness. But if those who have 
once been consecrated by the baptism of the church, cannot again be 
baptized, why fill them with perplexity in regard to their faith and the 
grace of the Lord? Or is it admitted that they have indeed become 
sharers of the grace of the Lord, but in a smaller measure of the divine 
largess and of the Holy Spirit, so that they must be considered as 


Christians indeed, but yet not placed on the same level with the rest? - 


No; the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but poured out in full 
on the faithful. For if the day breaks alike on all, and if the sun pours 
his light on all in equal measure, how much more shall Christ, the true 
sun and the true day in his church, distribute the light of eternal life 
with unstinted equality !”’ : 

The formula of baptism, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, which is cited as the traditional one by Justin Martyr, is per- 
haps not the oldest; but the older is perhaps the shorter formula which 
refers only to Christ, to which there is allusion in the New Testament, 
which Marcion also insists on in his attempt to bring about a restoration 
of the original gospel, and which, amid the disputes concerning the bap- 
tism of heretics, still received special recognition. At all events, this 


1 The North African bishop, Cecilius, of 
Bilta, goes on the supposition by his vote 
in this case, that exorcism belonged essen- 
tially to the whole act of baptism. So too 
the votum of the fanatical Vincentius a 
Thibari, that the manuum impositio in ex- 
orcismo must precede the baptism of here- 
tics. But from the 76th letter of Cyprian 
ad Magnum, the presence of exorcism in 
baptism generally cannot be proved; he is 
speaking there simply of exorcism in the 
case of energumens, and it is rather Cy- 
prian’s object to show that baptism is far 


mightier than exorcism. Spiritus nequam 
ultra remanere non possunt in hominis cor- 
pore, in quo baptizato et sanctificato incipit 
spiritus sanctus habitare. 

2 See my Hist. of the Planting, ete., Vol. 
i; Ὕ 222. 

See above, p. 238. 

4 Ep. 76 ad Magnum. 

5 The passage rendered here according 
to the sense, to make it intelligible: “ To- 
tum credentibus conferunt divina compen- 
dia.” 





᾿ς 


INFANT BAPTISM. 311 
shorter formula contains within it, as must be allowed, all that which in 
the longer one is but more fully analyzed and unfolded.? 

_ Baptism was administered at first only to adults, as men were accus- 
tomed to conceive baptism and faith as strictly connected. We have 
all reason for not deriving infant baptism from apostolic institution,? and 
the recognition of it which followed somewhat later, as an apostolical 
tradition, serves to confirm this hypothesis. Irenzeus is the first church 
teacher in whom we find any allusion to infant baptism, and in his mode 
of expressing himself on the subject, he leads us at the same time’ to 
recognize its connection with the essence of the Christian consciousness ; 
he testifies of the profound Christian idea, out of which infant baptism 
arose, and which procured for it at length universal recognition. Ire- 
neeus is wishing to show that Christ did not interrupt the progressive 
development of that human nature, which was to be sanctified by him, 
but sanctified it in accordance with its natural course of development, 
and in all its several stages. ‘‘ He came to redeem all by himself; all 
who, through him, are regenerated to God; infants, little children, 
boys, young men and old. Hence he passed through every age, and 
for the infants he became an infant, sanctifying the infants ;— among 
the little children he became a little child, sanctifying those who be- 
long to this age, and at the same time presenting to them an example 
of piety, of well-doing and of obedience ; among the young men, he be- 
came a young man, that he might set them an example and sanctify 
them to the Lord.’’® It is here especially important to observe, that 
infants (infantes) are expressly distinguished from children, (parvulis, ) 
whom Christ could also benefit by his example; and that they are rep- 
resented as capable of receiving from Christ, who had appeared in their 
age, nothing more than an objective sanctification. This sanctification 
becomes theirs, in so far as they are regenerated by Christ to God. 
Regeneration and baptism are im Irenzeus intimately connected ; and it is 


difficult to conceive how the term regeneration can be employed, in refer- 


ence to this age, to denote anything else than baptism. Infant baptism, 
then, appears here as the medium, through which the principle of sanc- 
tification, imparted by Christ to human nature from its earliest develop- 
ment, became appropriated to children. It is the idea of infant bap- 
tism, that Christ, through the divine life which he imparted to and 
revealed in human nature, sanctified that nature from the germ of its 
earliest development. The child born in a Christian family was, when 
all things were as they should be, to have this advantage above others, 
that he did not first come to Christianity out of heathenism, or the 
sinful nature-life, but from the first dawning of consciousness, unfolded 
his powers under the imperceptible preventing influences of a sanctify- 


1See my History of the Planting, etc., 
Vol. I. p. 222. 

2 The same, p. 224, ff. 

3 Trenzus, |. II. c. 22,§ 4: Omnes enim 
per semetipsum venit salvare: omnes, in- 
quam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, 
infantes et parvulos et pueros et juvenes et 
seniores. Ideo per omnem venit xtatem, 


et infantibus infans factus, sanctificans in- 
fantes; in parvulis, parvulus, sanctificans 
hance ipsam habentes zxtatem, simul et ex- 
emplum illis pietatis effectus, et justitiz et 
subjectionis; in juvenibus, juvenis, exem- 
plum juvenibus fiens et sanctificans Dom- 
1no: 


312 INFANT BAPTISM. 

ing, ennobling religion; that with the earliest germination of the natu- 
ral self-conscious life, another divine principle of life, transforming the 
nature, should be brought nigh to him, ere yet the ungodly principle 
could come into full activity; and the latter should at once find here 
its powerful counterpoise. In such a life, the new birth was not to 
constitute a new crisis, beginning at some definable moment, but it was 
to begin imperceptibly, and so proceed through the whole life. Hence 
baptism, the visible sign of regeneration, was to be given to the child 
atthe very outset ; the child was to be consecrated to the Redeemer 
from the beginning of its life. From this idea, founded on what is in- 
most in Christianity, becoming predominant in the feelings of Christians, 
resulted the practice of infant baptism. 

But immediately after Irenzeus,! in the last years of the second cen- 
tury, Tertullian appears as a zealous opponent of infant baptism; a 
proof that the practice had not as yet come to be regarded as an apos- 
tolical institution; for otherwise, he would hardly have ventured to ex- 
press himself so strongly against it. We perceive from his argument 
against infant baptism, that its advocates already appealed to Matth. 
19: 14, a passage which it would be natural for every one to apply in 
this manner. ‘‘ Our Lord rebuked not the little children, but commanded 
them to be brought to him that he might bless them.” Tertullian ad- 
vises, that in consideration of the great importance of the transaction, 
and of the preparation necessary to be made for it on the part of the 
recipients, baptism, as a general thing, should rather be delayed than 
prematurely applied, and he takes this occasion to declare himself par- 
ticularly opposed to haste in the baptism of children.? In answer to 
the objection drawn from those words of Christ, he replies: — ‘ Let 
them come, while they are growing up; let them come while they are 
learning, while they are being taught to what it is they are coming ; 
let them become Christians, when they are susceptible of the knowledge 
of Christ. What haste, to procure the forgiveness of sins for the age 
of innocence! We show more prudence in the management of our 
worldly concerns, than we do in entrusting the divine treasure to those 
who cannot be entrusted with earthly property. Let them first learn 
to feel their need of salvation; so it may appear that we have given to 
those that wanted.’”’ Tertullian evidently means, that children should 
be led to Christ by instructing them in Christianity; but that they 
should not receive baptism, until, after having been sufficiently instruct- 
ed, they are led from personal conviction and by their own free choice, 
to seek for it with sincere longing of the heart. It may be said, indeed, 
that he is only speaking of the course to be followed according to the 


general rule; whenever there was momentary danger of death, bap- 
᾿ 


110 has been attempted to prove the 
practice of infant baptism from the passage 
already cited from Clement of Alexandria, 
Peedagog. lib. II. f. 247: “ τῶν ἐξ ὕδατος 
ἀνασπωμένων παιδίων," which, beyond ques- 
tion, refers to baptism ; but this can hardly 
be considered a valid proof; for as the idea 
of the ϑεῖος παιδαγωγός was floating before 


Clement’s mind, he could denominate all 
Christians παιδία. Beyond doubt, the writer 
is speaking in this passage directly of con- 
version and regeneration, in reference to all 
men. 

2 De baptismo, ο. 18: Cunctatio baptismi 
utilior est, preecipue tamen circa parvulos. 


INFANT BAPTISM. 313 


tism might be administered, even according to his views. But if he 
had considered this to be so necessary, he could not have failed to 
mention it expressly. It seems, in fact, according to the principles 
laid down by him, that he could not conceive of any efficacy whatever 
residing in baptism, without the conscious participation and individual 
faith of the person baptized; nor could he see any danger accruing to 
the age of innocence from delaying it; although this view of the mat- 
ter was not logically consistent with his own system. 

But when, now, on the one hand, the doctrine of the corruption 
and guilt, cleaving to human nature in consequence of the first trans- 
gression, was reduced to a more precise and systematic form, and on 
the other, from the want of duly distinguishmg between what is out- 
ward and what is inward in baptism, (the baptism by water and the 
baptism by the Spirit,) the error became more firmly established that 
without external baptism no one could be delivered from that inherent 
guilt, could be saved from the everlasting punishment that threatened 
him, or raised to eternal life; and when the notion of a magical influ- 
ence, a charm connected with the sacraments continually gained ground, 
the theory was finally evolved of the unconditional necessity of infant 
baptism. About the middle of the third century, this theory was 
already generally admitted in the North African church. The only 
question that remained was, whether the child ought to be baptized im- 
mediately after its birth, or not till eight days after, as in the case of 
the rite of circumcision. The latter was the opinion of the bishop 
Fidus, who proposed the question to a council convened at Carthage. 
Cyprian answered it, in the year 252, in the name of sixty-six bishops.1 
His answer evinces how full he was of that great Christian idea which 
has just been unfolded, and out of which the practice of infant baptism 
proceeded. But embarrassed by his habit of confounding the inward 
with the outward, by his materialism, he mingled with it much that is 
erroneous. He declares himself against the arbitrary limitation of 
Fidus. ‘None of us could agree to your opinion. On the contrary, 
it is the opinion of us all, that the mercy and grace of God must be 
refused to no human being, so soon as he is born; for since our Lord 
says in his gospel, ‘The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s 
souls, but to save them,’ Luke 9: 50, so everything that lies in our 
power must be done that no soul may be lost. As God has no respect 
of persons, so too he has no respect of age, offering himself as a Father 
with equal freeness to all, that they may be enabled to obtain the 
heavenly grace. As to what you say, that the child in the first days 
of its birth is not clean to the touch, and that each of us would shrink 
from kissing such an object, even this, in our opinion, ought to present 
no obstacle to the bestowment of the heavenly grace ; for it is written, 
‘to the pure all things are pure;’ and none of us ought to revolt at 
that which God has condescended to create. Although the child be 
but just born, yet it is no such object that any one ought to demur at 
kissing it to impart the divine grace and the salutation of peace, (i. e. 


1 Ep. 59. 
VOL. I. 27 


314 INFANT BAPTISM. SPONSORS. 

the brotherly kiss, which was given to persons newly baptized, as the 
sign of the fellowship of peace in the Lord,) since each of us must be 
led, by his own religious sensibility, to thmk upon the creative hands 
of God, fresh from the completion of their work, which we kiss in the 
newly formed man-when we take in our arms what God has made. As 
to the rest, if anything could prove a hindrance to men in the attain- 
ment of grace, much rather might those be hindered whose maturer 
years have involved them in heavy sins. But if even the chief of 
sinners, who have been exceedingly guilty before God, receive the for- 
giveness of sins on coming to the faith, and no one is precluded from 
baptism and from grace, how much less should the child be kept back, 
which, as it is but just born, cannot have sinned, but has only 
brought with it, by its descent from Adam, the infection of the old 
death ; and which may the more easily obtain the remission of sins, 
because the sins which are forgiven it, are not its own, but those of 
another.” 

In the Alexandrian church also, which, in respect to its whole theo- 
logical and dogmatic direction of mind was so essentially distinguished 
from the church of North Africa, we find‘ prevailing, even at a some- 
what earlier period, the doctrine of the necessity of infant baptism. 
Origen, in whose system infant baptism could readily find its place, 
though not in the same connection as in the system of the North Afri- 
can church, declares it to be an apostolical tradition ;? an expression, 
by the way, which cannot be regarded as of much weight in this age, 
when the inclination was so strong to trace every institution which was 
considered of special importance, to the apostles; and when so many 
walls of separation, hindermg the freedom of prospect, had already 
been set up between this and the apostolic age. Also in the Persian 
church, infant baptism was, in the course of the third century, so gen- 
erally recognized that the sect founder Mani thought he could draw an 
argument from it in favor of a doctrine which seemed to him necessa- 
rily presupposed by this application of the rite. 

But if the necessity of infant baptism was acknowledged in theory, 
it was still far from being uniformly recognized im practice. Nor was 
it always from the purest motives that men were induced to put off 
their baptism. Precisely the same false notion of baptism as an opus 
operatum, which had moved some to consider the baptism of infants so 
unconditionally necessary, led many others, who mistook indeed, in a 
far grosser and more dangerous manner, the nature of this rite, to de- 
lay their baptism, that they might, in the meantime, the more freely 
abandon themselves to their lusts, and yet, cleansed in the hour of death 
by the magical annihilation of their sins, be able to pass without hind- 
rance into eternal life. We have already noticed the pious indignation 


1 Namely, in its relation to his theory, 
that human souls are fallen heavenly essen- 
ces, and are to be cleansed from a guilt 
which they brought with them ; see below. 

2 This, ea age in the fifth book of his 
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 


according to the Latin translation of Rufi- 
nus. In Origen’s time, too, difficulties were 
still frequently urged against infant baptism, 
similar to those thrown out by Tertullian. 
Comp. his Homil. XIV. in Lucam, (accord- 
ing to the translation of Jerome.) 


IMPOSITION OF HANDS IN BAPTISM. 315 
and force with which Tertullian, who was otherwise opposed to haste in 
baptism, combatted this error. 

‘Infant baptism, also, furnished probably the first occasion for the ap- 
pointment of sponsors or god-fathers; for as this was a case in which 
the persons baptized could not themselves declare their confession of 
faith and the required renunciation, it became necessary for others to 
do it in their name; and these at the same time engaged to take care 
that the children should be rightly instructed in Christianity, and 
trained up in a life corresponding to the vows given at baptism ; hence 
they were called sponsors, (sponsores.) Tertullian adds it to his other 
arguments against infant baptism, that these sponsors were obliged to 
assume an obligation which they might be prevented from fulfilling, 
either by their own death, or by the untoward conduct of the child.t 

With the act of baptism, several symbolical customs were united, 
which flowed from the idea of this transaction, and in which this idea 
was to be represented to the senses. Thus it came about that, as the 
participation of the universal priesthood of all the faithful was consid- 
ered as necessarily united with the mtroduction to the fellowship of 
Christians, so the symbol of priestly consecration was made to follow 
the act of baptism. As, in the Old Testament, anointing was the sign 
of consecration to the priestly office ; so oil, which had been blessed 
expressly for this purpose, was applied to the newly baptized, as a sign 
of consecration to this spiritual priesthood. We first meet with this 
custom in Tertullian, and in Cyprian it appears already to constitute 
an essential part of the rite of baptism.? The imposition of hands ac- 
companied by prayer, with which the act of baptism was concluded, is 
beyond doubt a still older custom. ‘The sign of the imposition of hands 
(ἐπίϑεσις τῶν χειρῶν, χειροϑεσία, 12°22) was the common token of religious 
consecration, borrowed from the Jews, and employed on various occa- 
sions, either to denote consecration to the Christian calling in general, 
or to the particular branches of it. The apostles, or presiding officers 
of the church, laying their hands on the head of the baptized individ- 
ual, called upon the Lord to bestow his blessing on the holy transaction 
now completed, to cause to be fulfilled in him whatever was implied in 
it, to consecrate him with his Spirit for the Christian calling, and to 
pour out his Spirit upon him. ‘This closing rite was inseparably con- 
nected with the whole act of baptism. All, indeed, had reference here 
to the same principal thing, without which no one could be a Chris- 
tian,— the birth to a new life from God, the baptism of the Spirit, 


1 De baptismo, c. 18: Quid enim necesse 
est, sponsores etiam periculo ingeri? quia 
et ipsi per mortalitatem destituere promis- 
siones suas possunt, et proventu malz indo- 
lis falli. 

2L.c.c. 7: Egressi de lavacro, perungui- 
mur benedicta unctione, de pristina disci- 
plina, qua ungui oleo de cornu in sacerdo- 
tium solebant. Adv. Marcion, 1]. I. c. 14; 
de res. carn.c. 8. Yet in the book de coro- 
na milit. c. 3, where he describes the usages 
in baptism which were derived not from 


Scripture, but from ecclesiastical tradition, 
he makes no mention of this unction. Cy- 
prian, ep. 70, in the name of an ecclesiasti- 
cal assembly: Ungi quoque necesse est 
eum qui baptizatus sit, ut, accepto chrismate, 
esse unctus Dei et habere in se gratiam 
Christi possit; (the next following words, 
respecting the sacrament of the supper, are 
manifestly a gloss, disturbing the sense, and 
occasioned by the subsequent mention of 
the supper,) unde baptizati unguuntur olco 
in altari sanctificato. 


316 BAPTISM. CONFIRMATION. 

which was symbolically represented by the baptism of water. Tertul- 
lian still considers this transaction and baptism as one whole, belonging 
together; although he distinguishes in it the two separate moments, 
the negative and the positive, the forgiveness of sin and cleansing from 
sin which was mediated by baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, and the importation of the Holy Spirit following thereupon, 
upon the individual now restored to the original state of innocence, to 
which importation the imposition of hands refers.4 . 

But now, since the idea had sprung up of a spiritual character be- 
longing exclusively to the bishops, or successors of the apostles, and com- 
municated to them by ordination; on which character the propagation 
of the Holy Spirit in the church was dependent; it was considered as 
their prerogative to seal, by this consecration of the imposition of hands, 
the whole act of baptism; (hence this rite was called signaculum, 
σφραγίς.) It was supposed that a good and valid reason for this rite 
could be drawn from the fact that the Samaritans, baptized by a dea- 
con, were first endowed with spiritual gifts by the imposition of the 
hands of the apostles, which was added afterwards, (Acts 19,7) as this 
passage was then understood. So now the ‘presbyters, and in case of 
necessity, even the deacons, were empowered to baptize, but the bish- 
ops only were authorized to consummate that second holy act. This 
notion had been formed so early as the middle of the third century. 
The bishops were under the necessity, therefore, of occasionally going 
through their dioceses, in order to administer to those who had been 
baptized by their subordinates, the country presbyters, the rite which 
was afterwards denominated confirmation. In ordinary cases, where 
the bishop himself administered the baptism, both were still united 
together as one whole, and thus constituted the complete act of bap- 
tism.® 

After all this had been performed, in many of the churches, in those 
for instance of North Africa and of Alexandria, there was given to 
the person newly baptized a mixture of milk and honey, as a symbol of 
filiation into the new life, and as a spiritual application of the promise 


1De baptismo, c. 8: Dehinc manus im- 
ponitur per benedictionem, advocans et in- 
vitans Spiritum sanctum. He names to- 
gether, de res carn. c. 8, in connection with 
baptism, all the three things which after- 
‘wards, separated from it and combined 
together in one whole, constituted in the 
Roman church, the sacrament of confirma- 
tion: the unction, conveying with it the con- 
secration of the soul; the signing with the 
cross, conveying with it protection from evil ; 
the imposition of hands, the illuminatio spi- 
ritus. 

2 See on this subject, my History of the 
Planting, ete., Vol. 1. p. 82, ff. 

8 Cyprian speaks of a sacramentum du- 
plex, water baptism, and spiritual baptism, 
represented by the imposition of hands, 
(sacramento utroque nasci,) yet both unit- 
ed in the church act of baptism, ep. 72, ad 


Jubajanum, and ep. 72, ad Stephan. We 
must not lose sight here of the unsettled 
meaning affixed to the word sacramentum, 
according to which it signified any sacred 
thing, sacred doctrine, sacred sign. After 
citing the example of Philip and the apos- 
tles, he says: Quod nunc quoque apud nos 
geritur, ut, qui in ecclesia baptizantur, pree- 
positis ecclesiz offerantur, et per nostram 
orationem ac manus impositionem spiritum 
sanctum consequantur et signaculo domini- 
co consummentur. The same notion occurs 
in the contemporary work, as is most prob- 
able, de rebaptismate; this act is here de- 
nominated baptisma spiritale, Cornelius, 
in Euseb. 1. VI. ¢. 48, asks respecting one 
who may not have received this confirma- 
tion of the bishop: “ How could he without 
this become partaker of the Holy Spirit ?” 


CONTROVERSIES ABOUT BAPTISM. | 317 
concerning the land flowing with milk and honey, to that heavenly 
country, with all its blessed privileges, to which the baptized belonged.} 
He was then received into the church by the first kiss of Christian 
brotherhood, the salutation of peace, of that peace with God which he 
now participated in common with all Christians ;* and from henceforth 
he had the right of saluting all Christians with this fraternal sign. But 
Clement of Alexandria already had to complain that this brotherly kiss, 
originally a natural expression of Christian feeling, was become an opus 
operatum, a thing of conscious display, by which the suspicion of the 
heathens was excited.? His objection to it is, that love evinces itself* 
not in the brotherly kiss, but in the disposition of the heart.‘ 

Before taking leave of this subject we must touch on a controverted 
question, which, in the second half of the third century, created no small 
agitation. It was the question, what constitutes the validity of baptism ? 
What was to be done in the case of a heretic, who, after having received 
baptism in his own sect, came over to the orthodox church? Before 
any special inquiries on this point had as yet been instituted, the 
churches in different countries had been in the habit of pursuing differ- 
ent courses, just as they happened, as 15 usual in such cases, to proceed 
unintentionally from different starting pomts. In Asia Minor and the 
adjacent countries, the point started from was that no baptism was valid, 
save that administered in the orthodox church, where alone all religious 
acts had their true significancy ; that the baptism of heretics was null 
and void, and that the true baptism ought therefore to be administered 
to such as came over from the sects, in the same manner as to heathens. 
This may be easily explained from the asperity of the polemical rela- 
tions which existed in these particular districts between the church 
and the sects, and from the character of these sects; for instance, the 
Gnostic, who departed widely in regard to the most essential points of 
doctrine and of practice from the commonly received opinions. In the 
Roman church, on the contrary, where too in other respects a bitter 
hostility prevailed against the heretics, the matter was conducted in a 
milder spirit, more importance being here attached to the objective side 
of baptism. ‘The principle was pursued in practice, that baptism, in 
virtue of the objective significancy of the name of Christ or of the Trin- 
ity, with the invocation of which it was administered, always has validity, 
by whomsoever and under whatsoever religious views it may be admin- 
istered. The heretics, therefore, who came over to the church, were 
recognized as baptized Christians ; and only the rite of confirmation, in 
the sense above explained, was bestowed on them by the bishop, that 


1See the passage above quoted from 
Tertullian’s de corona milit. and adv. Mar- 
cion. |. 1. c. 14: Deus mellis et lactis socie- 
tate suos infantat, (he causes them to be 
known as his new-born children.) Clemens, 
Pedagog. 1. 1. f. 103: Εὐϑὺς ἀναγεννηϑέν- 
τες τετιμῆμεϑα τῆς ἀναπαύσεως τὴν ἐλπίδα, 
τὴν ἄνω Ἱερουσαλὴμ εὐαγγελιζόμενοι, ἔν ἡ 
μέλι καὶ γάλα ὀμβρεῖν ἀναγέγραπται. 

2 Osculum pacis, εἰοήνη. See above. 


27* 


8 In the passage already cited from the 
Pedagog, 1. III. f. 256: Of δὲ οὐδὲν, ἀλλ᾽ 
ἢ φιλήματι καταψοφοῦσι τὰς ἐκκλησίας, τὸ 
φιλοῦν ἔνδον οὐκ ἔχοντες αὐτό. Καὶ γὰρ 
07 τοῦτο ἐκπέπληκεν ὑπονοίας αἰσχρὰς καὶ 
βλασφημίας τὸ ἀναΐδην χρῆσϑαι τῷ φιλῆ- 
ματι, ὅπερ ἐγρῆν εἶναι μυστικόν. 

4’Ayarn δὲ οὐκ ἐν φιλήματι. ἀλλ' ἐν 
εὐνοίᾳ κρίνεται. 


318 CONTROVERSIES 


the Holy Spirit might render efficacious the baptism they had received ; 
a practice which was one of the occasions of separating confirmation 
from baptism. As the different communities willingly directed them- 
selves according to the model of their apostolical mother churches, (the 
sedes apostolicee,) it is probable that most of the Western churches 
followed the example which had been set them at Rome. 

But towards the close of the second century, the custom, which thus 
far had been tacitly observed, became an object of especial inquiry in 
Asia Minor; whether it was that the prevailing principle in that region, 
being followed also by the Montanistic churches,! was therefore called 
in question by those who were glad of any opportunity to oppose the 
Montanists, or whether it was for some other reason. The majority 
declared in favor of adhering to the old principle. Somewhat later, 
when the matter again came up, this principle was solemnly confirmed 
by two ecclesiastical councils at Iconium and Synnada in Phrygia. 
This led to the discussion of the same question in other countries. Ter- 
tullian, most probably while he was still a member of the Catholic 
church, wrote in the Greek language a special treatise on the subject, 
in which he did not hesitate to depart in this particular from the custom 
of the Roman church. ΤῸ defend the necessity of recognizing hereti- 
cal baptism, the opposite party had doubtless already appealed to Hphes. 
4: 5, 6, One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of 
81}, —and had drawn from it the conclusion that wherever men were 
found to call on that one God and that one Lord, it was necessary to 
recognize the validity of their baptism. But Tertullian replies: 
“This can relate only to us, who know and call upon the true God and 
Christ. The heretics have not this God and this Christ. These words, 
therefore, cannot be applied to them; and as they do not rightly ad- 
minister the ordinance, their baptism is the same as none.” 

In the North African church, men willingly followed, for the most 
part, the example of the mother church at Rome, but were at the same 
time far from submitting their own judgment to the authority of that 
church.2 Ata council held in Carthage, over which the bishop Agrip- 
pinus presided, seventy bishops of North Africa declared themselves 
for the opposite opinion. Yet neither party was disposed as yet to ob- 
trude its own views and practice on the other. The churches which 
differed on this point, in no case dissolved the bond of fraternal har- 
mony on account of a disagreement which so little concerned the es- 
sentials of Christianity. But here again, it was a Roman bishop, 
Stephanus, who, instigated by the spirit of ecclesiastical arrogance, 
domination and zeal without knowledge, attached to this point of dis- 
pute a paramount importance. Hence towards the close of the year 
253, he issued a sentence of excommunication against the bishops of 
Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Galatia, and Cilicia,* stigmatizing them as 
anabaptists, (dvaBarriorai ,)° a name, however, which they could justly 


1 See Tertullian, de pudicitia, ¢. 19. 5 The words of Cyprian, ep. 71 ad Quin- 
2 De baptismo, ὁ. 15. tum: Nos autem dicimus eos qui inde 
8 See above. yeniunt, non rebaptizari apud nos, sed bap- 


4 Dionysius, in Euseb. 1. VII. ο. ὅ; Fir-  tizari. 
milianus in Cyprian, ep. 75. 


RESPECTING BAPTISM. 319 


affirm they did not deserve by their principles; for it was not their 
wish to administer a second baptism to those who had been already bap- 
tized, but they contended that the previous baptism, given by heretics, 
could not be recognized as a true one. 

From Asia, the discussions in regard to this matter extended them- 
selves to North Africa.- Here there was always a party which stood 
firm by the old Roman usages. ‘The earlier discussions were now for- 
gotten ; and hence there arose new questions and investigations relative 
to this matter. These induced Cyprian, the bishop, to propose the 
point for discussion at two synods held in Carthage in the year 255, 
the one composed of eighteen, and the other of seventy-one bishops ; 
and both assemblies declared in favor of Cyprian’s views, that the bap- 
tism of heretics ought not to be regarded as valid. As he was well 
aware! what importance the church of Rome and its followers attached 
to traditional customs, and that they held up this long observed practice 
in the light of an apostolical tradition, although from the nature of the 
thing, cases of this sort could not well occur in the time of the apos- 
tles; he expressed himself after the following manner in a letter to 
Quintus? an African bishop, to whom he communicated the decisions 
of the first council: ‘‘ This is a case in which we are not to be arbitra- 
rily directed by custom, but to be convinced by arguments. For even 
Peter, whom our Lord chose the first, and on whom he founded his 
church, did not arrogantly pretend, when Paul afterwards disputed 
with him concerning circumcision, Gal. 2,3 that he held the prima- 
cy, and that the later and younger apostle should yield obedience to 
him ; nor did he despise Paul, because he was once a persecutor of the 
church; but he took counsel of the truth and easily acquiesced in the 
correct views which Paul succeeded to establish. He thus gave us an 
example of unanimity and of patience, that we should not obstinately 
cleave to our own way, but rather, when any useful and salutary thing 
is occasionally suggested to us by our brethren and colleagues, make it 
ours, if it be true and lawful.’’ He communicated the decisions of the 
greater council to Stephanus also, the Roman bishop, in a letter written 
with great freedom of spirit, though in a tone of forbearance ;* but 
Stephanus, in his arrogant reply,® set up against Cyprian the tradition 
of the Roman church. He is said to have carried his blind, unchris- 
tian zeal so far as to indulge himself in undignified and abusive lan- 
guage towards his African colleague, refuse the bishops an audience 
who came to him as delegates of the North African council, and even 
forbid his church to receive them into their houses! Yet far from Cy- 
prian was the thought of submitting his reason to the authority of the 
Roman church. He convened at Carthage, in the year 256, a still 
larger council, composed of eighty-seven bishops, and this assembly also 
acceded to the principles before expressed. Inthe North African church 
was evinced, under this zeal for the exclusive validity of Catholic bap- 


1 See above. . been preserved in the North African church. 
2 Ep. 71. 4 Ep. 72. 
* It is remarkable how constantly the un- δ See above, p. 216, ff. 


biassed, unprejudiced view of this fact had 


320 CONTROVERSIES 

tism, a fanatical hatred of heretics; an exaggerated opinion of the ex- 
clusive doliness of the Catholic church. But it is noticeable how the 
same individual, who held tradition generally in so high esteem, opposed 
to it on this occasion, truth and right reason. ‘In vain,” he says, 
‘‘some who were cast in the argument, oppose to us usage, as if usage 
were greater than truth, or as if in spiritual things, one must not follow 
that better way which has been revealed by the Holy Spirit.” 2 

Cyprian now endeavored to form a connection with the Asiatics, who 
entertained the same views of this matter with himself; and to this end 
laid the whole case before one of the most eminent of the Asiatic bish- 
ops, Firmilianus, of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The latter signified his 
entire concurrence in Cyprian’s views,® and added some well-timed re- 
marks on the advantages of common deliberation on spiritual matters, 
when such deliberation is conducted in the spirit of Christ. ‘* Since 
divine doctrine transcends the bounds of human nature, and the soul 
of man cannot grasp the Whole and the Perfect, therefore is the num- 
ber of prophets so great, that the manifold wisdom of God may be ap- 
portioned among many. And hence he who has first spoken as a 
prophet, is commanded to keep silence when any thing is revealed to 
another.”” 1 Cor. 14: 80. 

The Christian moderation of the bishop Dionysius of Alexandria has 
been noticed already in a former controversy. We find him manifest- 
ing the same temper in this. On the poimt in question he agreed, it is 
true, with the churches of North Africa and Asia Minor, the same 
views having for a long time prevailed in the Alexandrian church : ὃ 
though he differed from them in one respect, that his more liberal 
spirit was rather inclined to make exceptions to the rule,® in regard to 
many sects, who in doctrine harmonized completely with the church. 
But at the same time he endeavored to maintain brotherly harmony 
with the bishops of Rome, and dispose them for peace. He besought 
the Roman bishop Stephanus with earnest representations not to dis- 
turb again the Eastern church in her enjoyment of that external peace 
which she had obtained from the emperor Valerian, and of the internal 


1 See Cyprian’s words, ep. 71: Hereti- 
corum sordidam et profanam tinctionem 
vero, unico et legitimo ecclesise catholic 
baptismo preponere. Nihil potest esse com- 
mune Antichristo et Christo. He styles the 
baptism of heretics, “aqua perfida et men- 
dax.” The opinions expressed by many 
of these bishops manifest the same spirit, 
—a premonitory sign of those struggles 
which in the fourth century were produced 
in these districts by a fanatical separative 
spirit. 

2 Proinde frustra quidam, qui ratione 
vincuntur, consuetudinem nobis opponunt, 
quasi consuetudo major sit veritate, aut non 
id sit in spiritalibus sequendum, quod in 
melius a Sancto Spiritu revelatum. Ep. 73. 

8 Cyprian, ep. 75, in a Latin translation, 
often literal. 

4 See above, the Novatian schism. 

5 That the Alexandrian church, too, re- 


jected baptism administered in the churches 
of heretics, seems necessarily to follow 
from the declaration of Dionysius in his 
letter to the Roman bishop, Sixtus II., Eu- 
seb. l. VII. c. 7, where he says, that when 
members of the Catholic church who had 
gone over to the heretics, returned back 
again to the former, it was not the custom 
to re-baptize them, for they had before re- 
ceived the holy baptism from the bishop. — 
This therefore was the only case. Conse- 
quently baptism administered out of the 
Catholic church, was not recognized as holy, 
as valid. 

6 Thus he made an exception of this sort 
with respect to the baptism administered in 
the Montanist churches, probably because 
he entertained milder views respecting their 
relation to the universal church. See Basil. 
Cesar. ep. 188, or ep. canon 1. 


RESPECTING BAPTISM. 321 
peace which accompanied it since the suppression of the schism of No- 
vatian. ‘“ Know, my brother,” ! he wrote, “that all the once divided 
churches in the East and still beyond are now united together, and that 
all the presiding officers of these churches agree, rejoicing exceedingly 
in the peace which, contrary to expectation, has fallen to our lot. All 
give praise to God in harmony and brotherly love.’ It was probably 
in consequence of his negotiations with the Roman church, conducted 
in this spirit of love and wise forbearance, that Stephanus did not ven- 
ture to excommunicate him with the rest. He continued the corres- 
pondence with Sixtus, the successor of Stephanus ; and to maintain the 
bond of brotherly love, he even asked his advice in relation to one mat- 
ter, where both of them could start from the same principles.? 

The emperor Valerian becoming soon after a persecutor of the 
Christian church, this outward conflict contributed to hush the disputes 
within it; perhaps, also, the successor of Stephanus did not partake of 
his blind zeal. 

It remains that we should consider somewhat more minutely the 
points in dispute between the two parties, and the mode of their devel- 
opment on both sides. There were two points of dispute. In respect 
to the first, the Roman party maintained that the validity of baptism 
depended simply on its being administered as instituted by Christ. 
The formula of baptism, in particular, gave it it8 objective validity ; it 
mattered not what was the subjective character of the officiating priest, 
who served merely as an instrument in the transaction; it was of no 
consequence where the baptism was administered. That which is ob- 
jectively divine in the transaction could evince its power, the grace of 
God could thus operate through the objective symbol, if it but found 
in the person baptized a recipient soul; that person could receive the 
grace of baptism, wherever he might be baptized, through his own 
faith, and through his own disposition of heart.’ But Cyprian brings 
against his opponents a charge of inconsistency, from which they could 
not easily defend themselves. If the baptism of heretics possessed an 
objective validity, then, for the same reason, their confirmation must 
also possess an objective validity. ‘‘ For,’’ says Cyprian, ‘if a person 
born out of the church, (namely, to the new life,) may become a tem- 
ple of God, why may not also the Holy Spirit be poured out on this 
temple? He who has put off sm in baptism and become sanctified, 
‘spiritually transformed into a new man, is capable of receiving the 
Holy Spirit. The apostle says, ‘As many of you as are baptized, have 
put on Christ.’ It follows, then, that he who may put on Christ when 


1 Euseb. |. V. c. 5. 

21, ο.1: VI. c¢. 9. 

3 Kum qui quomodocunque foris (with- 
out the church,) baptizatur, mente et fide 
sua baptismi gratiam consequi. The opin- 
ion of the Roman church is by no means 
to be so apprehended, as if the employment 


to a baptism which in other respects was 
administered in the right way, was presup- 
posed on both sides. Had the opponents 
found it in their power to charge any fault 
upon Stephanus and his party in this re- 
spect, they would hardly have omitted the 
opportunity. Moreover, Dionysius of Alex- 


of the correct formula of baptism, even of 
such a baptism as departed in all respects 
wholly from the original institution, could 
render it valid. That the question related 


andria, in the question which he proposed 
to the Roman bishop, Euseb. 1. VII. ο. 9, 
proceeds on the supposition that they were 
both agreed on that point. 


322 CONTROVERSIES ON BAPTISM. 
baptized by heretics, can much more receive the Holy Spirit, which 
Christ has sent; as if Christ could be put on without the Spirit, or the 
Spirit could be separated from Christ.’’! | 

The other party maintained, on the other hand, that no baptism could 
be valid, unless administered in the true church, where alone the effi- 
cacious influence of the Holy Spiritis exerted. If by this was understood 
merely an outward being in the church, an outward connection with it, 
the decision of the question would be easy. But what Cyprian really 
meant here, was an inward subjective connection with the true church 
by faith and disposition of heart. He took it for granted that the offi- 
ciating priest himself, by virtue of his faith, must be an organ of the 
Holy Spirit, and enabled by the magical influence of his priestly office, 
duly to perform the sacramental acts, to communicate, for example, to 
the water its supernatural, sanctifying power. But when the matter 
took this shape — was made thus to depend on the subjective character 
of the priest —it became difficult, in many cases, to decide as to the 
validity of a baptism, which must be the occasion of much perplexity 
and doubt;— for who could look into the heart of the. officiating 
priest ?3 

But the Roman party went still farther in their defence of the ob- 
jective significancy of the formula of baptism. Even a baptism where 
the complete form was not employed, but administered simply in the 
name of Christ, they declared to be objectively valid. Cyprian main- 


1 Cyprian, ep. 74. 

2 LL. c. ep. 70: Quomodo sanctificare 
aquam potest, qui ipse immundus est et 
apud quem Spiritus Sanctus non est? Sed 
et pro baptizato quam precem facere potest 
Sacerdos sacrilegus et peccator? Ep. 76: 
Quando hec in ecclesia fiunt, ubi sit et ac- 
cipientis et dantis fides integra. 

ὃ The author of the book de rebaptis- 
mate, which stands among the works of 
Cyprian, could therefore make the objec- 
tion : Quid dicturus es de his, qui plerumque 
ab episcopis pessimze conversationis bapti- 
zantur? by those who afterwards, when 
their vices came to be known, were deposed. 
Aut quid statues de eis, qui ab episcopis 
prave sentientibus aut imperitioribus fue- 
rint baptizati 1 

#¥From Cyprian’s letters, and from the 
book de rebaptismate, it is clear beyond all 
controversy, that the Roman party main- 
tained this. If Firmilian, in the 75 ep. Cy- 
prian, speaks only of the formula of bap- 
tism in the name of the trinitas, it does not 
follow, that the opponents had spoken bare- 
ly of this. Firmilian gives prominence only 
to that point against which he meant par- 
ticularly to direct his polemics, the principle, 
that the baptismal formula gave to baptism 
an objective validity; and hence he does 
not distinguish, what would have to be dis- 
tinguished in exhibiting the opinion of his 
opponents. Yet we see also the other po- 
sition of his opponents, which must have 


floated before his mind, discovering itself, 
when he says: Non omnes autem, qui nomen 
Christi invocant, audiri, &c. ‘The tract de 
rebaptismate, a work of some acuteness, I 
have thought myself undoubtedly author- 
ized to cite as belonging to this period. I 
cannot adopt the opinion, that it is the one 
which, according to Gennadius, de script. 
eccles., Ursinus, a monk, is said to have 
written, not till the close of the fourth cen- 
tury, or still later. The writer discourses 
like a man who lived in the midst of these 
controversies, in the time of the persecu- 
tions; all which is inconceivable of an au- 
thor belonging to a later period. When he 
says, these controversies were to produce 
no other fruit, nisi ut unus homo, quicun- 
que ille est, magnz prudentix et constan- 
tiz esse, apud quosdam leves homines inani 
gloria praedicetur, we see very clearly that 
Cyprian is here meant, and only a contem- 
porary could so speak of him. The ex- 
pression relative to an ancient apostolic 
tradition, “ post tot seculorum tantam seri- 
em,” seems, it is true, unbefitting in the 
mouth of a man who wrote in the middle 
of the third century. But this expression 
would in any case continue still to be very 
hyperbolical, although employed by a writer 
at the end of the fourth century; and it is 
the fact generally, that strong hyperboles 
are not unusual in the writers belonging to 
the African church, 


THE SACRAMENT OF THE SUPPER. 323 


tained, on the other hand, that the formula of baptism had no longer 
sienificancy, when not in the full form instituted by Christ. We per- 
ceive here the more liberal Christian spirit of the anti-Cyprian party. 
The thought hovered vaguely before their minds, that everything that 
pertains to Christianity is properly embraced in the faith in Christ. 

Cyprian himself, however, did not venture to limit God’s grace by 
such outward things in cases where converted heretics had alread 
been admitted without a new baptism, and had enjoyed the fellowship 
of the church, or died init. “God,” he observes, “is great in his 
mercy, to show indulgence and not exclude from the henefits of the 
church, those who have been received into it informally, and thus fallen 
asleep.’ .A remarkable case of this sort is narrated by Dionysius of 
Alexandria. There was in the church of Alexandria a converted 
heretic, who lived as a member of the church for many years, and par- 
ticipated in the various acts of worship. Happening once to be pres- 
ent at a baptism of catechumens, he remembered that the baptism 
which he himself had received tn the sect from which he was converted, 
probably a Gnostic sect, bore no resemblance whatever to the one he now 
witnessed. Had he been aware that whoever possesses Christ in faith, 
possesses all that is necessary to his growth in grace and to the salva- 
tion of his soul, this circumstance could not have given him so much 
uneasiness. But as this was not so clear to him, he doubted as to his 
title to consider himself a real Christian, and fell into the greatest dis- 
tress and anxiety, believing himself to be without baptism and the grace 
of baptism. In tears, he threw himself at the bishop’s feet, and be- 
sought him for baptism. The bishop endeavored to quiet his fears ; 
he assured him that he could not, at this late period, after he had so 
long partaken of the body and blood of the Lord, be baptized anew. 
It was sufficient that he had lived for so long a time in the fellowship 
of the church, and all he had to do was to approach the holy supper 
with unwavering faith and a good conscience. But the disquieted man 
found it impossible to overcome his scruples and regain his tranquillity. 
So destructive to peace of conscience were the effects of such tena- 
cious adherence to outward things, of not knowing how to rise with 
freedom to those things of the spirit, which the inward man appre- 
hends by faith ! 

We proceed now to the second holy symbol which Christ instituted 
for his church, — the Lord’s supper. 

The last supper which Christ held with his disciples on earth, must, 
from the nature of the case, have been full of meaning, as the parting 
meal of jim who was about to give up his life for their salvation, and 
for that of all mankind ; and who afterwards, although no longer vis- 


1Jn the book de rebaptismate: Invocatio not done in the right way, as was the case 
he nominis Jesu, quasi initium quoddam with regard to those judaizing Christians, 
mysterii dominici, commune nobis et cxte- Philip. 1: 16. Cyprian, who wanted to 
ris omnibus, quod possit post modum resi- deprive them of the use of this text, does 
duis rebus impleri. The party of Stepha- not understand it so Well, ep. 73. 
nus not badly appealed to the fact, that 2 Ep. 70. 
Paul testified his joy in knowing that ὃ Euseb.1. VII. c. 9. 
Christ was preached, even though it were 


324 THE LORD’S SUPPER. 


able among them as at this meal, yet quite as really, and with a more 
powerful divine efficacy and a richer blessing, would manifest among 
them his spiritual presence, impart to them himself and all his heavenly 
treasures. Besides, this meal was to take the place of the paschal sup- 
per, which Christ could no longer celebrate on earth. The feast in 
celebration of the foundation and covenant of the Mosaie religious con- 
stitution, was now, in accordance with the order of development of 
the theocratic economy, to exchange its earthly for a heavenly im- 
port, and to assume a relation analogous to the new shaping of the the- 
ocracy. The Jewish passover was a festival of thanks for the favor 
which the Almighty Creator of nature, who had caused its fruits to 
grow for the service of men, showed the people whom he honored with 
his especial guidance, when he delivered them from the Egyptian bond- 
age. The father of the family, who kept the passover with his house- 
hold and distributed wine and bread among the guests, praised God, 
who had bestowed these fruits of the earth on man, for the favor he 
had shown his own people. Hence, the cup of wine over which this 
giving of thanks was pronounced, was called the cup of praise or thanks- 
giving.!_ On the present occasion, then, Christ pronounced the bless- 
ing as the master of the household; a blessing, however, which, in its 
relation to the theocracy, must receive a new application, to denote de- 
liverance from the guilt and punishment of sin; release from the domin- 
ion of sin; the bestowment of true moral freedom through the sacri- 
fice of Christ for mankind; the preparation for entrance into a heay- 
enly country;— and this was the foundation of the kingdom of God, 
which is laid in the forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from sin, for 
all humanity. Hence Christ said, when he distributed wine and bread 
among his disciples, that this bread and this wine were to be to them, — 
and consequently to all the faithful of all times, —his body and his 
blood ; — the body which he offered for the forgiveness of their sins, 
for their salvation, for the establishment of the new theocratic relation ; 
and as these outward symbols represented to them his body and his 
blood, so would he himself be hereafter spiritually present with them, 
just as truly as he was now visibly among them; and as they now sen- 
sibly partook of these corporeal means of sustenance, which represented 
to them his body and his blood, so should they receive him, the Saviour, 
present in divine power, wholly within them for the nourishment of their 
souls; they should spiritually eat his flesh and drmk his blood, (John 
6,) should make his flesh and blood their own, and cause their whole 
nature to be more and more penetrated by that divine principle of 
life which they were to receive through their communion with him. 
Thus, to praise the effects of his sufferings for mankind, to celebrate 
their intimate life-giving communion with him as members of one spirit- 
ual body under one Great Head, they were to keep their feast together, 
till at length, in the actual possession of that heavenly country, they 
should enjoy, in its full extent, the blessedness which had been ob- 
ΕΣ 


1 13737 Did, ποτήριον εὐλογίας = εὐχαριστίας. 


THE AGAPA. 325 


tained for them by his sufferings, without being separated from him, 
and should, even in open vision, be united with him in his kingdom. 
After the example of the Jewish passover, and of the original insti- 
tution, the Lord’s supper was accordingly at first united with a social 
meal. Both constituted a whole, representing the communion of the 
faithful with their Lord, and their brotherly communion with one 
another ; both together were called the supper of the Lord, (δεῖπνον 
τοῦ κυρίου, δεῖπνον κυριακόν,) the supper of love, (¢yary.1) There was a 
daily celebration of this Christian communion in the first church at Je- 
rusalem; the phrase κλᾷν ἄρτον, breaking of bread, in Acts 2: 46, is 
most probably to be understood of them both together. In like man- 
ner we find them both united in the first church at Corinth; and so it 
probably was with the innocent, simple meal of the Christians of which 
Pliny speaks, in his report to the emperor Trajan.2_ On the contrary, 
in the description given by Justin Martyr, we find the celebration of 
the supper entirely separated from those feasts of brotherly love, if 
indeed they still continued to exist in those churches which he had 
in view. ‘This separation was occasioned partly by similar irregulari- 
ties to those which had arisen in the Corinthian church, when the spirit 
that prevailed in these feasts became unsuited to the holy rite which 
followed, and partly by local circumstances, which prevented generally 
the institution of such social meals. In truth, these meals were espe- 
cially calculated to excite the jealousy of the heathens, and gave 
birth to the strangest and most malicious reports,* — a circumstance 
which may have early led to their abolition or less frequent observance. 
We now speak first of these feasts of brotherly love, as they were 
afterwards, when, separated from the supper of the Lord, they went 
under the particular name of agape, (4yara.) At these, all distine- 
tions of earthly condition and rank were to disappear in Christ. All 
were to be one in the Lord; rich and poor, high and low, masters and 
servants, were to eat together at a common table. We have the des- 
cription of such a feast of agape by Tertullian. ‘‘ Our supper,’’ he 
says, ‘‘shows its character by its name; it bears the Greek name of 
love; and however great may be the expense of it, still it is gain to 
make expense in the name of piety, for we give joy to all the poor by 
this refreshment. The cause of the supper being a worthy one, estimate 
accordingly the propriety with which it is managed, as its religious end 
demands. It admits of no vulgarity, nothing unbeseeming. No one 
approaches the table, till prayer has first been offered to God; as much 
is eaten as is necessary to satisfy the demands of hunger, as much is 
drunk as consists with sobriety ; every one remembering that the night 
also remains consecrated to the worship of God. The conversation is 
such as might be expected of men who are fully conscious that God 
hears them. ‘The supper being ended, and all having washed their 


1See my History of the Planting, &., toaheathen. Ad uxoreml.II.c.4 Quis 
Vol. I. p. 30. ad convivium illud dominicum, quod infa- 
2 See above, p. 98. mant, sine sua suspicione dimittet 1 
8 Tertullian on the hindrances which a 4 Apologet. c. 39. 
Christian woman meets with when married 


VOL. 1. 


326 THE LORD’S SUPPER 

hands, lights are brought in; then each is invited to sing as he is able, 
either from the holy scripture or from the prompting of his own spirit, 
a song of praise to God for the common edification. It then appears 
how he has drunken. ‘The feast is concluded with prayer.” These 
agape lost by degrees their true original significancy, which it was im- 
possible for them to retain except under the first simple relations of the 
communities. They became often a lifeless form, no longer animated 
by the original spirit of brotherly love, which removed all distinctions 
between men and united together all hearts as one. Many abuses 
crept into them, which furnished occasion for the maliciously disposed 
to present the whole solemnity in the most unfavorable light. As usu- 
ally happens in such cases, some attributed undue importance to the 
dead form, as an opus operatum ; others unjustly condemned the whole 
custom, without distinguishing the right use of it from its abuse; 
neither party being any longer capable of appreciating the simple, 
childlike spirit in which this festival had originated. Wealthy indi- 
viduals of the church provided agapze of this sort, and imagined they 
had done something peculiarly meritorious ; and here, where all should 
be on a level, attention began to be paid’ to distinction of ranks, and 
the clergy, who should have set an example of humility to all, allowed 
themselves to be distinguished by outward preferences unworthy of their 
calling.t An ungentle, morose, ascetic spirit condemned these agape 
altogether, and eagerly caught at every particular imstance of abuse 
on these occasions, which was set out in exaggerated colors, for the pur- 
pose of bringing into discredit the whole custom. Such was the course 
of Tertullian after he became a Montanist.2, Clement of Alexandria 
expresses himself with greater moderation ; ὃ although he declares his 
opposition to those who imagined they could purchase with , banquets 
the promises of God, and who seemed to degrade the heavenly name 
of love, by such a particular appropriation of it to these banquets. 
*‘ Love,”’ says he, “‘ is indeed a heavenly food. In heaven this heavenly 
feast truly exists ; the earthly one is indeed given by love, yet the feast 
is not love itself, but only the proof of a benevolence ready to commu- 
nicate. Take care, therefore, that your treasure be not misrepre- 
sented ; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but right- 
eousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. He who shares in this 
latter feast, attains to the most glorious of all possessions, the kingdom 
of God, while he strives to belong, even in the present world, to that 
holy community of love, the church in heaven. Love is the divine 
thing itself, pure and worthy of God; to communicate is a work of 
love.” 


1 A double portion was set before eccle- 
siastics, in accordance with a grossly per- 
verted and sensual interpretation of the 
text, 1 Timoth.5: 17. Tertullian, when a 
Montanist, de jejuniis, c.17: Ad elogium 
guile tuz pertinet, quod duplex apud te 
presidentibus honos binis partibus deputa- 
tur. Comp. Apostol. Constitut. 1. 11. c. 28, 
where that which Tertullian very properly 
censures, is prescribed as a law. Clemens, 


Stromat. 1. VII. f. 759, respecting the Gnos- 
tic sects: ‘H συμποτικὴ διὰ τῆς ψευδωνύμου 
ἀγάπης πρωτοκλισία. 

2 De jejuniis, c. 17: Apud te agape in 
cacabis fervet. Major est agape, quia per 
hance adolescentes tui cum sororibus dor- 
miunt. So passionate an accuser appears 
of course not worthy of credit. 

ὃ Pedagod. 1. IL. ἢ. 142. 


SEPARATED FROM THE AGAPZ. 327 
So long as the agape and the Lord’s supper were united together, 
the celebration of the latter formed no part of the divine service. This 
service was held early in the morning, and not till towards evening did 
the church re-assemble at the common love-feast and for the celebration 
of the supper. At this celebration, as may be easily concluded, no 
one could be present who was not a member of the Christian church, 
and incorporated into it by the rite of baptism. But there was no 
reason for excluding unbelieving or unbaptized persons from participat- 
ing in the worship held in the morning.’ It is clear from 1 Cor. 14: 
23 — 25, that in the age of the apostles, no stranger was withheld from 
visiting those assemblies ; that, on the contrary, such visits were re- 
garded with pleasure, because the salutary impressions which were 
thus made on them, might tend to their conversion. The Apostle Paul 
desired, that divine service should be so arranged as to exert an influ- 
ence in this manner on such persons. We see no reason to justify a 
deviation from this practice. There needed to be no fear of spies. The 
extravagant reports spread abroad concerning the Christians, could be 
best refuted by ocular demonstration. Publicity was the best witness 
of the innocence of the Christians. To this, moreover, Tertullian ap- 
peals, that each one could have convinced himself of the untruth of 
those stories, as the churches were so often surprised in their meetings, 
and it must thus have been observed what was transacted in them.” 
If then the pagans themselves were challenged to testify what they had 
seen done in the Christian assemblies when thus surprised, there cer- 
tainly was no reason for repelling all visits of strangers for fear of 
spies. : 
2 But now, when the celebration of the supper was disjoined from the 
agapze and united with the other parts of divine service, 1t might hap- 
pen on this very account, that men would believe it necessary to con- 
fine the participation of unbelievers to those other parts; that at this 
celebration and the preparation which went before, they should be 
dismissed, because these celebrations, from their very nature, were de- 
signed only for the members of the church, and originally all who were 
present partook in the communion of the holy supper. Marcion, the 
defender of apostolical simplicity in church life, the warm opponent 
of all Jewish, hierarchical peculiarities, combatted the new separation 
made between catechumens and the baptized entitled to communion, 
and this dismissal of them at certain church prayers united with the 


1 Dr. Rothe, in the acute and ingenious 


guishing of a missa catechumenorum, and 
dissertation which has already been referred 


a missa fidelium. But I cannot be per- 


to, de disciplina arcani, maintains the opin- 
ion, that the admission of unbelievers and 
catechumens to the first portion of the ser- 
vice was a later arrangement; and that it 
was the change which took place in the 
catechumenal instruction, (see above, p. 
305,) and the introduction of a class of 
catechumens into the church assemblies, in 
which hitherto none but those that had been 
baptized, took a part, which first led to the 
comparing of the Christian worship with 
the Grecian mysteries, and to the distin- 


suaded that the suppositions on which this 
opinion rests are sufficiently well grounded, 
although I confess, there is a want of pre- 
cise data for a certain determination of the 
disputed questions. The reasons for my 
opposite views, and against Rothe, lie in my 
development of the matter itself. 

2 Apologet. ὁ. 7: Quotidie obsidemur, 
quotidie prodimur, in ipsis plurimum ceeti- 
bus et congregationibus nostris opprimi- 
mur. 


328 THE LORD’S SUPPER. 

supper, a8 an innovation alien from the original spirit of the apostolic, 
or as he said, Pauline church.!. He would have the catechumens take 
part in all the prayers of the church.? He would see nothing offensive 
even were they present also at the celebration of the holy supper, with- 
out participating init. ‘Tertullian, on the other hand, objected to the 
heretics, — by whom he seems particularly to have had in his mind 
the Marcionite party, — that in their assemblies, 1t was impossible to 
distinguish who were catechumens, and who were believers, (baptized ;) 
that all entered in alike or at once, and took part in the same prayers ; 
that moreover, when pagans came in, the holy, such as it was, was 
thrown to dogs and the pearls before swine — viz. the celebration of the 
supper was exposed before the eyes of the profane; although, in truth, 
no Lord’s supper— ‘Tertullian proceeding on the assumption that, 
among heretics, there could be neither a true baptism, nora true Lord’s 
supper. From this passage it is perfectly clear, not that the pagans 
assisted in the divine service, but that they could be present at the 
whole without distinction. This was what offended Tertullian. He 
demanded that pagans, catechumens and baptized persons should, in 
the divine service, take their several places; that certain holy rites 
should be performed only in the presence of the last, but remain con- 
cealed from the gaze of the profane. It was the new arrangement 
combatted by the Marcionites, by virtue of which the divine service 
was divided into two portions, the acts in which catechumens and unbe- 
lievers might take part, and those in which only the baptized could take 
part. Here the comparison with the mysteries of the Greeks, of which 
we have already spoken above, found place; although we cannot assert 
that this division proceeded originally out of a comparison with the 
Greek mysteries. For those only who had been consecrated by baptism, 
could the veil be removed from the hidden sanctuary.* Thus it came 
about, that while Justin Martyr did not scruple to sketch out a deserip- 
tion of the administration of baptism and of the celebration of the sup- 


1 In reference to the position held by such, 
Tertullian, prescript. heret. c. 41: Simpli- 
citatem volunt esse prostrationem disci- 
plinze, cujus penes nos curam lenocinium, 
(a corruption of the primitive unity,) vo- 
cant. 

2 See Jerome on the epist. Galat. 6, 6: 
Marcion hunc locum ita interpretatus est, 
ut putaret fideles et catechumenos simul 
orare debere, et magistrum communicare in 
oratione discipulis. 

8 Tertullian, preescript. heret. c. 41: In- 
primis, quis catechumenus, quis fidelis, 
incertum est; pariter adeunt, pariter orant, 
etiam ethnici si supervenerint. A different 
sense presents itself, according as we take 
these words with what precedes or with 
what follows them. In the first case, the 
whole would be a continuation of the same 
thought, and by the sanctum we should 
have to understand the church prayers. In 
the second case, the sense expressed by me 


in the translation would answer to the origi- 
nal. 

41 cannot concur with Rothe in respect 
to all the passages in which he is disposed 
to find an allusion to the Greek mysteries, 
or an affectation of secrecy in imitation of 
them. In particular, in the language of 
Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christianis, f. 37, 
ed. Colon., I can find no trace whatever of 
concealment and mystery as to certain sa- 
cred rites. Athenagoras speaks of the fact, 
that the Christians, who distinguished them- 
selves for their zeal in behalf of strict mo- 
rality, must expect to be accused by the 
pagans, who were slaves to every lust, of 
the same unnatural debauchery which they 
found existing among themselves, and in 
this connection he says: “’Q τί ἀν εἴποιμι 
τὰ aroppnra;” “ What shall I say of that 
concerning which one would prefer to be 
silent?” Indigna dictu. Not a word here 
respecting the mysteries of the Greeks, nor 
respecting the sacraments of the Christians. 


ITS CONSECRATION. 329 
per for the use of pagans, it was thought, on the other hand, after this 
transferring of the conception of the mysteries to the holy supper, 
that one ought not to speak of these holy things before the uninitiated. 
And this revolution coincides with the time when that great revolution 
of the Christian views took place respecting the priesthood. To the 
inner connection which here presents itself, it is unnecessary to direct, 
the attention of our readers. 

Already in the third century, it became customary, before the prayer 
of the church which prepared the way for the celebration of the sup- 
per, for the clergyman who presided at this celebration, to admonish 
the church to silent devotion, calling upon them to lift up their souls to 
heaven, and the church thereupon responded — Yea, to the Lord we 
have lifted them up. 

It has already been remarked, that the prayer of praise and thanks 
had passed over to the Christian celebration of the supper from the 
Jewish passover. This prayer of praise and thanks was, moreover, 
always considered as constituting an essential part of the solemnity : 
hence the Lord’s supper obtained its name of the eucharist (εὐχαριστία. 3) 
The presiding officer of the church, taking up the bread and wine from 
the table that stood before him, gave thanks to God, in the name of the 
whole church, that he had created the things of nature, which were 
here represented by the most essential means of sustenance, for the use 
of man; and that he, the Lord of nature, had also, for the sake of 
man, given his Son to appear and suffer in human nature. Both the 
thanksgiving for the gifts of nature and the thanksgiving for the bless- 
ings of grace were in fact intimately connected; since it is not until 
man, redeemed, returns back to his filial relation with the Heavenly Fa- 
ther, that he truly perceives how all had been bestowed on him by the 
love of his Heavenly Father; then every earthly gift acquires for him 
a new and higher significancy, as the pledge of an eternal love, im- 
parting blessings to men of far higher worth than these. All nature, 
which before had been desecrated by him, in his servitude to sin, in 
his condition of estrangement from God, was now sanctified and re- 


1 Cyprian, de oratione dominica: Sacer- 
dos ante orationem prefatione przmissa 
parat fratrum mentes dicendo: sursum corda, 
ut dum respondet plebs: habemus ad Domi- 
num, admoneatur, nihil aliud se quam Dom- 
inum cogitare debere. And Commodian, 
ce. 76, in rebuking the female practice of 
talking in the church, says: 

Sacerdos Domini cum sursum corda precepit ; 

In prece fienda ut fiant silentia vestra, 

Limpide respondes nec temperas quoque promissis. 
Thus we find already the first traces of the 
liturgy, which we become acquainted with 
in the fourth century. 

2 The term “ εὐχαριστία" is used meto- 
nymically, resembling in all respects the 
phrase, “ ποτήριον εὐλογίας, ὃ ebdoyoupev,” 
in St. Paul = “6 εὐχαριστηϑεὶς ἄρτος καὶ 
οἶνος," in Justin Martyr, —the bread and 
wine over which the prayer of thanksgiving 

pronounced. The latter says ex- 
* 


28 


pressly, that immediately after the presiding 
officer of the church has pronounced this 
prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and 
wine, and the church joined in it with their 
Amen, the sacramental elements were dis- 
tributed. He mentions no other consecra- 
tion. He says: ‘H δι’ εὐχῆς λόγου τοῦ παρ’ 
αὐτοῦ (του Χριστοῦ) εὐχαριστηϑεῖσα τρο- 
φή. This cannot be a prayer which came 
verbally from Christ, for they had no such 
prayer; but it is rather the prayer of thanks 
generally, instituted by him, which, after 
his example, was to be offered at this cele- 
bration. It may be that the words of the 
institution were introduced into this prayer. 
In the language used by Firmilian, Cyprian, 
ep. 75: “invocatione non contemtibili sane- 
tificare panem et eucharistiam facere,” lies 
probably the idea of a consecration, where- 
by the ordinary bread became the sacrament 
of the supper. 


330 THE LORD’S SUPPER. 
stored back to him as a redeemed creature ; and in the Lord’s supper, 
the earthly, the natural was to become transfigured into a symbol or 
vehicle of the heavenly, the divine. With the bodily food, thus sancti- 
fied by the prayer of thanksgiving, was now to be connected, by the 
power of the same God who had caused this earthly means of suste- 
nance to grow for the use of men, a higher, heavenly food for the life 
of the inward man. (We shall say nothing at present of the different 
notions concerning the relations of the signs to the thing represented.) 
This connection of ideas was quite familiar to the early Christians ; 
they often made use of it in their polemics against the contempt for na- 
ture affected by the Gnostics. Attached to this, moreover, was the 
allusion to a peculiar custom of the church at this period; the members 
of the community themselves offered the wine and the bread as a free 
gift, and from these were taken the elements for the celebration of the 
Lord’s supper.! These gifts were regarded as the spiritual thank-offer- 
ing of the Christians. The presiding officer of the church, in taking 
from these gifts the elements of the supper and consecrating them to 
God with praise and thanksgiving, represented the whole community 
as one priestly race, as one in the Lord, and as ready to consecrate 
again to the service of God all that they had received from Him. ‘This 
thank-offering of the Christians, considered as a spiritual offermg of the 
heart, as a free expression of childlike love and gratitude, was opposed 
to the sacrificial worship of the pagans and Jews. In part, these gifts 
of the Christians; in part, the prayer of thanks of the presiding church 
officer, with which they were consecrated to God; in part, finally, the 
entire celebration of the Lord’s supper, was called, at first only in this 
sense, an offering or sacrifice, προσφορά, ϑυσία.2 In allusion to this, Justin 
Martyr says :3 “‘ The prayers and thanksgivings offered by worthy men 
are the only true sacrifices, well-pleasing to God; these alone have the 
Christians learned to offer, and particularly in remembrance of their 
bodily nourishment, which consists of the dry and the moist, by which 
they are reminded also of the sufferimgs which Christ endured on their 
account.’ He regards this as a proof of the high-priestly lineage of 
the Christians ; since God receives offerings from none but his priests. 
In this sense Irenzeus, contrasting those spiritual offerings with every 
species of ceremonial connected with a sacrificial worship, observes: ‘ It 
is not the offering that sanctifies the man, but it is the conscience of 
the offerer that sanctifies this offering, if it be pure, and induces God 
to receive it as from a friend. Accordingly, the idea of a sacrifice in 
the supper of the Lord was at first barely symbolical; and originally 
this idea did not even have reference to the sacrifice of Christ. The 


1This usage, which is already plainly 
presupposed by the allusions of Justin Mar- 
tyr, of Ireneus, is mentioned in express 
terms hy Cyprian, de opere et eleemosynis, 
where he rebukes the rich woman, who 
came to the communion without bringing 
with her a gift of charity for the necessities 
of the church. Locuples et dives es, et 
domiinicum sine sacrificio venis, quae partem 
de sacrificio, quod pauper obtulit, sumis ? 


2 Hence the expression which occurs so 
frequently in Cyprian: oblationem alicujus 
accipere, offerre. To receive such gifts from 
any one for the church, to take from them 
the elements of the supper, and consecrate 
them, was evidence that he was considered 
to be a regular member of the church. 

8 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. ἢ, 345. 

4 Tren. 1. TV. e718; 


ITS ELEMENTS. 331 
only thing originally had in view was the spiritual thank-offering of the 
Christians, of which the presentation of the bread and wine, the first 
fruits of nature’s gifts, served asa symbol; while no doubt the conscious- 
ness of the new relation to God, in which the redeemed were placed by 
the sufferings of Christ, lay at the basis of the whole transaction.” 1 Af 
terwards, the reference to the death of Christ was made more promi- 
nent, yet so that it continued still to be no more than the idea of a 
commemorative or symbolical representation of this sacrifice. But as 
one error begets another, it was quite natural that the false notion of 
a particular priesthood in the Christian church, corresponding to that 
in the Old Testament, should give birth to the erroneous notion of a 
sacrificial worship which should stand in the same relation of correspond- 
ence to that of the Old Testament; and so it came about that the 
whole idea of sacrifice in the Lord’s supper, which in the first instance 
was simply symbolical, took a direction altogether wide of its true im- 
port, and bearing towards the magical ; the earliest indications of which 
we find in Cyprian. 

The ordinary bread presented by the church was used for the Lord’s 
supper. Justin Martyr calls it expressly common bread, (κοινὸς ἄρτος 5) 
those who went on the supposition that Christ kept the passover a day 
earlier than it was usually observed, had no occasion to take other than 
common bread for the celebration of the ordinance ; but even those who 
entertained the contrary opinion did not consider the use of unleavened 
bread as an essential thing in the institution of the supper. We meet 
with but one exception, in a class of Judaizing Christians,?— an excep- 
tion, however, which in this case explains itself. These Christians 
celebrated the Lord’s supper, in remembrance of that last supper of 
Christ, but once in the year, at the feast of the passover; hence they 
were bound, as Christians who still continued to observe the Jewish cer- 
emonial law, to use unleavened bread.? As among the ancients, and 
particularly in the Hast, it was not customary to drink at their meals 
pure wine unmingled with water, it was taken for granted that Christ 
also, at the institution of the supper, made use of mingled wine. The 
taste for higher mystical interpretations could not be satisfied, however, 
with this simple, but, as it seemed, too trivial explanation of the prevail- 


1A single passage in Irenus, 1. IV. c. 
18, § 4, seems to speak a different language: 
“verbum quod offertur Deo;” therefore the 
Logos himself, Christ, is offered up in the 
sacrament of the supper. But even if there 
were no other reading, yet this could not be 
the right one; for such a form of expres- 
sion would not only stand in manifest con- 
tradiction to the whole chain and connec- 
tion of ideas elsewhere so luminously exhib- 
ited in Jrenzus, but also be unsuited to 
what immediately precedes. He had in 
fact just before said, “offertur Deo ex crea- 
tura ejus,” (thus the offering is referred to 
the bread and wine.) and in the preceding 
chapter, § 6, it is said: “ per Christum offert 


ecclesia.” Beyond question, therefore, the 
reading of other manuscripts at this place — 
“per quod offertur,” must be recognized as 
the correct one. It is precisely the refer- 
ence to Christ, the high priest, which gives 
as well to this spiritual thank-offering, as to 
the entire Christian life, the right consecra- 
tion. This is the meaning of Irenzeus. 

2 Epiphanius says respecting the Ebionites 
of his time, that they annually celebrated 
the communion with unleavened bread and 
with water, (the latter, because their ascetic 
principles allowed not the use of wine.) 

8 See what is to be said hereafter of the 
Ebionites. 


982 PRIVATE COMMUNION. 
ing custom. The mingling of water with the wine was said to denote 
the union of the church with Christ.1 

As we have already remarked, the celebration of the Lord’s supper 
was still held to constitute an essential part of divine worship on every 
Sunday, as appears from Justin Martyr; and the whole church partook 
of the communion, after they had joined in the Amen of the preceding 
prayer. The deacons carried the bread and wine to every one present, 
in order. It was held to be necessary, that all the Christians in the 
place should, by participating in this communion, maintain their union 
with the Lord and with his church; hence the deacons carried a por- 
tion of the consecrated bread and wine to strangers, to the sick, to 
prisoners, and all who were prevented from being present at the as- 
sembly.” 

In some of the churches, however, as for example in the church of 
North Africa, the daily enjoyment of the communion continued to be 
held necessary; since it was considered the daily bond of union be- 
twixt the Lord and the church, the daily means of strength, life and 
salvation to Christians. Hence Tertullian and Cyprian give a spiritual 
explication of the petition for our daily bread, as a petition for an unin- 
terrupted, sanctifying union with the body of Christ through the Lord’s 
supper. But when the daily service and celebration of the Lord’s sup- 
per ceased, the only means left was, to take home a portion of the con- 
secrated bread, which, in this case of necessity, was to be substituted 
for the whole communion —the first trace of the practice, introduced 
through error and abuse, of receiving the Lord’s supper under one 
kind. Thus every Christian, with his family, after the morning devotions, 
and before engaging in his daily business, partook of the communion at 
home, that the life of the whole ensuing day might be sanctified by 
- fellowship with the Lord. We recognize here the ideas at bottom, ly- 
ing in the depth of the Christian consciousness ; but also the same 
spirit of externality, disturbing the Christian consciousness, which we 
have met with in so many different forms, and which was ever prone to 
ascribe a magic power of making holy to the sensible elements.® 

But other countries, perhaps, even as early as this, acted upon the 


1 Quando in calice vino aqua miscetur, 
Christo populus adunatur. Cyprian, ep. 63. 

2 In the description of the rite by Justin 
and by Irenzeus cited in Eusebius, 1. V. c. 
24: Πέμπειν εὐχαριστίαν τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν 
παροικιῶν παροῦσιν, where the author is 
speaking of the Roman bishops. Thus 
arose first the custom of communicating 
with elements previously consecrated, (the 
προηγιασμένα, as they were afterwards call- 
ed.) The idea at bottom was, that a com- 
munion could properly have its right sig- 
nificance only in the midst of a church; 
the communion of persons absent, of indi- 
viduals, was to be considered therefore as 
only a continuation of that communion of 
the whole body of the church. But when 
in Cyprian mention is made of presbyteris 
apud confessores offerentibus, the meaning 


probably is, that the elements were first con- 
secrated by the presbyters on the spot. 

8 To this custom the following passages 
refer. Tertullian, speaking of the suspicion 
of the pagan husband towards his Christian 
wife, Ad uxorem, 1. IL ὃ. 5: Non sciet 
maritus, quid secreto ante omnem cibum 
gustes? Et si sciverit panem, non illum 
credit esse, qui dicitur.—De orat. c. 19, 
(in the piece discovered by Muratori,) Ac- 
cepto corpore Domini et reservato, (respect- 
ing a Christian mistress of a family,) arca 
sua, in qua Domini sanctum fuit. Cyprian, 
de lapsis, p. 189, ed. Baluz.—In the work 
ascribed to Cyprian, de spectaculis, respect- 
ing one who runs from the church to the 
theatre: Festinans ad spectaculum, dismis- 
sus e dominico et adhue gerens secum, ut 
assolet, eucharistiam. 


INFANT COMMUNION. THE DEAD. 338 


principle that men ought never to partake of the holy thing except 
after a very especial preparation of the heart, and therefore only at 
stated seasons chosen according to each one’s necessities. The learned — 
Hippolytus, who lived in the first half of the third century, wrote thus 
early a discussion on the question, ‘‘ whether the communion should be 
received daily or only at stated seasons.” ! 

As the church of North Africa was the first to bring prominently 
into notice the necessity of infant baptism, so in connection with this 
they introduced also the communion of infants ; for as they neglected 
to distinguish with sufficient clearness between the sign and the divine 
thing which it signified, and as they understood all that is said in the 
sixth chapter of John’s gospel concerning the eating of the flesh and 
drinking the blood of Christ to refer to the outward participation of the 
Lord’s supper, they concluded that this, from the very first, was abso- 
lutely necessary to the attainment of salvation.? 

The celebration of the Lord’s supper became the seal of all religious 
consecration ; it was thus used at the conclusion of a marriage,® thus at 
the solemnities in commemoration of the dead. Of the latter, we will 
here take occasion to speak somewhat more at large. 

As Christianity in its general mfluence did not tend to suppress but 
only to ennoble the natural feelings of man; as it opposed itself gener- 
ally, as well to the perverted education which would crush these natu- 
ral feelings, as to the unrestrained expression of them in the rude state 
of nature; the same was its influence also in relation to mourning for 
the dead. From the first, Christianity condemned the wild, and at the 
same time hypocritical expressions of grief with which the funeral pro- 
cession was accompanied, those wailings of women who had been hired 
for the occasion, (mulieres preeficee ;) yet it required no stoic resigna- 
tion and apathy, but mitigated and refined the anguish of sorrow by 
the spirit of faith and hope, and of childlike resignation to that eternal 
love, which takes, in order to restore what it has taken under a more 
glorious form; which separates for the moment, in order to re-unite the 
separated in a glorified state through eternity. When multitudes at 
Carthage were swept away by a desolating pestilence, Cyprian said to 
his church : —‘‘ We ought not to mourn for those who are delivered 
from the world by the call of the Lord, since we know they are not 
lost, but sent before us; that they have taken their leave of us in order 
to precede us. We may long after them as we do for those who have 
sailed on a distant voyage, but not lament them. We may not here 
below put on dark robes of mourning, when they above have already put 
on the white robes of glory; we may not give the heathens any just 
occasion to accuse us of weeping for those as lost and extinct, of whom 
we say that they live with God, and of failing to prove by the witness 
of our hearts the faith we confess with our lips. We, who live in hope, 

1 See Hieronym. ep. 71, ad Lucin. contrary to the institution, led to a separa- 
2 And so it came about, that to children tion of the elements of the supper. 
who were not yet able to eat bread, they 8 Oblatio pro matrimonio. As to what 


gave wine. Cfr. Cyprian, de lapsis. Once is to be understood by this, see above. 
more an example, how a superstitious abuse, 


984 COMMUNION IN MEMORY 

who believe in God, and trust that Christ has suffered for us and risen 
again; we, who abide in Christ, who through him and in him rise 
again, — why do we not ourselves wish to depart out of this world ; or 
why do we lament for the friends who have been separated from us, as 
if they were lost, when Christ, our Lord and God, exhorts us, saying, 
‘TI am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die?’ Why are we not in haste to see our country and 
home, to greet our elders? There await us a multitude of those whom 
we love, fathers, brothers and children, who are secure already of their 
own salvation and concerned only for ours. What mutual joy to them 
and to us, when we come into their presence and into their embrace !’?! 
Out of this direction of the feelings arose the Christian custom which 
required that the memory of departed friends should be celebrated 
by their relations, husbands, or wives, on the anniversary of their death, 
in ἃ manner suited to the spirit of the Christian faith and of the Chris- 
tian hope. It was usual on this day to partake of the communion 
under a sense of the inseparable fellowship with those who had died in 
the Lord; a gift was laid on the altar in their name, as if they were 
still living members of the church; and in return for this, the petition 
for peace to the souls of the departed was introduced into the prayer 
of the church which preceded the communion.? 

But when the ideas of the priesthood and sacrifice took another 
shape, this circumstance also would necessarily react on those Christian 
relations connected with the holy rite. We meet with the first indica- 
tions of this false tendency as early as the times of Cyprian. 

While individual Christians and Christian families celebrated in this 
manner the memory of those departed ones who were especially near 
to them by the ties of kindred, whole communities celebrated the mem- 
ory of those who, without belonging to their own particular community, 
had died as witnesses for the Lord.? The anniversary of the death of 
such individuals was looked upon as their birth-day to a nobler exist- 
ence. Great care was bestowed in providmg for their funeral obse- 
quies, and the repose of their bodies, as the sanctified organs of holy 
souls, which were one day to be awakened from the dead and restored 
to their use under a more glorious form. On every returning anniver- 
sary of their birth-day, (in the sense which has been explained,) the 
people gathered round their graves, where the story was rehearsed of 
their confession and sufferings, and the communion was celebrated in 
the consciousness of a continued fellowship with them, now that they 
were united with him for whom, by their sufferings, they had witnessed 
a good confession. The simple Christian character of these celebra- 


1 Cyprian, de mortalitate. 

2 Oblationes pro defunctis annua die fa- 
ciemus. ‘Tertullian, de corona milit. c. 3, 
as an ancient tradition. ‘The same writer 
says to a widower, in reference to his de- 
ceased wife: Pro cujus spiritu postulas, pro 
qua oblationes annuas reddis. Commen- 
dabis per sacerdotem etc. De exhortatione 
castitat. c. 11. 


3'The dies natales, natalitia martyrum, 
γενέϑλια TOV μαρτύρων. 

* The oblationes, sacrificia pro martyri- 
bus, presupposed originally that the martyrs 
were like other sinful men, who might well 
stand in need of the intercessions of Chris- 
tians. This usage was, in its orginal sense, 
in collision with the extravagant veneration 
of the martyrs; and this circumstance ac- 


OF THE MARTYRS. 885 


tions is evinced by the manner in which the church at Smyrna, in their 
report of the martyrdom of Polycarp, their bishop, answered the re- 
proach of the heathens, who refused to give up the remains of the 
martyr, lest the Christians should abandon the crucified, and begin to 
worship Aim.1 ‘They are not aware,’ writes the church, “that we 
can neither forsake that Christ who has suffered for the salvation of the 
whole world of the redeemed, nor worship another. Him we adore, as 
the Son of God; but the martyrs we love, as they deserved for their 
unconquerable love to their King and Master, and because we also wish 
to become their companions and fellow disciples.” The church then 
proceeds to say, —‘‘ We gathered up his bones, which are more 
precious than gold or jewels, and deposited them in a suitable place ; 
and God will grant us to assemble there in joy and festivity, and cele- 
brate the birth-day of his martyrdom, in remembrance of the departed 
champion, and for the purpose of exercising and arming those whom 
the conflict is still awaiting.” Yet it cannot be denied that as early 
as the time of Cyprian, or even earlier, (for Tertullian, when a Monta- 
nist, combatted this error,) the germ began to show itself of an exces- 
sive veneration for the martyrs. So uniformly is man inclined to place 
an undue value on the human agent, to deify the instrument, which 
should simply point to Him who employs it; and the false element once 
existing in the germ, it soon unfolds and spreads, unless repressed by a 
mightier reaction of the sense of truth. 


cordingly must have afterwards led to a τὰς τοῦ κυρίου καὶ μιμητὰς ἀγαπῶμεν, ἀξίων 
different interpretation of the ancient cus- ἕνεκα εὐνοίας av ὑπερβλήτου τῆς εἰς τὸν 
tom. ἴδιον βασιλέα καὶ διδάσκαλον. 
1 Euseb. 1. TV. ο. 15. See above, p. 109. 3 Eic τε τῶν προηϑληκότων μνήμην, καὶ 
2 Τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ, υἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ ϑεοῦ, τῶν μελλόντων ἄσκησιν τε καὶ ἑτοιμασίαν. 
προςκυνοῦμεν" τοὺς δὲ μάρτυρας, ὡς μαϑη- 


SECTION FOURTH. 


HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, APPREHENDED AND DEVELOPED AS A 
SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES. 


The same law according to which, as we have seen in the preceding 
sections, Christianity proceeded to unfold and shape itself in the out- 
ward life from within, will again offer itself to our notice in the present 
section, where it is our purpose to trace the progressive development 
of Christian doctrine. It is the law expressed in the words we have 
prefixed as the motto to this volume — words employed by our Lor 
himself to describe the manner in which his kingdom should be devel- 
oped here on the earth. As the fragment of leaven cast into the large 
mass of meal brings on a process of fermentation, and by its own inhe- 
rent virtue, working through the mass, assimilates the whole to itself ; 
so Christianity — the heavenly leaven — by the power of a divine life, 
created a ferment in human nature, which, from the hidden depths, the 
inmost recesses of that nature, extended its influence as well to the 
faculties of thought as to the outward life, striving to assimilate, to 
transform and fashion the whole to its own likeness ; — an effect which 
could only be brought about by a gradual process of development, and 
which presupposed manifold conflicts with the alien forces it was neces- 
sary to overcome. ‘To exhibit the workings of Christianity, now that 
they have been contemplated in the phenomena of life, as-they are 
seen in the development of thought and of knowledge, is the problem - 
before us. 

As it is one essential characteristic of Christianity, that it did not 
deliver a new law in a distinct set of formal precepts, nor found a new 
society, organized from without in certain fixed and invariable external 
forms; so it is another, that it did not communicate a rigid system 
of doctrines, settled and determined once for all in certain ready made 
conceptions. In both these respects, the word of the quickening Spirit 
was to find its way outward from within —just as in the external shap- 
ing of the life, so also in the coining of its doctrines into distinct con- 
ceptions for the understanding. The divine revelation was so delivered 
and so calculated, that its substantial contents might be elaborated and 
evolved, through the divinely enlightened reason of man, actuated by 
the new divine life, in the same proportion as he became more fully 
penetrated by it, and with the free activity befitting its own proper es- 
sence. It was not something engrafted on the different imdividualities 
of human character and still remaining foreign to them; but the divine 
matter, suited to all the individualities of human character, and in 
which these individualities were to find, not their destruction, but their 
completion, was designed for the very end of being appropriated by 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 337 
each in its own way, and of being developed by each in the form 
most nearly corresponding to its own stamp. As Christ, the second 
man, the prototype of the new regenerated humanity, is exalted 
above all antagonisms of human individuality, comprising in himself 
the original elements of them all harmoniously combined ; so what 
in him is one, must in the ennobled human nature proceeding from 
him, become individualized. The various peculiarities of character, 
destined, when animated by his life, to present different phases of 
himself, were to codperate, each supplying what the others might lack, 
to give a perfect exhibition of the fullness of Christ in the course of 
history. And this law was verified at the very outset, in the case of 
those who formed the necessary connecting links between himself and 
the next succeeding evolution of the church ; — those organs and vehi- 
cles of his Spirit to all subsequent ages. Hence the mode of appre- 
hending and presenting that divine truth, which is one in essence, must, 
at this point, be immediately separated into four grand particular direc- 
tions, constituting all together the fullness of Christ; as will be evident 
by comparing the different characters of James and Peter, Paul and 
John. ‘The spirit of Christ exercised too mighty an influence over 
these individualities of character, attracted and animated as they were 
by one and the same’ power, to leave it possible for them to unfold 
themselves in such opposite ways as to exclude one another. Hence 
whatever was diverse in them still remained subordinate to a higher 
unity, in which they were one. And so on in the future ; — it rested 
on the natural diversities of human character to decide, by which of 
these grand tendencies in the original presentation of Christianity each 
man should be chiefly attracted ; and on which side,,in what form of it, 
each could appropriate it to himself. 

But when, in the after course of development, the power of Christ’s. 
spirit, which thus subordinated the human element to itself, no longer 
predominated, but the human individuality asserted its own importance, 
then partial systems arose, running counter to each other, which, in one 
way and another, did great injury to the cause of divine truth; and it 
only remained that the progressive movement and purification of the 
church should cause that unity to be once more clearly apprehended 
and restored out of these conflicting elements. 

In the sections which have gone before, we saw Christianity pressing 
into the conflict with the religious principles of the earlier world — with 
those of paganism and Judaism ; and the strife was not barely one of 
open war, but those principles entered into the mode of apprehending 


Christianity itself, threatening its 


1] cannot deny myself the pleasure of 
referring here to those beautiful words of 
Schleiermacher, which express so profound 
an understanding as well of the historical 
development of Christianity as of the es- 
sential character of Christ. “If we con- 
template Christendom in its full and com- 
plete sense, if we can but for a moment so 
fill the mind’s eye with light and so kindle 
the fire of love in the heart, that the differ- 

29 


VOL. I. 


corruption by lowering it down to 


ences shall no longer shock and repel us, 
we shall not only find in them all, taken to- 
gether, the fullness of Christ, as well as the 
fullness of the undivided Spirit of God, but 
we shall also see therein the Father who 
has revealed himself in his Son, and take 
in at a glance all these different broken 
rays of divine light as they proceed from 
one central point.” Schleiermacher’s Pre- 
digten, neue Ausgabe, B. IIL. p. 590. 


338 DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 

their own standard and becoming themselves blended with it. The 
same thing we shall have to observe in the process of the development 
of doctrines. Just as in the progressive evolution of Christian life, we 
saw Jewish and pagan elements entering in with a corrupting influence, 
while yet the Christian principle preserved itself pure in the conflict 
with both ; so we must observe the same thing again in the history of 
doctrines, and perceive the intimate connection between the develop- 
ment of the Christian principle in doctrine and im life, im dogmatics 
and in ethics, both having sprung from a common root. Now wherever 
the religious tendencies of the old world, which at first presented them- 
selves in outward hostility to Christianity, became so mixed in with its 
inner development as to lame the foundation of the Christian faith itself, 
by appropriating to themselves only a part of the whole, those appear- 
ances arose which were designated by the name of heresies ;} though 
in later times this name was often applied in a very different manner, 
being employed by some one dominant sect, — that refused to recog- 
nize the manifold phases necessarily presenting themselves in the healthy 
development of Christian truth, and would substitute in place of the 
unity, exhibiting itself in these manifold forms, a uniformity that sup- 
pressed the healthy process of development, — to brand as a morbid 
appearance every deviation from a mode of apprehending Christianity 
which claimed to be the only valid one. 

The multiform and grand phenomena of the heresies which arose in 
this period, where we may observe Jewish and Oriental-Greek elements 
of culture in various combination, exhibit to us, on one side, the chaotic - 
heavings of a dismembered world, on the point of either plunging into 
dissolution or rising in some new creation called forth out of the chaos; 
while on another, they bear witness to the mighty attractive power 
which the appearance of Christ exerted on the elements of this chaos, 
the powerful impression which it produced, both attractive and repul- 
sive. Suppose the case that nothing had come down to us save the 
knowledge of these phenomena; that we knew nothing about the causes 
by which they were produced; yet any mind, of more than ordinary 
reflection, would feel constrained to recognize, in these mighty after- 
workings, some still greater phenomenon that had preceded them ; 
and doubtless it would be possible, from studying the one, to arrive at 
some probable conclusion with regard to the character of the other. 


1 The word αἵρεσις, in its original signifi- 
cation, grounded on its etymology, has, as 
is well known, no bad meaning attached to 
it; but in the philosophical usus loquendi, 
denotes the choice of certain principles for 
the whole regulation of life, — some par- 
ticular conviction determining the character 
of the life. Hence it was used to desig- 
nate the different schools of philosophy, 
which were divided each from the other by 
their difference in respect to such convic- 
tions. ‘Thus Sextus Empiricus gives as 
the most general definition of the word: 
λόγῳ τινὶ κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον ἀκολουϑοῦσα 
ἀγωγὴ. But where the question turns not 


on the different opinions of men with re- 
gard to important subjects, but on truth 
communicated by divine revelation, where- 
by the foundation is to be laid of a fellow- 
ship and unity of religious conviction, of 
an all-embracing church, the word αἵρεσις, 
as opposed to this postulate, as denoting the 
preponderance of the subjective side, where- 
by that higher fellowship and unity are vio- 
lated, takes in the associated idea of arbi- 
trary human opinion, through which divine 
truth becomes corrupted ; and with such an 
associated bad meaning the term seems to 
be employed even in the usus loquendi of 
the New Testament. 


HERETICAL TENDENCIES. 339 


Since we must perceive in these heresies the reaction of different 
fundamental principles, prevailing in the ancient world, which had 
found their way into Christianity itself and strove to maintain themselves 
along with it; it is evident that they must have subserved this import- 
ant end; namely, that the Christian mind, while engaged in repelling 
such a reaction, must, in this opposition, still more clearly develope 
and express itself, than it could have done if these fundamental princi- 
ples had merely been brought to assail Christianity from without. These 
conflicts could not fail to result in a conscious knowledge, more clearly 
developed and more sharply defined, of the distinguishing essence 
of Christianity generally, and of the substantial contents of its several 
doctrines. 

In contemplating the oppositions most distinctly marked in the here- 
sies of this period and the process of development whereby the Chris- 
tian consciousness, which was thus more clearly unfolded, came forth 
triumphant from these conflicts, we see those words of the Christian 
philosopher, which we selected as-a motto for the first volume of this 
history, remarkably verified, that all oppositions find themselves resolved 
and reconciled in Christ. 

Since, then, the process of the development of Christian doctrine 
ean be rightly understood only by taking into view its conflict with the 
heresies, we must first turn our attention to the consideration of these 
phenomena. 


Heretical Tendencies. 


What the two most important tendencies of the heretical spirit were, 
will appear as soon as we consider the relation of Christianity to the 
previous religious development of mankind. Christianity was the new 
creation, that pushed its way out of the envelope of Judaism. In com- 
mon with Judaism, it possessed the character of a revealed religion, as 
opposed to the nature-religion of heathenism ; — it possessed the ground- 
work of the theocracy, and yet was something entirely new—a princi- 
ple which aimed at the transformation of everything already extant. 
The least among those who shared in the new creation was to be greater 
than the greatest among the prophets. It was the dissolution and the 
fulfilment of Judaism. Hence it was important to a right apprehension 
of Christianity, that both these relations should be rightly seized; that 
it should be seen how Judaism was to meet with its fulfilment in Chris- 
tianity, but how, at the same time, united with this fulfilment, was the 
dissolution of the distinct religious ground which Judaism had, till now, 
maintained. It behooved that Christianity should be rightly under- 
stood, both in its connection with the preparatory elements in Judaism, 
and also in its opposition to Judaism itself. Hence there could arise 
contrary tendencies of error, according as either the opposition was lost 
sight of in the intimate connection, or the intimate connection was over- 
looked in the opposition. And in these main directions of the hereti- 
cal spirit, we shall easily be able to trace the influence of two elements 
of culture directly opposed to each other, which were attracted by 
Christianity — the opposition of the Jewish and of the Hellenic mind. 


340 HERETICAL TENDENCIES—JEWISH AND GRECIAN. 


As the new spirit which Christ introduced into humanity was at first 
covered up and hidden under the old forms of Judaism, from which it 
was afterwards to burst free by virtue of its own inherent power; as 
the Jews, from their previous religious point of view, could come to the 
knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, it 
came about, that the doctrine of Christ was wholly blended by them 
with their previous Judaism, that they were for holding fast, as of per- 
petual validity, what was to be only a transient moment, — that stage 
of the development of Christianity in which it first appeared clothed 
under the forms of Judaism. The free Grecian spirit, on the other 
hand, which struggled hardest against the yoke of the law, being most 
strongly attracted by that particular phase in the appearance of Christ 
and in Christianity which was most directly opposed to the restraints 
of Judaism, would most naturally apprehend Christianity simply as a 
religion opposed to Judaism; would be disposed to deny the fact of 
their common divine foundation; to explain the connection between 
them as a thing merely accidental, and to overlook the more profound 
and necessary inner connection, the higher unity which existed be- 
tween the two religions. Indeed we may perceive the germ of the 
opposition just described as early as the time of Paul — the opposition, 
that is, between those who held to the exclusive authority of the apos- 
tles of Palestine, and those who attached themselves exclusively to the 
Apostle Paul, — between those who remained in bondage to the Jew- 
ish law, and those who gloried in their Christian freedom and higher 
knowledge.t_ The same opposition appeared still more strongly devel- 
oped in the age of John;? and hence arose afterwards the opposition 
between the Jewish and the Gnostic understanding of Christianity. 
Where this opposition reaches its full and complete development, it is 
the one which of all others affects most deeply the entire apprehension 
of Christianity, extending alike to all its ethical and all its dogmatic 
elements. The first of these spiritual tendencies cleaves to the tem- 
poral, earthly form of manifestation alone, without divining the higher 
spirit which it embodies and conceals; the other disdains that temporal 
form of manifestation, which is the necessary medium for the appropri- 
ation of the spirit, and would have the spirit without this medium. 
The one sticks fast by the letter, beyond which it cannot penetrate to 
the revelation of the spirit ; the other believes itself competent to grasp 
the spirit without the letter. The one perceives nothing in Christ but 
the Son of man; the other, nothing but the Son of God;—and so the 
one would have only the human element in Christianity, without the 
divine ; the other, only the divine, without the human. The last anti- 
thesis is of the utmost importance, on account of its bearing on the 
essence of Christian morality. For as this presupposes the oneness of 
the Son of God and the Son of man in Christ, so the refinement of the 
entire man, as a form for the manifestation of the divine life, is its prin- 
ciple, flowing directly from this presupposition. 

Of these two main tendencies, we shall now proceed to consider, first, 
the one which exhibited itself in the Judaizing sects. 


1 See my Apostol. Zeitalter, Bd. I. S. 314, ff. 2 Td. Bd. 11. 5. 532, ff. 


THE JUDAIZING SECTS. 341 


1. The Judaizing Sects. 


This main heretical tendency, as may be gathered from what has been 
said, is the oldest which entered as a disturbing influence into the de- 
veloping process of Christianity. It fixed itself on Christianity at the 
very spot of its birth; for it had a slow and gradual growth, — exhib- 
iting itself first, when that which, in its crudeness and imperfection, con- 
stituted the first necessary link in the chain of development, set itself 
in hostile opposition to the progressive movement which Christ aimed at 
and promised ; next, when that which was in its right place at the be- 
ginning, gave itself forth as the end, and asserted its own validity 
against the free development of the spirit bursting from the covermg 
in which it had been previously confined ; finally, when the same fleshly 
and contracted Jewish sense which showed its hostility to Christianity 
at first in decided unbelief, received Christianity, but received it after. 
its own fashion, that is, the shell instead of the kernel; when the same 
fleshly sense to which our Saviour’s exalted language had so often been 
a stone of stumbling, believed his words in part, it is true, but again 
betrayed itself by misconstruing their meaning, — taking them accord- 
ing to the sensuous letter, and not according to their spirit. But still 
we must carefully distinguish the different gradations in this tendency, 
which varied from a merely imperfect and subordinate stage of Chris- 
tian knowledge, to that which may properly be called heresy. 

Let us recollect that the faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah 
was the fundamental doctrine, on which the whole structure of the 
church arose. Accordingly, the first Christian community was formed 
of very heterogeneous materials. It was composed of such as differed 
from other Jews only by the acknowledging of Jesus as the Messiah— 
of such as still continued bound to the same contracted Jewish notions 
which they had entertained before ; and of such as, by coming to know 
Jesus more and more as the Messiah in the higher spiritual sense, by 
surrendering themselves with docility to the spirit of Christ, would, by 
the inworking of that spirit, be ever growing in their Christian knowl- 
edge, and becoming more completely freed from their besetting errors. 
The heterogeneous elements, which, in the first communities formed 
among the Jews, were thus outwardly rather than inwardly combined, 
must now, in the course of the progressive development, be thrown 
apart from each other. ‘The sifting process of history must effect a 
separation between those who had really been brought in contact with 
the spirit of Christianity and those who still belonged more truly to 
Judaism. To this necessary separation in the course of history, the 
a of Paul, 1 Corinth. 11: 19, and of 1 John, 2: 19, properly 
eh See 

As Christ himself had faithfully observed the Mosaic law, so the 
faithful observance of it was adhered to at first by all believers, and 
was held to be a necessary condition of participating in the Messiah’s 
kingdom. After the preparatory labors of Stephen, the martyr, and 
other men of Hellenistic origin and education, and of Peter, — that which 
Christ intended, when he said that he was not come to destroy the law but 

29* 


342 JUDAIZING SECTS — 

to fulfil it, and when he called himself the Lord of the Sabbath; that 
which he meant by the worship of God, confined no longer to particu- 
lar times or places, but in spirit and im truth, the essence of the new 
spiritual creation, which is grounded in the resurrection of Christ,1 
was clearly conceived and expressed by the Apostle Paul, and a self: 
subsisting Christian church, wholly independent of Judaism, formed 
among the pagans. Already a schism threatened to break out between 
the two elements of which the Christian church was composed, — the 
prevailing notion of Christianity in Palestine, which was characterized 
by a decided leaning to the Old Testament, and which suffered the 
new spirit to remain enveloped in the old forms of Judaism; and the 
independent Pauline development of Christianity among the pagans. 
By the compromise entered into between the two parties at Jerusalem,? 
this opposition was harmoniously reconciled ; and it was the triumph of 
the idea of a catholic church, whose unity, grounded on the faith in 
Jesus as the one Saviour and Lord of all, was to outweigh all subordi- 
nate differences of Jewish and Hellenic forms of culture. But the 
more deep seated opposition could not be overcome and set aside by 
this reconciliation, brought about by outward concessions. The power 
of the Apostle Paul in establishing the principles of the more expanded 
view of Christianity, and his successful and rapidly extendmg labors 
among .the pagans, which excited the jealousy of the pharisaic party 
among the Jewish Christians, soon caused it to break forth anew. In 
opposition to Paul, whom they refused to acknowledge as an apostle, 
whom they accused of corrupting the doctrines of Christ, arose that 
party of Jewish Christians, — zealots according to the pharisaic spirit, 
—which was not until afterwards distinguished by a common name. 
At the time when this opposition had become most violent, Paul was 
removed from his earthly field of labor. Then followed the conciliating 
element of the Apostle John’s labors in Asia Minor, by which many of 
the points of difficulty were removed ; — but still the opposition, in those 
respects in which it had been most strongly marked, could not be wholly 
suppressed. 

About the middle of the second century we still find, among the 
Christians of Jewish descent, the two parties which existed in the apos- 
tolic age. This is evident from a passage in the dialogue of Justin 
Martyr with Trypho.? Two classes are here mentioned,—they who in. 
their own practice united with the faith in Christ the observance of the 
Mosaic law, but without requiring the same observance of believing 
pagans, whom they acknowledged rather as genuine Christian brethren 
and accounted worthy of all brotherly fellowship, notwithstanding that 
they maintained their original Christian freedom,*—and they who 


1 Following the Pauline train of thought. 
As Christ the risen possesses a life exempt- 
ed from the dominion of nature, from the 
στοιχεῖα τοῦ κοσμοῦ, so too the spiritual 


free, and thenceforth bound to no outward 
circumstances whatever. 

2 See on this subject, my Apostol. Zeital- 
ter, Bd. I. S. 169, ff. 


life of those who are spiritually risen with 
him is exempted from the dominion of na- 
ture, their religion is a religion emancipated 
from the elements of the world, altogether 


8 Ed. Colon. ἢ 266, to which, in many 
respects, important passage, we shall have 
occasion to advert again hereafter. 

* As Justin reports of them in the pas- 


APOSTOLICAL AND HERETICAL. 345 
were not content with observing the Mosaic law themselves, but were 
for forcing the pagan believers universally to the same observance, and 
who refused otherwise to have fellowship with them; thus proceeding 
on the assumption, that the believing pagans, like all others, were un- 
clean, and that without the observance of the Mosaic law no man could 
be just before God.!_ The former were the genuinely apostolic, Jewish 
Christians, who had remained true to the pledge of agreement made at 
Jerusalem ; the latter belonged to that party with whose influence the 
Apostle Paul had so often to struggle among the communities of the 
pagan Christians. 

As the destruction of Jerusalem and the abolition of the Temple- 
worship could not shake the faith of the Jews at large in the perpetual 
validity of their religious laws, so neither can it be said that the at- 
tachment of those Jews to the Mosaic law, who embraced Christianity, 
was thereby diminished. They regarded these events, doubtless, as a 
divine punishment, sent upon the mass of the people, who were hostile 
to Christ, and whose wicked disposition had caused his death; and 
many among them were expecting a glorious restoration of the city and 
of the temple to the faithful of the nation. Those that were not finally 
drawn by their Jewish way of thinking, on which had been merely 
grafted a superficial faith in Jesus as the Messiah, to fall wholly back 
again into Judaism,? — the more genuine class of Jewish Christians, 
who were at Jerusalem at the breaking out of the Roman war, could 
have no sympathy with the fanaticism which this war brought along 
with it; and when reminded of the admonitory, warning and threaten- 
ing words of Christ, could hardly fail to foresee, in the issue of this war, 
the divine punishment of their perverse nation which he had predicted. 
It may have been the case, perhaps, that as the prophetic voice was 
still occasionally heard in the Christian assemblies, some pious men felt 
constrained to warn the assembled communities of the approaching 
destruction, and to call upon them to remove from the midst of the ru- 
ined people, and repair to one of the ten cities in Persea, on the east- 
ern bank of the Jordan, known under the collective name of Decapo- 
lis.2 At a later period this community is said to have returned to 
Jerusalem. Until the time of the emperor Hadrian, it was wholly 
composed of Christians of Jewish descent, who were distinguished from 
pagan: Christians by their strict observance of the Mosaic law; though 


sage above referred to: Αἱροῦνται συζῆν 
τοῖς Χριστιανοῖς καὶ πιστοῖς, μὴ πείϑοντες 
αὐτοὺς μῆτε περιτέμνεσϑαι ὁμοίως αὐτοῖς, 
unre σαββατίζειν, μῆτε ἄλλα ὅσα τοιαῦτά 
ἐστι τηρεῖν. 

1 Justin’s words: ’Edv δὲ οἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ yé- 
νους Tov ὑμετέρου (the race of the Jews) 
πιστεύειν λέγοντες ἐπὶ τοῦτον τὸν Χριστὸν, 
ἐκ παντός κατὰ τὸν διὰ Μωσέως διαταχϑέντα 
νόμον ἀναγκάζωσι ζῆν τοὺς ἐξ ἐϑνῶν πισ- 
τεύοντας ἢ μὴ κοινωνεῖν αὐτοῖς τῆς τοιαύ- 
THC συνδιαγωγῆς αἱρῶνται. 

2 A change very easily accounted for, and 
one which Justin notices in the passage 
above referred to: Τοὺς ὀμολογῆσαντας καὶ 


ἐπιγνόντας τοῦτον εἶναι τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ 
ἡτινιοῦν αἱτίᾳ μεταβάντας ἐπὶ τὴν ἔννομον 
πολιτείαν, ἀρνησαμένους ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ 
Χριστός. 

3 Eusebius, 1]. IIT. 6. 5; Κατά τινα χρησ- 
μὸν τοῖς αὐτόϑι δοκίμοις δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως 
ἐκδοϑέντα. In Epiphanius, (de mensur. et 
pond. c. 15,) an exaggerating tradition has 
already converted this prophetic utterance 
into a revelation delivered by an angel. 
Without doubt, this whole account springs 
from some earlier source ; perhaps a state- 
ment of Hegesippus. We have no suffi- 
cient reason for calling in question its truth. 


844 THE EBIONITES. 


we have no reason to infer from this, that there existed among them no 
other diversities of religious tendency and of religious opinion. Under 
Hadrian a change was for the first time produced by outward causes, 
which led to the substitution of another community of an altered shape 
in place of that original Christian church. That emperor was induced 
by the insurrection of the Jews under Barkochba, to exclude them en- 
tirely from the city of Jerusalem and its circumjacent territory. This 
prohibition must have extended to all native Jews, who had not, by 
their whole manner of life, utterly renounced their nation. The com- 
munity could no longer subsist, then, in its ancient form, in this place. 
Thus there was formed at first in the pagan colonial city, Adlia Capito- 
lina, which had been founded in the place of the ancient Jerusalem, 
a church in which no further trace was to be found of the observance 
of the Mosaic law; in which Christians of pagan descent, and liberal- 
minded Jewish Christians who did not hesitate to put the pagans on an 
equal footing with themselves in respect to all matters of outward life, 
were mingled together. This community had for their presiding elder 
a Christian of pagan descent, whose name was Marcus.! But this 
change had no influence on the other Jewish Christians ; and those who 
perseveringly distinguished themselves, by a strict observance of the 
law, from the Christians of pagan origin, and avoided all intercourse 
with them, would thus naturally become more widely known, as a dis- 
tinct sect by themselves. If the story, already alluded to, concerning 
the return of the original community from Pella to Jerusalem, is a cor- 
rect one, or if a great majority of them, at least, did not remain behind 
at Pella, the event just mentioned would naturally lead those who held 
tenaciously to the Mosaic law, to separate themselves from the mixed 
community and repair once more to Pella, where a strictly Jewish 
Christian church maintained its existence down to the fifth century. 
Now it might easily happen that, from a superficial knowledge or con- 
sideration of the facts, some might be led to place together in the 
same class all these Jewish Christians who agreed in observing the 
Mosaic law, without any regard to the differences existing among them. 
Accordingly, from the time of Irenzeus, who first mentions the name, 
they all came to be designated by the common appellation of Ldionites. 

In respect, first, to the origin and the meaning of this appellation, the 
opinion certainly must be rejected that it is a proper name, derived 
from the founder of the sect. ‘This hypothesis appears first in the 
writings of the inaccurate Tertullian, who, in his ignorance of the He- 
brew, and of the signification of the word in that language, took it for 
a proper name; and as other sects were named after their founders, 
supposed the same must be true of this sect also. Epiphanins, who 
possessed the advantage over Tertullian, it is true, of being acquainted 


1 Eusebius, 1. 1V.c. 6. See also the re- sub legis observatione credebant. Nimirum 
markable words of Sulpicius Severus, who, id, Domino ordinante, dispositum, ut legis 
after citing the prohibition of the Emperor _ servitus a libertate fidei atque ecclesiz tol- 
Hadrian, goes on to say, (hist. sacr. 1. Ic. leretur; where this writer has perhaps at- 
31:) Quod quidem christianz fidei profici- tributed too much importance to the event. 
ebat, quia tum pene omnes Christum Deum 


NAME OF THE EBIONITES. 345 


with the Hebrew language, but was however no less inaccurate, fol- 
lowed the same opinion without further inquiry; although he himself 
proposes another derivation of the word, quite inconsistent with this 
hypothesis, taken from its etymological Hebrew signification, with which 
he was doubtless acquainted. Since the character of the party desig- 
nated by this name was of so general a nature, and the party itself 
embraced in it so many different shades of the Jewish Christian princi- 
ple which they held in common; since, as appears from what has been 
said, such a general ground-tendency as the one denoted by this name 
could hardly fail, in the historical course of development, to pass over 
from Judaism into Christianity, — the origin of this party from any 
single individual should seem to be a thing quite improbable. We 
might suppose, indeed, that this name was applied first to a distinct 
sect belonging to this general class, and founded by a man who had 
some peculiar views of his own; and that, at some later period, it re- 
ceived a more general application. But we have no warrant whatever 
for any such supposition. No tradition respecting the founder of a sect 
by the name of Ebion is supported on grounds of authentic history. 
The more accurately informed authorities, such as Irenzeus and Origen, 
nowhere mention such a person; and all that we find anywhere said 
respecting the pretended Ebion, is of that vague and indefinite char- 
acter which sounds suspicious. Origen was the first to give the correct 
derivation of this name, from the Hebrew word 173, poor. These 
Jewish Christians, then, were called the poor; but the question now 
arises, in what sense was this appellation originally applied to them? 
And with this is connected another, — by whom first was this appellation 
given them? Upon the resolution of these questions it must depend, 
whether the appellation is to be understood as a term of reproach or of 
praise. Now it appears evident, it 18 true, from an explanation which 
Epiphanius cites from the mouths of the very people in question,! that, 
in his time, the Ebionites regarded it as an epithet which they had 
bestowed on themselves. But although the Hbionites did actually ap- 
propriate and sanction the name, it might nevertheless be true and 
wholly consistent with this fact, that the epithet was originally bestowed 
on them by their adversaries; while they might afterwards apply it to 
themselves, either in the same or a different sense; since what was 
considered by their opponents a term of reproach, might be regarded, 
from their own point of view, as an honorable title. 

Origen, who, as we have said, first presented the correct explanation 
of the word, applies the designation, “ poor,” to the meagre religious 
system, the poverty of faith, that characterized this party.? In this 
sense, the term may have been applied to them by pagan Christians ; 
but it cannot be supposed that pagan Christians would have chosen a 
Hebrew word to express this character. It is far more natural to sup- 


1 Heres. 30. nation; he merely alludes, after his usual 

2 Orig. in Matth. T. XVI.c. 12: Τῷ ἐβι- way, to the meaning of the name. Yet, 
ὠνεΐῳ καὶ πτωχεύοντι περὶ τὴν εἰς Ἰησοῦν (c. Cels.1. 11. c.1,) he says expressly: ’E7o- 
πίστιν. It was hardly Origen’s intention νύυμοι τῆς κατὰ τὴν δωδοχὸν πτωχείας τοῦ 
in this place, to give an etymological expla- voyov. 


346 THE EBIONITES. 

pose that the inventors of this name were Jews; and at the particular 
position of these Jews, it might be used and understood to denote a 
poor, meagre way of thinking, especially if this notion be defined ac- 
cording to the acute and ingenious suggestion of a distinguished mod- 
ern inquirer in this department of learning ;! namely, that in the mouth 
of those Jews who were expecting a Messiah m visible glory, it would 
designate such as could believe in a poor, abject, crucified Messiah, 
like Jesus. Yet even this explanation, taken by itself, seems not the 
most simple and natural; and, indeed, the author of it himself joins it 
with the other, about to be mentioned. What objection is there to under- 
stand this word in the literal and obvious sense, as a designation of the 
poorer class among the people of the nation? We know, in fact, what 
reproach was cast upon the Christian faith by the hierarchical party 
among the Jews, because none but those belonging to the ignorant and 
poorer class of the people would openly profess it, (John 7: 49;) and 
the like objection was made to Christianity by the pagans.2 Thus it 
may be explained, how the Christians among the Jews came to be de- 
signated as the poor; and this name, which was employed by them to 
designate the Christians generally, would afterwards naturally be em- 
ployed by the pagan Christians, without any knowledge of the meaning 
of the name, to designate that portion of believers who were distin- 
guished from the rest by their observance of the Mosaic law. When 
we observe that the same thing happened in the case of another name 
which was originally a common appellation for all Christians among the 
Jews, the name ‘“‘ Nazarenes,” it may serve to confirm the above sup- 
position. 

When Ebionitism was looked at as it appeared in its extreme form, 
and as it may have been exhibited among the great mass of believing 
Jews, it might be said of it, perhaps with justice, as Origen expresses 
himself,? that there was little to distinguish its adherents from the com- 
mon Jews, who were fettered to the mere letter. We see in them the 
natural descendants of those fierce antagonists of the Apostle Paul, 
who never ceased to calumniate him as an apostate from the law. 
They disseminated false and malicious reports respecting the life of this 
apostle, in order to attribute his abandonment of Judaism to unworthy 
motives. Later Ebionites at least do not scruple to assert, that he was 
a proselyte of heathenish descent.° In Christianity, they saw at best 
but a perfecting of Judaism by the addition of a few isolated precepts ; 
and it was in this sense, probably, they explained to themselves, what 
is to be rightly understood only in its connection with the whole of 


1 Dr. Gieseler in the Archiv fiir alte und 
neue Kirchengeschichte von Staudlin und 
Tzschirner, Bd. 1V., 2tes Stiick, S. 307. 

2 See the first section. 

8In Matth. T. XI. § 12: Of σωματικοὶ 
Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ὀλίγῳ διαφέροντες αὐτῶν 
"EBiwrvaiot. 

4 Origen, (Hom. XVIII. in Jerem. ὁ 12,) 
says: Kai μέχρι viv ᾿Εβιωναῖοι τύπτουσι 
τὸν ἀπόστολον ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγοις δυσ- 
φήμοις. 


5 Vid. Epiphan. heeres. 80, § 25. Perhaps 
these Ebionites followed, in this respect also, 
the example of their predecessors, with 
whom Paul had to contend; perhaps it is 
to some such malicious perversion of facts 
this apostle has reference, when, in speaking 
of various events in his earlier life, he pro- 
tests to the truth of what he utters, and 
when he places so much emphasis on the 
fact of his Jewish origin, and his education 
in the Pharisaic schools. 


DOCTRINES OF THE EBIONITES. 347 
Christianity, the sermon on the Mount. Their views respecting the 
work and character of Christ, the essence of Christianity, and the per- 
son of its author, are closely connected with each other. 

In both respects, the Ebionites seem to have remained within the 
contracted range of the ordinary Jewish point of view. As they could 
not understand the specific difference between Judaism and Christian- 
ity, so neither could they understand what it was, that distinguished 
the author of Christianity from Moses and the Prophets, and from the 
founders of other religions. Looking upon him not as the Redeemer 
of all mankind, by whom every other means of justification and expia- 
tion had been rendered null and superfluous, not as the author of a new 
creation of the divine life, but only as the supreme Law-giver, Teacher 
and King, thev did not feel themselves constrained to admit any higher ἢ 
views of Christ’s person. They were precluded, therefore, on this side, 
from the possibility of understanding his discourses. ‘They held firmly 
to the chasm, not to be filled up, betwixt God and his creation, which 
the stern monotheistic system of legal Judaism taught in opposition to 
the polytheistic and pantheistic principles of nature-religion. To Jesus 
they simply transferred the notion of the Messiah which most widely 
prevailed among the Jews, and most perfectly agreed with this common 
principle of the Jewish system,—that he was a man distinguished 
above all others for legal piety, — who, for this very reason, was deemed 
worthy of being chosen as the Messiah, —who knew nothing at all of any 
special call to the Messiahship, as others, too, were far from divining any 
such thing of him, until Elias re-appeared, and revealed to him and to 
others his election to the high office, when he was filled with divine 
power for the exercise of his mission as the Messiah, and thus enabled 
to work miracles! What was generally believed of the Elias, these 
Ebionites transferred to John the Baptist. It was first when Jesus 
came, with all the others, to John, to receive baptism from him, that 
the miraculous phenomenon occurred, by which the fact of his election 
to the Messiahship was revealed, and along with which, the divine 
power which he required in order to fulfil his mission, descended on 
him. An abrupt antithesis was thus formed between two portions of the 
life of Jesus, — the period before and that after his consecration to the 
Messiahship ; so that while the mere human nature, to the entire exclu- 
sion of everything supernatural, was placed in the first portion, the 
sudden entrance of the supernatural and sensuously objective element 
was made prominent in the event which took place at the very begin- 
ning of the second portion. The fact of Christ’s supernatural birth 
was particularly opposed to this view of the matter; and indeed this 
fact was directly at variance with that Jewish ground of doctrine gen- 
erally, wearing to the Jews a certain pagan aspect, and being placed 
by them in the same class with the heathen myths concerning the sons 


1The Jew Trypho in Justin,— Dial. c. κατηξιῶσϑαι τοῦ ἐκλεγῆναι εἰς Χριστόν. 
Tryph. f. 291, ed. Colon. —expresses this Respecting the appearance of Elias, where- 
common Jewish point of view, where he by the Messiah was first to be made known 
requires of the Christians to prove concern- as such to himself and to others, see f. 268 
ing Jesus: Ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστὸς, διὰ compared with 336. 
τὸ ἐννόμως καὶ τελείως πολιτεύεσϑαι αὐτὸν 


348 DIFFERENT KINDS OF EBIONITES. 
of the gods.1 Even in the well known passage of the Tth chapter of 
Isaiah, the Ebionites could not find announced the birth from a virgin. 
In the Ebionitie revision of the gospel history, which sprang from one 
of the main branches to be traced back to the Apostle Matthew, the 
appearance at Christ’s baptism is represented as an altogether outward, 
sensible event, connected with the descent of the Holy Ghost upon 
Christ ; and the appearance is supposed to be designed as well to lead 
himself to the consciousness of his call to the Messiahship, as to reveal 
this fact to the Baptist. This phenomenon is decked out with miracu- 
lous events; light shone over the place, fire burst forth from the river 
Jordan.? Jerusalem, in the estimation of the Ebionites, was still the 
city of God, the central point of the Theocracy.* They lived in expect- 
ation of Christ’s speedy return, to restore this city of God, and to re- 
establish the Theocracy there in surpassing splendor. All the Jewish 
notions respecting the millenial kingdom of the Messiah they transferred 
to this event.° | 

We have remarked already, that among the Hbionites, if we consider 
this name as a general appellation for Jewish Christians, there must 
have existed different forms and shades of opinion, arising out of the 
various combination of Jewish and Christian pots of view. Irenzus 
was not aware of the existence of any such differences. But Origen, 
who was more skilled in the accurate investigation of relationships and 
differences, and who had himself been a longer time resident in Pales- 
tine, distinguishes two classes of Ebionites, a class which denied the 
supernatural birth of Jesus, and another which admitted it.6 If we 
duly consider how obstinately the ordinary Jewish spirit must have 
struggled against the acknowledgment of such a fact, we must conclude 
from Origen’s statement, that connected with this deviation from the 
common bent of the Jewish mind, there were also other differences ; 
that those who could be induced to admit the fact above mentioned, 
must have been more deeply affected by the spirit of the new creation. 
It seems implied that they did not, like the others, in accordance with 
the common Jewish views, separate the divine from the human nature 


1 See what the Jew Tryphon, (in Justin 
M. f. 291,) says against this doctrine: M7 
τερατολογεῖν τολμᾶτε, ὅπως μῆτε ὁμοίως 
τοῖς Ἕλλησι μωραίνειν ἐλέγχησϑε. 

2 The position assumed by the Ebionites 
led to a dispute about the interpretation of 
this and several other prophetic passages. 
Where men were usually satisfied by alle- 
gorical interpretation, the Ebionites, follow- 
ing the Jewish doctrines, may have entered 
more deeply into the use of language, into 
the connection, and the historical allusions, 
and may have sought to show how many 
things which were referred by Christian 
teachers to the history of Christ, had been 
already accomplished in the facts and ap- 
pearances of earlier history. We may hence 
explain, perhaps, what Irenzeus objects to 
them, (lib. I. c. 26:) Que autem sunt pro- 
phetica, curiosius (περιεργοτέρως) exponere 
nituntur. 


8 See the fragment of the gospel of the 
Hebrews, in Epiphan. Heres 30, § 13, and 
Justin. Dial. ο. Tryph. f. 315, ed. Colon. 

4 Hierosolymam adorant, quasi domus sit 
Dei. Iren. 1, I. c. 26, § 2. 

5 See, in the Jewish-Christian work, the 
Testament of the twelve patriarchs, (Tes- 
tament IV. of Judah, § 23,) the return of 
the scattered Jews from their captivity; and 
in Testament VII. of Dan. § 5: “Jerusa- . 
lem shall then suffer desolation no more, 
and Israel no more be carried into captivi- 
ty; for the Lord shall dwell in the midst of 
Jerusalem, and walk with men.” 

6 Orig. c. Cels. 1. V. e. 61, where he em- 
ploys the name Ebionites to designate gen- 
erally all Jewish Christians observing the 
Mosaic law: Οἱ διττοὶ ᾿Εβιωναῖοι, ἤτοι ἐκ 
παρϑένου ὁμολογοῦντες, ὁμοίως ἡμῖν, τὸν 
Ἰησοῦν, ἢ οὐχ’ οὕτω γεγεννῆσϑαι, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς 
τοὺς λοιποὺς ἀνϑρώπους. 


THE NAZARENES. 349 


in Christ, and suppose merely a sudden commencement of the actuat- 
ing power of the Holy Spirit upon him, but that they conceived of a 
certain codperation of the divine and human elements in Christ, where- 
by he differed in kind from other prophets, — a certain original actua- 
tion of the divine Spirit, under whose influences the human nature in 
Christ began as well as continued to develope itself. Being less fettered 
in this respect by the Jewish spirit, they may have been so much the 
more free also in their judgment respecting the continued obligation of 
the Mosaic law, insomuch as to make a distinction between the position 
of the native Jews and that of believers from among the Gentiles. 
Thus we perceive that they must have been the same Jewish Christians, 
followers of the apostolic principles, whom we saw described by Justin 
Martyr, as a class of these latter that still remained. To the same class 
belonged also the people about whom Jerome took pains to obtain more 
accurate information, during his residence in those countries, near the 
close of the fourth century. They then dwelt at Beroea, in Syria,} 
and passed by the name of Nazarenes. This name, like that of the 
Ebionites, was in the first place, perhaps, a common appellation for all 
Christians among the Jews, so called as sects that sprang out of Naza- 
reth, and still more common than the former one, as appears from Acts 
24: 5, and from the fact that in still later times all Christians were 
condemned under this name in the Jewish synagogues.” 

The distinctive trait of these Nazarenes was their decided anti- 
pharisaic tendency. They denounced the maxims of the scribes and 
Pharisees, who caused the people to err by their traditions, and who 
had hindered them from believing in Jesus.? In explaining Isaiah 8: 
23, (9: 1,) they held, that by the preaching of Christ in Galilee, the 
Jews had been first delivered from the errors of the Scribes and Phar- 
isees, and from the burthensome yoke of the Jewish traditions ; and 
they interpreted chaper 9: 1, (9: 2,) as referring to the preaching 
of the gospel, by the Apostle Paul, to all pagan nations. Thus it is 
clear, that they differed entirely from those Ebionites who were hostile 
to this apostle ; that they acknowledged his call to be an apostle to the 
Gentiles, and so were not disposed to enforce on these latter the ob- 
servance of the Mosaic law. Accordingly we find that Jerome actu- 
ally makes a distinction between the Ebionites and the Ebionitarum 
socii, who considered all this to be permanently obligatory only on such 
as had descended from a Jewish stock. They lamented the condition 
of their unbelieving people, and earnestly longed for the time when 
these also should turn to believe in the Lord and in his apostles. Then 
they would put aside all their idols, which had led them into the devi- 
ous ways of sin. Then every obstacle which Satan had set up to hin- 
der the progress of God’s kingdom, would be removed, not by human 
might, but by the power of God; and all who had been hitherto trust- 


1 Vid. Hieronym. de viris illustrib. ο. 3. IX. c. 29, v. 18, ed. Vallarsi. T. IV. p. 398. 
2 Ejusd. commentar. in Isai. 1, 11. c. 5 to 4See Jerome’s remarks on those pas- 
5, 18. sages, l. 6. p. 130, ed. Vallarsi. 
8 Vid. Hieronym. commentar. in Isai. 1. L,,.c J. 1.¢. I, p. 23. 


VOL. I. 30 


350 THE NAZARENES. 
ing to their own wisdom, would become converted to the Lord. They 
believed that they found this promised in Isaiah 21: 7, 8.1 

The view of Christ which, as we were led to suppose, prevailed 
among those whom Origen refers to the second class of Ebionites, we 
should, perhaps, be warranted to ascribe also to these Nazarenes ; for that 
they did not suppose the divine element in Christ had its first begin- 
ning with his inauguration into the Messiahship, seems evident from 
the fact, that the recension of the Hebrew gospel which Jerome received 
from them and translated into Latin, did not, like the gospel of the 
other party, commence with the inauguration of Christ into his office as 
Messiah, by John the Baptist, but had adopted besides the first chap- 
ters, which treat of the birth of Christ.2 He is described by them as 
the one towards whom the progressive movement of the Theocracy 
tended from the beginning ;—as the end and aim of all the earlier 
divine revelations. In him, the Holy Spirit, from whom, down to this 
time, only isolated revelations and excitations had proceeded, first found 
an abiding place of rest, a permanent abode. Inasmuch as the Holy 
Spirit was the productive principle of his entire nature, and it was first 
from him that the efficiency of the Spirit, in shaping the entire life of 
humanity and forming other organs of action, could proceed, he is 
ealled the First born of the Holy Spirit ; —- as the Holy Spirit is also 
denominated his Mother. Where this gospel describes how the whole 
fountain of the Holy Spirit descended on Christ at his baptism and 
abode permanently with him, the following words of salutation are as- 
cribed to the former: ‘“‘ My Son, in all the prophets I expected thee, 
that thou shouldest come, and I might find in thee a place of rest; for 
thou art my resting place, thou art my first born Son, who reignest for- 
ever.” * Assuredly, in this representation, we perceive a more pro- 
found Christian consciousness, rismg above the limited views of the 
common Ebionitism. And the appellation, given to the Holy Spirit, of 
Mother of Christ, may perhaps, in some way, stand connected with the 
idea of his supernatural generation. 

It appears evident, from what has been said, that although sternly 
pronounced Ebionitism excluded all speculations concerning the divine 


1 See Jerome’s remarks on this passage, 
lc. p. 425. In the edition of Martianay, 
T. I1I.—the places p. 79, 83, 250 and 261. 

2 As appears evident from Jerome’s com- 
mentary on the gospel of Matthew, chapter 
2d, at the beginning; where by the ipsunt 
hebraicum is doubtless to be understood, 
according to the connection, the Hebrew 
gospel of the Nazarenes;—also from the 
words which he cites from this gospel in his 
work de viris illustrib. ο. 3. 

8 See the passages cited by Jerome, in 
Micham 1. II. c. 7, T. VI. p. 520; and by 
Origen, T. II. Joh. § 6, in which Christ says : 
"Ape ἔλαβέ με ἣ μήτηρ μου, τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦ- 
μα, ἐν μιᾷ τῶν τριχῶν μου, καὶ ἀπένεγκέ με 
εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ μέγα Θαβώρ; where it may be 
a question, whether the thought is merely 
expressed in a poetic form, that Christ re- 


paired thither by the impulse of the Holy 
Spirit, which animated him in all things, or 
whether a supernatural conveyance is meant. 
That the passage is to be understood in the 
former way, and not literally, appears prob- 
able when we compare it with the similar 
figurative modes of expression in an orien- 
tal writer. In Taberistanensis annales re- 
gum atque legatorum Dei, Vol. II. Pars I. 
Gryph., 1835, page 103, it is said by those 
whom God had converted from being ene- 
mies of Mahomet into zealous advocates of 
his cause, (in Kosegarten’s Latin transla- 
tion from the Arabic original :) “ Denique 
Deus cordibus cincinnisque nostris prehen- 
sis, per eum in viam rectam ita nos direxit, 
ut eum sequeremur.” 

4 Vid. Hieronym. in Isai. 1. IV. ¢. 11. T. 
IV. p. 156. 


RELATIONS OF EBIONITISM. 3851 


nature in Christ, yet still, where it assumed a milder and more liberal 
form, as it did in the case we have just described, such speculations 
might perhaps also be united with it. Again, we must not forget, — 
what we have more carefully considered in the general introduc- 
tion, — that, at this period, Judaism had become decomposed into 
manifold and even conflicting elements;— and these had become 
blended with many tendencies foreign from original J udaism. These, 
now, might easily be attracted also by Christianity, and might seek to 
appropriate it to themselves, after their own way. If, at first, phari- 
saic views became mixed with the apprehension of Christianity, they 
were afterwards followed by such as were more nearly related to Esse- 
nism, or to the system of the Alexandrian Jews. The Apostle Paul 
having been suddenly removed from the circle of labors, m which his 
commanding influence opposed an invincible bulwark to all corruptions 
of Christian truth, there began to be formed, first in Asia Minor, such 
mixtures of doctrine, the earliest example of which we find in the 
church of Colosse, in Phrygia. Similar appearances we recognize once 
more ina great deal which Epiphanius embraces under the general 
name of Ebionitism ;— appearances which are wholly distinct from the 
Ebionitism that sprang out.of the common Pharisaic elements, and the 
origin of which would assuredly carry us back to an earlier period than 
that in which Epiphanius wrote. Among the Ebionites described by 
Epiphanius, there were those who started from that common Ebionitic 
view of Jesus as a man, first raised to the dignity of Messiah on ac- 
count of his legal piety ---- but then, whilst others affirmed, that the 
whole power of the Holy Spirit descended on him at his consecration 
to the Messiahship by the baptism of John, they substituted, in place of 
the Holy Spirit, the highest of the spirits created by God, — a spirit 
exalted above all the angels,!— and the latter was then considered the 
true revealer of God, the Messiah in the highest sense. By means of 
such a separation of the divine and human natures in Christ, the Ebio- 
nitic element might pass over to the Gnostic. Others placed in con- 
nection with Christianity, that idea which exhibits itself to us under so 
many different forms, on which sometimes the Oriental, sometimes the 
Hellenic stamp predominates, the idea of a heavenly man, Adam Kad- 
mon, the primal man. The Spirit, which is the pure efflux of the di- 
vine Spirit, which appeared first in Adam and afterwards returned 
under manifold shapes, to reveal God to his fallen children, — this 
same Spirit re-appeared in Christ, to deliver the last revelation to hu- 
manity. 

We should not be warranted to suppose, in the case of all the ten- 
dencies which were designated under the common name of Ebionitism, 
the same degree of adhesion to the law of Moses. There had, in truth, 
been evolved among the Jews themselves, out of the opposition to the 
traditional element of Pharisaism, as we saw in the example of Saddu- 


1 50 says Epiphanius: Οὐ φάσκουσιν ἐκ πεποιημένων. So Philo describes the Lo- 
ϑεοῦ πατρὸς αὐτὸν γεγενῆσϑαι, ἀλλά ἐκτίσ- gos as an dpyayyeAoc. Cons. the Jewish 
Ba, ὡς ἕνα τῶν ἀρχαγγέλων, μείζονα δὲ apocryphal work, Ἰωσὴφ προσευχή : Tpwrd- 
αὐτῶν ὄντα, αὐτὸν δὲ κυριεύειν τῶν ἀγγέ- γονος παντὸς ζώου ζωοὐμένου ὑπὸ ϑεοῦ. 
λων καὶ πάντων ὑπὸ τοῦ παντοκράτορος 


902 RELATIONS OF EBIONITISM. 

ceism, tendencies whose aim was to distinguish the original religion of 
Moses from later additions. ‘This distinction, however, might assume 
different forms, as it happened to proceed from different tendencies of 
mind. An entirely different character from that which it presented among 
the Sadducees, it must have assumed in those cases where it started 
from some mystico-ascetic bias, which, alien from the original Hebraism, 
had formed itself out of that which was the essential element of Juda- 
ism as opposed to Pharisaism and Sadduceism, and under the influence 
of an Oriental spirit. Out of this sprung next the idea of a more spirit- 
ual, primitive religion, which had been corrupted at some later period 
by the importation of foreign elements ; and among these corruptions 
was reckoned everything that was at variance with this mystico-ascetic 
tendency. ‘There was an Ebionite sect, as we learn from Epiphanius,} 
which, rejecting as well the eating of flesh as the offerings of animals, 
explained the entire sacrificial worship as a thing foreign from primitive 
Judaism, and as a corruption. Christianity, contemplated from this 
point of view, must have been considered as a restoration of the origi- 
nal Judaism. rom this sect proceeds a book under the name of Jacob, 
ἀναβαϑμοὶ Ἰακώβου, Steps of Jacob, (probably intended to denote the steps 
of initiation, with reference to the true Gnogis,) in which the patriarch 
is introduced discoursing against the sacrificial and Temple worship. 
With this ascetic tendency stood connected the rule which required a 
total renunciation of earthly goods, complete poverty, as an essential 
part of religious perfection ; — whether such a tendency had already, 
before the appearance of Christianity, sprung up among the Jews, in 
opposition to the worldly spirit in Judaism,—just as the societies of 
spiritual paupers (the apostolici, the pauperes de Lugduno) sprung up, 
during the middle age, from an opposition of this sort, — or whether 
this tendency was first called forth by a partial and imperfect appre- 
hension of the Christian principle.2 The Jewish spirit— although this 
was foreign from the original Hebraism — yet nevertheless manifested 
itself in the whole outward character which it gave to the opposition 
betwixt the kingdom of the Messiah and the kingdom of Satan, as if 
the two were outwardly divided in the world, and the present earthly 
world belonged wholly to Satan, whilst the future had been committed 
to Christ. Hence those who would participate in the future kingdom 
of the Messiah, must look upon all the goods of this world as alien 
from them, and renounce every earthly possession. ‘The members of 
this sect were willing to call themselves Ebionites, as the poor in spirit, 
and they traced back this inherited name to the circumstance, that their 
fathers, who formed the first church at Jerusalem, renounced all rights 
of private property, and lived in an unconditional community of goods.° 


1 Whether, as Epiphanius alleges, a per- 
son otherwise unknown, by the name of 
Elxai, had so great influence in bringing 
about this modification of Ebionitism, we 
must leave undetermined. In the forma- 
tion of a religious tendency of this kind, 
very little depends, in any case, on the per- 
sonality of an individual. 

2 See above, page 276. 


8 This laudatory sense of the epithet 
1)", is referred to also in the words of 


Testamentum VII. in the Testaments of 
the twelve patriarchs, (c. 5,) where it is said 
respecting the form of government in the 
perfected kingdom of the Messiah: “γιὸς 
ἸΙσραὴλ βασιλεύων ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἐν ταπεινώ- 
σει καὶ ἐν πτωχείᾳ. 


THE CLEMENTINES. 353 
The question, whether this is the correct explanation of the name, de- 
pends on another, whether the name was employed originally to desig- 
nate only a smaller portion of the Ebionites, and afterwards obtained a 
more general application, or whether that more general application, of 
which we have spoken, was the earlier one, and this interpretation of it 
first introduced at the stage of the above described peculiar modifica- 
tion of the Ebionite spirit. 

But with this ascetic tendency, however, we see a reaction of the 
original Hebraism manifesting itself in the fact, that this sect combat- 
ted the over-valuation of celibacy; that they were inclined to prefer 
early marriage, according to the prevalent custom of the Jews, as being 
ἃ preservative against unchastity. This party must therefore have been 
polemically opposed to those ascetic tendencies in the Christian church 
which favored the life of celibacy.1 

The peculiar Ebionitic tendency here described,? appears in a very 
remarkable apocryphal book, called the Clementines, or the eighteen 
Homilies,’ in which, as it is pretended, Clement, descended from a noble 
family in Rome, and afterwards bishop of the church in that city, gives 
an account of his conversion and of the discourses and disputes of the 
Apostle Peter.* It is somewhat difficult, indeed, to separate here what 
belongs to the general tendency of that particular sect of the Ebionites 
which, we last described, and that which must be reckoned to the pecu- 
liarities of the author, as they developed themselves amid the conflict- 
ing opinions of the second century. At all events, it may be easily 
seen, how a religious tendency and a work of this description might be 
called forth in some connection with these conflicting opinions. When 
the Jews, Judaizing Christians and Christians of pagan descent were 
standing in stern opposition to each other, when Judaism, attacked in 
various ways by the Gnostics, was placed in the most unfavorable light, 
the thought occurred to some individual of this particular Ebionitic ten- 
dency, to compose a work that might serve to reconcile those opposite 
views, — a work of an apologetic and conciliatory tendency, —a notice- 
able phenomenon in the ferment of that chaotic period, to which a new 
breath of life, setting everything in motion, had been communicated by 
Christianity, and in which the most heterogeneous elements could be 
fused together, what was really profound meeting and mingling with 
what was altogether fantastic. The fundamental idea of the apologetic 
and conciliatory aims of this work, is the idea of a simple and original 


1 So we may remark a similar opposition, 
proceeding from the same spiritual bent, 
among the Zabians, or disciples of John. 

2 Epiphanius speaks of these Ebionites 
as a party still existing in his own time. 
It is certain that he had derived the inform- 
ation he gives us concerning them, partly 
from his own personal intercourse with the 
sect, and partly from other works of theirs 
besides the Clementines. The Clementines 
presuppose the existence of such a sect, — 
not that the writer of that work should be 
regarded as the author of such a system. 

8 'Ομελίαι. 

90" 


41 cannot deny myself the pleasure of 
directing the attention of the theological 
public to a work which we are soon to ex- 
pect from one of the most distinguished 
of our young theologians, the candidate 
Adolph Schliemann of Rostock, — contain- 
ing a thorough investigation into the ori- 
gin, the end, the peculiar religious bent of 
mind, and the composition of this remarka- 
ble book; and intended also to embrace a 
complete critical examination of all that 
has been said till now on this subject, which 
of late has been so much discussed. 


304 THE CLEMENTINES. 

religion, proceeding from divine revelation, as the common foundation 
of Judaism and Christianity. The supranaturalist element of Judaism 
is here presented in peculiar strength. In contemplating so many 
restless spirits, ever on the search for truth and tortured with doubts,} 
so many conflicting systems of the philosophers, the author is con- 
vinced of -the necessity of a divine revelation ; without which, man is 
certain of nothing but the most general principles of morality, — the 
consciousness that, as no one is willing to suffer wrong from others, so no 
one should do wrong to others. Whoever seeks the truth, evinces by 
this very fact, that he is in need of some higher source, from which to 
derive the knowledge of it. He needs a criterion to enable him to dis- 
tinguish the truth; he holds that to be true which flatters his mclina- 
tions: — hence so many opposite systems. ‘‘ He only who is under no 
necessity of seeking the truth, he who has no doubts, he who knows the 
truth by means of a higher spirit dwelling within himself, which is su- 
perior to all uncertainty and all doubt, obtains the knowledge of the 
truth, and can reveal it to others.”” Thus the author arrives at the 
conception of the true prophet, from whose revelations all religious truth 
is to be derived.? “ Looking away from all others, men should entrust 
themselves to the prophet of truth alone, whom all, however ignorant 
they may be, can know as a prophet. God, who provides for the neces- 
sities of all, has made it easy for all, among both Greeks and _barbari- 
ans, to recognize the person of such a revealer.’”’ ‘The first prophet 
was Adam, in whom, if in any one, formed as he was immediately by 
the creative hand of God, that which is the immediate efflux of the di- 
vine Spirit, dwelt.”” The doctrine of the fall of the first man, is one 
which the author of the Clementines felt constrained to combat,‘ as 
blasphemy against God.® ‘On the man created after his own image, 
God, the alone good, bestowed everything. Full of the divinity of his 
Creator, and as a true prophet knowing all things, he revealed to his 
children an eternal law, which has neither been destroyed by wars, nor 
corrupted by godless power, nor hidden in any particular place, but 
may be read of all men.”® In reference to this general revelation of 
God, it was consistent with the system, in the Clementines to affirm, 
‘“‘that the appearance neither of Jesus, nor of Moses, would have been 
necessary, if men had been willing, of themselves, to come to the 


1 See Vol. I. p. 8. 

2Hom. 11. ο. 6: ᾿Αληϑείας κρατεῖν οὐ 
δυνατὸς ἔσται, πλὴν πολιτείας μόνης, καὶ 
ταῦτα ἐκείνης τῆς διὰ τὸ εὔλογον γνωρισϑῆ- 
vat δυναμένης, ἥτις ἑκάστῳ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ϑέ- 
Aew ἀδικεῖσϑαι, τοῦ μὴ δεῖν ἄλλον ἀδικεῖν 
τὴν γνῶσιν παρίστησιν. 

8 Hom. IL. c. 9. 

4 Hom. III. ο. 20 and 42. 

5 We should have better means of judg- 
ing in what sort ef connection this view 
stood with earlier Jewish doctrines, if a 
Jewish work were made known, which has 
been cited by Eisenmenger, (Theil. I. Kap. 
8, 5. 336:) DIX NADI, the purity, mnocence 


of Adam, in which it was likewise asserted, 
that Adam never sinned. 

6 Hom. VIII. c. 10: Νόμον αἰώνιον ὥρι- 
σεν, ὅλοις, (perhaps we should read ὅλως,) 
μῆτε ὑπὸ πολέμων ἐμπρησϑῆναι δυνάμενον, 
μηδ᾽ ὑπὸ ἀσεβοῦς τινὸς ὑπονοϑευόμενον, 
μῆτε ἑνὶ τόπῳ ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ἀλλὰ πᾶσιν 
ἀναγνωσθῆναι δυνάμενον. Without doubt 
it was the author's design to oppose this 
original, universal, eternal law, springing 
from the revelation of God’s Spirit in the 
first man, to the Mosaic law recorded in 
the letter of scripture, which, as he endeay- 
ors to show in this work, must be liable to 
all those defects from which that higher 
law was exempt. 


THE CLEMENTINES. 355 


knowledge of what is right, (of what they must do, in order to obtain 
God’s favor; for everything depends on works.’) “ But since this 
original revelation, which should have been transmitted, by the living 
word, from generation to generation, was corrupted over and over by 
impure additions, proceeding from an evil principle, (a notion which in 
this book stands closely connected with its pervading doctrine, concern- 
ing the antithesis of the good and the evil principle in the whole history 
of the world,) new revelations were requisite to counteract these cor- 
ruptions, and restore the matter of that original revelation ; and it was 
always that primal Spirit of humanity, the Spirit of God in Adam, 
which, in manifold forms, and under various names, re-appeared ; 2? — 
where we have presented that view of the matter, — falling in with the 
eclectic bent of the period, but im the East ever recurring from the 
oldest time, — which regarded all religions as different forms of the 
manifestation of one divine principle, or of one fundamental truth. 
Thus, Moses constitutes one of these forms of manifestation; and the 
religious law proceeding from him is one of the new revelations, intend- 
ed to restore the primitive truth. The author of the Clementines joined 
himself to that party of the Jews who exalted the Pentateuch above 
all the other books of the Old Testament. The Pentateuch alone passed 
with him as a book coming from divine revelation ; yet he was far from 
acknowleding it as such in its whole extent. We see in him the first 
who disputed the genumeness of the Pentateuch,— being in this, as in 
many other respects, a forerunner of far later appearances; being the 
first, indeed, who availed himself of many of the arguments, which 
were afterwards again brought forward, independently of him, by later 
disputers of the genuineness of this work. He maintained, for instance, 
that the Mosaic doctrine, which was to be transmitted only by the living 
word, was re-written many times over; and that, until the Pentateuch 
reached its latest form, various foreign elements, conflicting with the 
truth revealed by Moses, were introduced, through the influence of the 
principle which ever seeks to corrupt the revelation of the godlike. 
Thus he could explain away as interpolations everything which contra- 
dicted his own ascetic tendency, and which was made use of against it 
by the opponents of Judaism among the pagans and the Gnostics. In 
those cases where the Jewish theologians of the Alexandrian school 
sought to relieve a difficulty by explaining that the letter was the mere 
envelope of an idea allegorically represented, the author of the Clem- 
entines would remove such a stone of stumbling entirely away, by the 
application of his expurgatory criticism. Thus he was forced to do by 
his chosen position ; for he was opposed to all allegorical shifts. He 
required of the prophet, that he should express everything clearly ; 
withort ambiguity ; simply and comprehensively. Such, as it appeared 
to him, was the character of the discourses of Christ? — though for 


- 1Hom. VIII. ¢.5: Οὔτε γὰρ ἂν Μωῦσέ- ἅμα τοῖς ὀνόμασιν μορφὰς ἀλλάσσων, τὸν 
ως, οὔτε τῆς τοῦ Ἰησοῦ παρουσίας χρεία ἦν, αἰῶνα τρέχει. 
εἴπερ ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὸ εὔλογον νοεῖν ἐβού- 8 Hom. III. c. 26: Ῥητὰ προφητεύει, σα- 
TO. φῆ λέγει. 
2 Hom. III. ο. 20: Ὃς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αἰῶνος, 


356 THE CLEMENTINES. 


the rest, he indulges himself in extremely violent and tortuous inter- 
pretations, with a view to favor his own peculiar opinions. 

Since the author of the Clementines required of the prophet, that he 
should announce the truth in calmness of spirit, and in simple, clear, and 
unambiguous language, with this requisition must correspond also the 
notion he formed to himself of inspiration, and of the prophet’s mental 
state. He rejected the Platonic notion of an ἐνθουσιασμός corresponding 
to the μανία, ---- of an ecstatic state of the prophet, such as occurs in the 
Jewish theology of the Alexandrian school, and lies at bottom of the 
legend respecting the origin of the Alexandrian version. In the case 
of the true prophet, he would not allow that there was any such state 
of ecstasy, in which, borne onward by the might of a higher actuating 
spirit, the prophet announced greater things than he could himself com- 
prehend. Such a state, he supposed, did not agree with the nature of 
the divine Spirit, — for this is a Spirit of quiet and of order, — but 
corresponded to the character of the demoniacal spirit, which is a spirit 
of confusion. Such states as might occur in pagan divination, and at 
the pagan oracles, ought not to be transferred to the true prophet. If 
@ person is impelled, sometimes by this and at other times by that spirit, 
announces sometimes what the divine Spirit, and at other times what 
his own spirit suggests to him, then the criterion is wanting, by which 
to separate, in his discourse, the true from the false. The prophet, 
who appeared for the restoration of the true religion, and from whom 
men were to learn to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, in 
the earlier records of religion, would himself make it necessary to re- 
peat the same separation over again. The author of the Clementines 
had a true perception of the fact, that nothing analogous to the ecstasy 
is to be observed in the case of Christ; that the whole style in which 
he expresses himself, testifies of a calm consciousness, always clear as 
to its own meaning, always self-possessed. But as it was the peculiar 
bent of many, in this period, to be looking for the full and complete 
everywhere alike, to allow of no gradual transitions and intermediate 
steps, so the author of the Clementines requires in all manifestations 
of the prophetic gift, what corresponds to this complete conception of 
prophecy, as it was fulfilled in Christ; and all else he sets down as be- 
longing to false prophecy. The true prophet must be ever, like Christ, 
one with himself; must have with him the divine Spirit at all times 
alike.! Now, as he could not apply this notion of prophecy to the 
prophets of the Old Testament; as he found in them a great deal that 
was obscure, a great deal expressed respecting the Messiah and his 
kingdom, which, literally understood, — as everything announced by 
divine revelation should be understood, — did by no means agree with 
the appearance and conduct of Jesus as the Messiah; so he looked 
upon all this as a mark of the spurious prophetic spirit, which was cal- 
culated to deceive. And so the Jews did, in fact, suffer themselves to 
be led astray, by this ambiguous or false matter in the prophets, when 
they were looking for a worldly Messiah,? and a worldly kingdom of 


1 Hom. VIII. c. 11 and 12. 21. ο. 6. 22 and 23. 


861 


the Messiah; when they expected in the Messiah, the son of David, 
not the Son of God,! and hence did not acknowledge Jesus as th 
Messiah. 

We may well presume that, when men of the peculiar spiritual bent 
which characterized the Essenes, became possessed of the idea of the 
Messiah, they would show themselves to be opposed, on this side also, 
to the common Pharisaic notions, and would shape the idea in accord- 
ance with their own mystico-ascetic spirit. Such a peculiar shaping 
forms the ground-work of the Clementines. That Ebionite idea of 
spiritual poverty, of which we have spoken above ; that striving after 
emancipation from the world, which was opposed to the secular direc- 
tion of the religious sentiment among the great body of the Jews, and 
the traces of which we perceive also in the Clementines as the product 
of such a shaping of the Ebionite spirit, would lead to a corresponding 
mode of apprehending the idea of the Messiah and of his kingdom. 
Opposition to the secular and political element entering into the no- 
tion of the Messiah — to the views of the Chiliasts, would necessarily 
spring out of it; and so we find the case to be in the Clementines. 
Now as the author was incapable of understanding the organic _histori- 
cal connection, following the law of constant progress, in the successive 
steps of revelation — the gradual emerging of the idea, unfolding itself, 
under the actuation of God’s Holy Spirit, out of its temporal envelope 
—as he was incapable of understanding this, he sees of course in every- 
thing that borders on that secular form of the idea respecting the Mes- 
siah, and on which the false expectation of the Jews had fastened, the 
pseudo-prophetic element.? 

From these two opposite shapings of Ebionitism, which may be suc- 
cinctly denominated the Pharisaic and the Essenian,? there would arise, 
in the next place, two opposite ways of contemplating the gospel his- 
tory, — of which the one would seek to get rid of all incipient appear- 
ances of the supernatural in the history of Christ’s childhood, and of 
everything that would lead to the recognition of a higher nature and 
dignity there; the other would endeavor to expunge everythmg which 
represented him as the son of David, — the potentiated David.* While 


THE CLEMENTINES. 


1 Thus in Hom. XVIII. c. 13, the passage 
Matth. 11: 27, is explained as spoken in 
opposition to the Jews, who in the Messiah 
saw the son of David, and not the son of 


2 Hom. IIT. ec. 22, 23, etc., where the con- 
trast between true and false prophets is 
seized with reference to this point. 

8 By employing which term, however, we 
would not be understood to maintain, that 
this particular shaping of Ebionitism pro- 
ceeded directly from the sect of the Essenes ; 
but we regard Essenism as being only one 
particular manifestation of a religious bent 
of mind which extended still farther. See 
Vol. 1. p. 43, f. 

* The author of the Clementines proba- 
bly belonged to that class of the Ebionites 
who acknowledged the supernatural birth of 
Christ ; for in opposing those who acknowl- 


edged the prophets of the Old Testament, 
but did not reckon Adam among the proph- 
ets, he says, (Hom. III. c. 20:) “If one 
cannot discern the holy spirit of the Mes- 
siah in the man produced immediately by 
God’s creative hand, (τῷ ὑπὸ χειρῶν ϑεοῦ 
κυοφορηϑέντι ἀνϑρώπῳ,) πῶς ἑτέρῳ τινὲ ἐκ 
μύυσαρας σταγόνος γεγενημένῳ διδοὺς ἔχειν, 
οὐ τὰ μέγιστα ἀσεβεῖ 1" Tt seems implied 
here, that in the last form of manifestation 
of the Adam-spirit, there must have been 
something analogous to the immediate ex- 
ercise of God’s creative power, as contra- 
distinguished from ordinary birth, ἐκ μυσα- 
pac σταγόνος, (the way in which the false 
prophets came into existence.) It is true, 
the question arises then, how he represent- 
ed to himself the origin of others, whom he 
regarded no less as forms of manifestation 
of the primal spirit. 


308 THE CLEMENTINES. 
the great mass of worldly minded Jews were unwilling to acknowledge 
Jesus as the Messiah, because they did not find realized in him every 
feature of the Messiah’s image presented to them in the prophets ; 
while the Christian church teachers, without distinguishing the peculiar 
positions held by the prophets in the development of the Theocracy 
from the more advanced position of Christianity, contrived by allegori- 
cal shifts to introduce the fully developed Christian scheme into the 
prophets; while the opponents of Judaism among the Gnostics laid hold 
of the discrepancy between the appearance of Christ and the idea of 
the Messiah contained in the letter of the prophetic writings, to prove 
that an absolute opposition existed betwixt Judaism and Christianity ; — 
the author of the Clementines opposed to all this another view of the 
idea of inspiration and of the prophetic gift, by which, while the divine 
character of the Mosaic religion was upheld, the writings of the proph- 
ets were represented not as constituting any part which belonged to the 
progressive completion of that religion, but as something wholly alien 
from it. He may have attached himself to a sect among the Jews 
which exalted Moses far above the prophets, and which placed the 
writings of the prophets, to say the least, far below the Pentateuch.? 
This view of the corruption of the original truth by becoming inter- 
mixed with foreign elements in the records of revelation, stands con- 
nected with a remarkable idea concerning the process of the develop- 
ment of religious faith, and the law observed by the revelations of God 
to mankind. That intermixture was designed, for instance, for the 
special purpose of trying the godlike temper in man. ‘The conscious- 
ness of God, love to God, should be so strongly developed in the man 
of piety, as to reject at once as spurious all those declarations at vari- 
ance with it, which have become incorporated into the records of relig- 
ion. The criterion, accordingly, in this case, was in the disposition ; — 
every thing was to depend on the cherishing of a disposition in which 
genuine faith had become rooted.? ‘* The Holy Scriptures do not lead 
men into error, but only cause the hidden disposition of every one to 
be made manifest. Thus each man finds a God in the Holy Scriptures 
such as he would have him to be.”® In another recension of this 
work, the Recognitions of Clement, which are known to us only in the 
shape given to them by the version of Rufinus, this idea is also applied 
to God’s mode of revealing himself in the works of nature and in the 
entire life of humanity; “‘ that which may create doubt every where ac- 


νήσεως τοὺς προφήτας Δλελαληκέναι. In 
Combefis. bibliothecze graecor. patr. auctari- 


1 Epiphanius knew of an Ebionite party, 
who received the Pentateuch alone as the 


divine book of the Old Testament, yet did 
not admit the authority even of this in its 
whole extent, and who acknowledged Christ 
alone as a true prophet, and represented 
the prophets of the Old Testament as 
prophets endowed merely with human in- 
sight, συνέσεως προφήτας, καὶ οὐκ ἀληϑείας. 
Heres. 30. ο. 15 et 18, A depreciation of 
the prophets springing out of some such 
Ebionite principle, we find described also in 
the words of Methodius, who wrote in the 
beginning of the 4th century: ’E§ ἐδίας κι- 


um novissimum Pars I. f. 118. Paris, 1672. 
2 As to the end which the introduction of 
those false declarations, (τῶν βλασφήμων 
περικοπῶν) were to subserve, the Homilies 
say: Τούτο γέγονεν λόγῳ καὶ κρίσει, ὅπως 
ἐλεγχϑῶσιν, τίνες τολμῶσιν τὰ κατὰ τὸν 
ϑεὸν γραφέντα φιληκόως ἔχειν, τίνες TE 
στοργῇ τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν τὰ κατ’ αὐτοῦ λεγό- 
μενα μὴ μόνον ἀπιστεῖν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ τὴν 
ἀρχὴν ἀκούειν ἀνέχεσϑαι. Hom. 1]. ο. 38. 
8 Hom. XVI. ο. 10. 


THE CLEMENTINES. 859 


companying that which leads to faith in a divine providence.”! It is 
interesting to observe, how the author of the Clementines was led by his 
peculiar cosmological and theological system to express, for the first time, 
that great and fruitful idea which the profound Pascal, from an entire- 
ly different point of view, has so beautifully unfolded in his apologetic 
« Thoughts ;’? —the idea in which various difficulties, standing in the 
way of religious faith, first meet their solution, and which poimts to the 
true connection between believing piety and liberal science. 

Strongly prominent as the conception of outward revelation, of the 
authority of a true prophet, is made in the Clementines, no less care- 
fully notwithstanding is the author of this work on his guard, as is evi- 
dent from what has been said, against giving a one-sided outwardness 
to the supranaturalist principle. The universal revelation proceeding 
from Adam becomes — as we see —at the same time, an inward one in 
the conscience. Every new revelation, by which the matter of the first 
was to be restored to its original purity, is calculated with reference to 
the inward state of recipiency, the inner consciousness of God and of 
truth. The good man dares to believe nothing, on whatever authority 
it may be presented, which stands in contradiction with God (the gen- 
eral idea of God) and with God’s creation. The nature related to 
God is the spot where the inner revelation of God takes place. In the 
truth, implanted by God in the depths of the human mind, all other 
truth is contained ; — the revelation of the Divine Spirit does but bring 
this up to consciousness.? This revelation of God, coming forth from 
within, is something higher and more trust-worthy than any revelation 
by visions and dreams, which, after all, is something without the man, 
and pre-supposes in him an estrangement from the God, who stands to 
him in so outward a relation.? 

According to the doctrine of this work, then, the first father of the 
human race was moved by the love of his children, scattered through- 
out the world, to appear once more on the earth in the person of Jesus 
himself, for the purpose of purifying the original religion from the addi- 
tions which distorted it. This purpose of his appearance is intimated 
by him, when he says, Matth. 5: 17, “ Think not I am come to destroy 
the law,* but to fulfil.”” What he has destroyed, then, cannot possibly 
belong to what he calls the law, to that primitive religion. He appeared 
particularly for the purpose of extending his blessings to his other chil- 
dren, to the Gentiles, and of delivering to them also that pure, primi- 
tive religion, which had been constantly handed down by a consecrated 
few among the Jewish people.’ Hence the doctrine of Christ is alto- 
gether one with the pure and original doctrine of Moses. The Jewish 
mystic, the Essenian or any person of that class, who embraced Chris- 


1 Nihil omnino est, quod fidem providen- ὁραμάτων καὶ ἐνυπνίων, τὰ δὲ πρὸς φίλον 
tiz faciat, et non habeat e contrario aliud στόμα κατὰ στόμα. 
ad infidelitatem paratum. Recognition. 1. 4 The words “ τοὺς προφήτας" are arbi- 
ὙΠ]. ες. 53. trarily omitted here, because the prophets 
2 Ἔν τῇ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐκ ϑεοῦ τεϑείσῃ σπερμα- were not recognized by the author. 
τικῶς πᾶσα ἔνεστιν ἡ ἀλήϑεια, ϑεοῦ δὲ 5 Hom. III. § 51. 
χειρὶ σκέπεται καὶ ἀποκαλύπτεται. 6 Τὰ ἀπ’ αἰῶνος ἔν κρυπτῷ ἀξίοις παρα- 
®Hom. XVII. § 18: Τὰ τῆς ὀργῆς δ διδόμενα κηρύσσων. 


360 THE CLEMENTINES. 


tianity, was not obliged to adopt a new doctrine; the doctrine of Christ 
was for him but a confirmation of this earlier religious belief; he only 
rejoiced to behold that secret doctrine now made the common property 
of mankind, —a thing which before seemed to him impracticable. In 
Jesus he witnessed a new appearance of that Adam, whom he had con- 
stantly reverenced as the source of all that is true and godlike in hu- 
manity. ‘‘ None but the father could so love his own children, as 
Jesus loved men. His greatest sorrow was, that he must be striven 
against by those in their ignorance, for whom he strove as his children ; 
and yet he loved them that hated him, yet he wept over the disobe- 
dient, yet he blessed them that blasphemed him, yet he prayed for his 
enemies ; and these things he not only did Azmself, as a father, but also 
taught his disciples to pursue the same course of conduct towards men 
as their brethren.’ . 

Hence, then, the conclusion —“‘ that the same primitive religion is 
to be found in the pure doctrine of Moses, and in Christianity ; — he 
who possesses the former, may dispense with the latter; and he who 
possesses the latter, with the former:—;provided the Jew does not 
blaspheme Christ, whom he knows not, nor the Christian, Moses, whom 
he knows not. But he who is counted worthy of attaining to the 
knowledge of both, to find in the doctrine announced by both but one 
and the same truth, is to be esteemed as a man rich in God,— one 
who has found in the old that which has become new, and in the new, 
that which is old ; —an allusion, doubtless, to the passage in Matth. 13: 
52.2 The Jew and the Christian owe it entirely to the grace of God, 
that they have been led by these revelations of the primal man, — re- 
peated under different forms, one by Moses, another by Christ, — to 
the knowledge of the Divine will. After they have obtained this, then, 
without any help from themselves, that which now does depend on 
themselves is, to carry out in their conduct all that is prescribed by 
Moses or by Christ. Itis in this way, too,they entitle themselves to a 
reward.” 

Now if we must recognize, in the author of the Clementines, after 
this exposition of his system, the representative of some Jewish princi- 
ple of doctrine, peculiarly modified by a way of thinking closely allied 
to Essenism, a principle according to which the work of Christ is not 
prominently set forth as the main point, but Christ is considered simply 
in the light of a teacher and lawgiver, the revealer of the truth which 
had been previously taught and transmitted as a secret doctrine ;— 
then it becomes evident in what sort of relation, or rather opposition, he 
must have stood to the teachings of the Apostle Paul. The Jewish 
principle, apprehended in this exclusive and one-sided manner, was wont. 
to express a peculiar hostility to this Apostle ; we may expect, therefore, 
to find the same hostile relation existing in the case before us. It is 
true, Paul is nowhere mentioned by name; but the author may have 


1 Hom. III. § 19. ἀνὴρ ἐν ϑεῷ πλούσιος κατηρίϑμηται, τά TE 
2 Hom. VIII. 4.7; Πλὴν ἢ τις καταξιω- ἀρχαῖα νέα τῷ χρόνω καὶ τὰ καινὰ παλαιὰ 
ϑείη τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους ἐπιγνῶναι, ὡς μιᾶς νενοηκώς. 
διδασκαλίας ὑπ’ αὐτῶν κεκηρυγμένης, οὗτος 


THE CLEMENTINES. 361 
had his reasons for preferring to attack the principles of the Apostle, 
without introducing his name ; and this is the course actually taken in 
the epistle of Peter to James, prefixed to the Clementines ;! where, by 
the unknown enemy, who corrupted the doctrine harmonizing with the 
Mosaic law, which was preached by Peter, no other person can be un- 
derstood than Paul.? If it was of any consequence to the author of the 
Clementines to carry out the idea of his work in a consistent manner, 
without playing his part falsely, he could allow nothing to be seen in 
the present but the germ of the future; and was obliged to represent 
those tendencies of his own time, which he really meant to combat, as 
though they had been already attacked in their principle by the Apos- 
tle Peter. Accordingly he assails several of the tendencies which first 
began to appear in the bud during the second century, such as Gnosti- 
cism, perhaps also Montanism ; but he transfers them all to the contem- 
porary of the Apostle Peter, Simon Magus, who, on account of the 
opinion entertained of him in the first centuries, was very generally re- 
garded as the representative and forerunner of all the heretical tenden- 
cies of later times. As Peter is the representative of the pure doctrine 
of revelation; so in his view every thing conspired in the person of 
Simon Magus to denote the blending together of all erroneous tenden- 
cies In one image, wherein the analogies to individual appearances in 
later times cannot be distinguished with certainty. In the sense of the 
author, the Pauline doctrine concerning the relation of the gospel to 
the law belonged, without any doubt, among the number of these. And 
the remark is, in all probability, aimed against the Apostle Paul, when 
Peter says to Simon Magus, ‘‘ Why should Christ have remained with 
his disciples and instructed them an entire year, if one might be formed 


inated in the defective chronological ar- 


1 This perhaps did not proceed from the 
rangement of events in the gospel history, 


same author as the Clementines. So we 
Had 


might conclude from the fact, that he dif- 
fers from the Clementines in his view of the 
Old Testament prophets, inasmuch as their 
divine authority is presupposed, and only 
the necessity of having a key to the right 
understanding of them argued from the 
ambiguity of their language. 

2 It is very evident that Peter alludes to 
what is related in the epistle of Paul to the 
Galatians, when he says: “I see already 
the beginning of the evil; for some of the 
Gentiles have rejected the doctrines taught 
by me, which are in harmony with the law, 
haying adopted an anti-legal and fabulous 
doctrine from the man who is my enemy, 
(τοῦ ἐχϑροῦ ἀνθρώπου ἄνομόν τινα Kai 
φλυαρώδη προσηκώμενοι διδασκαλίαν.) And 
. this is what some have undertaken to do 
even during my life-time, wresting my 
words by various false interpretations, to 
the subversion of the law, as if I also were 
really, though I did not openly express it, 
of the same opinion.” 

8 A supposition, of which we find many 
traces even in writers belonging to the first 
century, and which might have easily orig- 


VOL. I. 31 


as we find it the synoptical writers. 
the author known, however, from the gos- 
pel of John, that the ministry of Christ lasted 
several years, he assuredly had special good 
reason for putting down several years instead 
of one. We shall find it probable, there- 
fore, that he made no use of John’s gospel. 
Yet there are to be found in the Clemen- 
tines declarations of Christ, which bear a 
close resemblance’ to the altogether peculiar 
type of Christ’s discourses as exhibited in 
this gospel, and which appear so nearly the 
same with particular sayings of Christ, 
which are nowhere to be met with but in 
this gospel, that we cannot avoid perceiving 
them to be essentially identical. _We must 
either suppose, then, that these sayings 
came to the knowledge of the author 
through some other collection or narrative 
drawn from the gospel of John, or that he 
found in his εὐαγγέλιον καϑ’ ‘EBpaiovg such 
words of Christ taken from tradition, which 
John has communicated in the original 
connection in which they were spoken. The 
latter will appear to have been the true state 
of the case, if we compare the form of these 


362 RELATIONS OF PAGAN CHRISTIANS 
into a teacher by avision? If, however, thou hast been made an apos- 
tle after having been instructed by him in a momentary appearance, 
then preach his words, love his apostles, and fight not against me, who 
have lived in his society.”?!_ There appears also to be some allusion to 
the reaction of the Jewish Christian scheme against the Pauline type 
of doctrine, which took place at the close of the age of St. Paul, when 
Peter lays it down as a law, that, as the appearance of falsehood must 
uniformly precede the revelation of the truth, — Simon Magus having 
preceded Peter, —so the false gospel must first be spread by a teacher 
of error, (Paul,) and then, after the destruction of the temple, the true 
gospel must be secretly disseminated, for the rectification of the subse- 
quent heresies, (in accordance with that taste for mystery which char- 
acterized a tendency so closely allied to Essenism ;)* and so likewise at 
the end of all, the Antichrist would precede the appearance of Christ. 
"Τὸ must have proved difficult, it is true, for that rigid Ebionitism 
which maintained the perpetual validity of the Mosaic law, when the 
Christian church had once established itself on an independent footing 
among the pagans, to make proselytes from among the members of that 
body ; but it seems to follow, notwithstanding, from the words of Justin 
Martyr, which have been cited above, that such attempts still continued 
to be made in his time, and not always without success; for he speaks 
of Pagan Christians, who had been induced to unite the observance of 
the Mosaic law with the Christian faith.® 
As it would appear, then, from the exposition which has been given, 
that there were various grades of difference amongst those who were 
inclined to the Ebionite way of thinking, so there were also such grades 
of difference amongst the Pagan Christians in their relation to the Ebi- 
onites ; from a mild and tolerant, intermediate tendency, to downright 
opposition. In these diversities, too, we meet once more with those 
various shades which had already begun to appear in the apostolic age. 
On both sides, error could find some point of union. That tendency 
which strove to reconcile the differences between Jewish and Pagan 
Christians, might be led wrong by the habit of surrendering itself too 
much to the influence of the Jewish spirit; the more repulsive tenden- 


sayings, as they occur in the Clementines, 
with the form in which we find them in the 
gospel according to John. 

1 Hom. XVII. § 19. 

2 Hom. 11. ο. 17: Πρῶτον ψευδὲς δεῖ 
ἐλϑεῖν εὐαγγέλιον ὑπο πλάνου τινὸς, Kal EV 
οὕτως, μετὰ καϑαίρεσιν τοῦ ἁγίου τόπου, εὐ- 
αγγέλιον ἀληϑὲς κρύφα διαπεμφϑῆναι. 

8 Justin’s words are, (1. ο. f. 266:) Τοὺς 
δὲ πειϑομένους αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τὴν ἔννομον πο- 
λιτείαν μετὰ τοῦ φυλάσσειν τὴν εἰς τὸν 
Χριστὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ ὁμολογίαν καὶ σωϑῆσεσ- 
Var ἴσως ὑπολαμβάνω. We take it for 
granted, in the view of the matter which 
we have given in the text, that the author 
is here speaking not of Jews but of pagans. 
On the other hand, the Diaconus C. Semisch 
in his Monograph on Justin Martyr, (‘Theil 
11. S. 236, Anm. 1,) a work distinguished 


for profound, extensive and candid inquiry, 
understands the author as alluding in this 
case also to Jews. But since, in the preced- 
ing passage, those Jewish Christians have 
been described who were for constraining 
the pagans to observe the Mosaic law, I do 
not see how we can suppose that Jews are 
meant again by “those who followed them, 
and passed over to the observance of the 
law.” The latter must necessarily be a 
different class from the former, and there- 
fore pagan Christians only can be meant. 
It is evident, moreover, that Justin does not 
express himself with the same mildness in 
speaking of the latter, as in speaking of the 
former; for with regard to one class he 
simply testifies his disapprobation, but with 
regard to the others he says doubtfully, “he 
believes they would perhaps be saved.” 


TO JEWISH. JUSTIN MARTYR. 363 
ey might in this way be pushed onward to an ultra Paulinism, breaking 
loose from the connection of all the other types of apostolic doctrine, 
and gradually passing over into the province of Gnosticism. These 
more rigid Pagan Christians, who by no means adhered to the genuine 
principles of St. Paul, we find represented by that class of whom Justin 
says, that they pronounced the like sentence of condemnation on all 
who still observed the Mosaic law, even those who were not wishing to 
obtrude it on the Gentile Christians; maintained that such could not 
be saved ; and renounced all Christian fellowship and all manner of 
intercourse with them.! The milder tendency of the Pagan Christian 
party is presented to us, on the other hand, in the person of Justin 
Martyr himself. He is ready to extend the right hand of fellowship to 
those Jewish Christians, who, although they observed the Mosaic law 
for themselves, yet were not for obliging the Gentiles to do the same. 
He knew how to overlook the weakness of a subordinate position, 
which must present itself in the interval between Judaism and Gentilism ; 
to distinguish an inferior and still defective stage of Christian knowl- 
edge, from the heretical element. But even on those Jewish Chris- 
tians who, while they maintained the absolute validity of the Mosaic 
law, yet united with it faith in Christ, he pronounced no anathema, ex- 
eluding them from salvation, but simply witnessed that he could not 
agree with them. And, what is still more, even from the less excusa- 
ble Gentile Christians, who had allowed themselves to be drawn away, 
by the deceptive representations of Judaizing proselyte makers, to adopt 
the Mosaic law, even from these he ventures not to exclude all hope of 
salvation ; he says, they may perhaps be saved by their faith in Jesus as 
their Saviour. He is ever true to the principle of the apostolic church, that 
faith in Jesus as the Messiah is the sole ground of salvation; and this 
faith he still acknowledges to exist, even where it is accompanied with 
all defective Christian knowledge. So mildly did he judge respecting 
those who were still entangled in that error; although he must have 
known, without doubt, that they were far removed, not only in their views 
of the Mosaic law, but also in their opinion concerning the person of 
Christ, from what he considered to be Christian truth. He speaks ex- 
pressly, also, of those who recognized Christ barely as a man born of 
men,’ and without adding any harsher word, he simply says, he does 
not agree with them,* because he held only to the doctrine of Christ 
and of the prophets. He was under the necessity of speaking with 


1 Μηδὲ κοινωνεῖν ὁμιλίας ἤ ἑστίας τοῖς 
τοιούτοις τολμῶντες. 

2 Διὰ τοῦ ἀσϑενὲς τῆς γνώγης, as he ex- 
presses it. 

8 Ed. Colon. f. 267. It is the Ebionites, 
without doubt, whom he has particularly in 
view here; although other Christians of 
similar views may be meant at the same 
time, if we may assume that the reading 

the manuscript is correct: “ Τινὲς ἀπὸ 
τοῦ ἡμετέρου γένους." Yet taking into 
consideration, that the phrase “ ὑμέτερον 
γένος" is a designation of the Jews, and that 


it was ohserved just before, that the doctrine 
of a preéxisting divine nature of the Messiah 
was one peculiarly foreign to those of their 
race, viz. the Jewish, we might be led to 
conjecture, that Justin expressed himself 
thus: “ Hence there are many of your race, 
(of Jewish descent,) who do indeed ac- 
knowledge Jesus as the Messiah, but hold 
him to be a mere man.” We do not ven- 
ture, however, to pronounce the reading 
“ὑμετέρου to be the one necessarily re- 
quired by the context. 

4 Οἷς οὐ συντίϑεμαι. 


364 CORRUPTIONS OF EBIONITISM. 

more sharpness against the Gnostics, since by these, as will hereafter 
be shown, the fundamental doctrine itself of the historical Christ was 
attacked. 

This mild tone of judgment with regard to the Ebionites by no means 
warrants us, then, to suppose that Justin himself was inclined to Ebio- 
nitism.t The very manner in which he expresses himself with regard 
to the Judaizing Christians, as parties with whom he had no sympathy, 
is sufficient evidence to the contrary, — as well as the Pauline element 
of his Theology,” respecting which there can be no mistake. Indeed, 
how could that man be possibly inclined to Ebionitism, who could assert 
that Christians of a more genuine stamp sprang from the midst of the 
pagans, than from the midst of the Jews,?— who gave it to be under- 
stood that the genuine and full understanding of Christianity must first 
proceed from the pagans. 

Such mildness in passing judgment on the different stages of devel- 
opment in Christianity did not, indeed, last for any length of time. It 
is only among the Alexandrian church teachers that the traces of such 
mildness once more make their appearanee ; and indeed this was a pe- 
culiarity which stood connected with their whole tendency of mind, 
hereafter to be described. Thus Origen * again recognizes in these Ebio- 
nites weak brethren, whom Christ notwithstanding did not reject; for 
he was even to them the Messiah, from whom they expected all their 
help, although they acknowledged in him only the Son of David, not 
the Son of God. In his fine allegorical exposition of the story of Bar- 
timeus, Mark 10: 46, he represents the blind man who accosted Jesus 
as the Ebionite, and the many who bid him to be silent, as the be- 
lievers from among the heathen, who for the most part have higher 
views of the person of Jesus. ‘ But,” he continues, “although the 
many bid him be silent, he cries still the more, since he believes on 
Jesus, although he believes on him rather after the human manner,5 
and says, Son of David, have mercy on me.” ® 

From Ebionitism, however, we must distinguish’ certain elements, 
possessing some affinity with Ebionitism, but involving a grossly mate- 
rial view of Christianity, since they adhered to the sensuous envelope 
of the letter, and failed of penetrating to its spirit; that materialist ele- 
ment of the religious spirit, in affinity with the Jewish position, which 
betrayed itself, for example, in the anthropo-morphism and anthropo-pa- 


1 As is maintained by many in modern 
times. For the history πα also a thorough 
refutation of this opinion, consult the above 
cited work of Semisch, (Th. 11. p. 233.) 

2 That he never quotes St. Paul by name, 
can be no evidence to the contrary ; although 
we should not be inclined, with Semisch, to 
account for this silence on the ground that 
the Dialogue cum Tryphone was written 
expressly with reference to the Jews. We 
find elements derived from the apostle John 
also in the same work, although John is 
nowhere named; and in general, with the 
exception of the scriptures of the Old Tes- 
tament, no writing is cited by name but the 
Commentaries of the Apostles. 


8 See above, Vol. I. p. 63. 

4 Matth. T. XVI c. 12. 

5 Πιστεύων μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν, ἀνϑρω- 
πικώτερον δὲ πιστεύων. 

ὃ Οἵτινες παρ᾽ ὀλίγους ἅπαντες πεπιστεύ- 
kaow αὐτὸν ἐκ παρϑένου γεγενῆσϑαι. 

This theory, in the germ, is to be found 
in Clement of Alexandria: Οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ 
υἱὲ Δαβὶδ ἐλέησόν pe ἔλεγον, ὀλίγοι δὲ υἱὸν 
ἐγίγνωσκον τοῦ ϑεοῦ. Strom. ]. VI. f. 680. 

7 The neglect of this distinction, and the 
too indiscriminate application of the term 
Ebionitism, have, in recent times, given 
occasion to many arbitrary historical com- 
binations and hypotheses. 


CONTACT OF EASTERN AND WESTERN MIND. 865 


thism of the doctrine concerning God; in the low, worldly views of the 
kingdom to be founded by Christ on earth; in Chiliasm. A tendency 
of this kind might easily take its rise also in paganism, since it found a 
ready point of union in the sensuous element of spiritual culture gener- 
ally ; and this would, of itself, stand forth prominently as the first stage 
of evolution, until the influence of Christianity, like the leaven, had 
more fully penetrated the entire mode of thinkmg. Although we find 
among Jewish tendencies the first traces of an intermixture of the theo- 
cratic principles of the Old and New Testaments, and hence the trans- 
ference of the Old Testament priesthood into the Christian church,! yet 
it by no means follows, that this corruption of the great Christian prin- 
ciple, concerning which we have spoken in the history of the church 
constitution, is to be traced ultimately and every where to such a 
source. We see the opposite case to this in the Roman church, where 
the development of the Christian life, which proceeded in the first place 
from a Pauline, Gentile Christian principle,? could afterwards, through 
that outward and formal notion of the church which found its point of | 
attachment in the political element of the Roman spirit, make open 
room for the reaction of the Jewish element that had been vanquished 
by Paul. 

"This new intermixture of Jewish and Christian principles contributed 
to call forth the reaction of that opposite tendency of mind, already de- 
scribed as to its great features in the introductory remarks to the pres- 
ent section, — we mean the Gnostic tendency, — which at length must 
bring about a total separation of Christianity from its organic connec- 
tion with Judaism. But Gnosticism is one link of a greater series of 
phenomena peculiar to this period, originating in the vast interchange 
among nations which this age witnessed, the contact of the East with 
the West, and the intermingling of the Eastern and Western spirit, — 
such a series of events as occurs in history only at rare intervals. 

We see how Christianity announces itself to the Hast and the West 
as a new power in the history of the world; how oriental and occidental 
minds are attracted by it, and peculiar combinations of both are formed 
under the influence of Christianity ; a proof of the great energy with 
which it begins to operate on the spiritual life of the Eastern and West- 
ern nations. A transient, though stupendous phenomenon indeed, but 
premonitory of the enduring influence which Christianity was to pro- 
duce in more distant future times. ‘This series of phenomena we now 
propose more distinctly to consider. 


Sects which originated in the blending of Christianity with ancient Oriental Views. 


The list of these commences with the great family of the Gnostic 
sects, in which this intermingling of the old oriental spirit with Chris- 
tianity made its earliest appearance. We shall speak first therefore 
of the 


1 On this ground, we find asserted alrea- 2 Sec the evidence in favor of this origin 
dy, (in Testament. IV. of Judas, c. 21.) of the Roman church, in my Apostol. 
Hildebrand’s principle of the subordination Zeitalter, Bd. I. 5. 384 ff. We shall return 
of the kingdom to the priesthood : 'ῶς ὑπερ- to the subject once more in another connec- 
ἔχει οὐρανὸς τῆς γῆς, οὕτως ὑπερέχει ϑεοῦ tion. 
ἱερατεία τῆς ἐπὶ γῆς βασιλείας. 

91" 


366 GNOSTICISM. 


Gnostic Sects. 


General Remarks on the Origin and Character of these Sects, on their Common Characteristics, 
and the Specific Differences, constituting the Grounds of their Subdivision. 


To appreciate rightly the historical importance of this great phe- 
nomenon, we must contemplate it from several different points of view. 
We perceive in it, in the first place, the reaction of the aristocratic 
spirit, ruling supreme in the life and making itself felt in the religion 
and philosophy of the old world, against the Christian principle by 
which it was overthrown, against the recognition of one religious faith 
whereby all the distinctions hitherto subsisting among men in relation to 
the higher life were to be abolished, and all united together in one 
higher fellowship of life. As the aristocracy of knowledge and culture 
had at first spurned this faith with contempt, and set itself in hostile 
Opposition to it, so afterwards, when Christianity had found its way among 
the educated men and seekers after wisdom, the same principle was at- 
tracted itself on many sides by Christianity, and sought to incorporate 
itself with it. ΤῸ such a tendency the very name employed to desig- 
nate this phenomenon, the Gnosis, refers, which denotes the religion of 
knowledge and of one who knows, as opposed to the faith of the multi- 
tude (πίστις τῶν πολλῶν.) We have seen! how already among the Alex- 
andrian Jews such a philosophic system of religion had been formed 
under the influence of. Platonism, which would exalt itself above, or set 
itself up in opposition to, the common religious faith. Such a tendency 
now found its way into Christianity. But in the present case, Orien- 
talism was added to Hellenism,— the Oriental Z’heosophy to the Pla- 
tonic philosophy. As on the practical side, in church life, the old 
distinction between priesthood and laity had insinuated itself into the 
development of Christianity, so here we perceive a similar reaction of 
the ante-christian principle on the theoretic side. As we find there the 
antithesis between priesthood and laity, so here we find the antithesis 
between knowers and believers, —a hierarchy of another kind. Beside 
that practical distinction between the spiritual and the secular class, the 
other distinction established itself, which had grown up in the theoretical 
domain, — the distinction between the privileged natures, the men of 
intellect, whose vocation it was to know, the πνευματικοῖ, and the rude 
mass of the ψυχικοί, who could not rise above blind and implicit faith. 
We may observe uniformly, that all reactions against the Christian 
principle are first called forth by occasion of some defective or dis- 
colored view of that principle, and are directed against this: and we 
cannot fail to see, that it was so in the present instance. If greater 
prominence had been given in the church to the genuine Pauline concep- 
tion of faith, this reaction, originating in an over valuation of knowledge, 
(that which Paul himself designated by the phrase σοφίαν Gretv,) might 
have arisen indeed; yet the elevation of mind which is grounded in 


1 See the account of the Alexandrian theology in the general Introduction. 


GNOSTICISM. 367 
the essence of faith as thus understood, would not have been so easily 
overlooked. But this conception had now become generally very much 
obscured ; and instead of it there was to be found only the notion of 
faith, in the sense of trust on outward authority, which by itself alone 
could not obtain the reward of eternal life, but must have added to it 
besides, good works actuated by love. Such a faith might with good 
reason be characterized as a subordinate position of the Christian life, 
something which was more truly Jewish than Christian; and this fur- 
nished Gnosticism with a plausible reason for its depreciation of faith.1 
Again, it cannot be denied that faith, taken according to that outward 
view of it, often placed itself in direct opposition to the striving after 
knowledge; holding fast on every thing as posztive, as given from 
without, as an aggregate of separate, positive doctrines and precepts. 
But in Christianity, while faith was the starting point, inasmuch as it is 
the principle of completion for all that is purely human ; so the craving 
after knowledge in religion was, without overstepping the limits of a 
strict conformity to nature, also to find its satisfaction. It was neces- 
sary, when Christianity entered into the spiritual life, that out of it 
should grow the craving to arrive at some clear consciousness of the 
connection between the truths communicated by revelation and the al- 
ready existing mental possessions of mankind, — as also of the internal 
harmony existing within the sphere of Christian truth itself as an or- 
ganic whole. But wherever such a craving, instead of being met and 
satisfied, must be violently suppressed, the one-sided tendency of the 
Gnosis found in this some ground of justification. An exclusively the- 
oretical tendency opposed itself to an exclusively practical one, and the 
deficiency of the latter tended to introduce the former.” 

The nature of Gnosticism, as a reaction of the antique principle in 
religion against the Christian, stands closely connected with another 
point. ‘The opposition both between an esoteric sacerdotal doctrine 
and an exoteric religion of the people, and between a philosophic relig- 


1 The late Dr. Mohler made Gnosticism 
a precursor of Protestantism, and in en- 


in so far as it was a reaction against the 
Jewish element that had become mixed in 


deavoring to carry out his position, made 
use of many arguments partially grounded 
in truth. Among these half truths belongs 
the following: that Gnosticism, so far as its 
polemical attitude to the dominant church 
is concerned, did undoubtedly agree with 
Protestantism. But there was this differ- 
ence ; that the opposition in the two ten- 
dencies sprang out of an altogether differ- 
ent positive principle. In Gnosticism it 
originated in a purely theoretical principle, 
a conception of the Gnosis which was for- 
eign from the ground-position of Christi- 
anity;—in Protestantism, on the other 


hand, it sprang out of the Pauline concep- | 


tion of faith, once more restored and rein- 
stated in its rights. Marcion alone consti- 
tutes an exception, and he may with more 
propricty be styled a precursor of Protestant- 
ism. Thus at the basis of this whole theo- 
ry of Mohler lies the truth, that Gnosticism, 


with Christianity, was a precursor of Pro- 
testantism ; to which, however, it must be 
added, that as this reaction in Gnosticism 
proceeded from a different principle, so it 
was carried to an extreme which led to error 
of another kind. Marcion constitutes an 
exception in the first respect, not in the last. 
But as a Jewish element mixed in with 
Christianity is perceived in Catholicism, 
when considered from the Protestant point 
of view, so on the other hand, Gnostic ele- 
ments might be naturally expected to mani- 
fest themselves in Protestantism, as viewed 
from the Catholic position. 

2 Thus Origen told his friend Ambrosius 
he had been conducted to a false Gnosis : 
᾿Απορίᾳ TOV πρεσβευόντων τὰ κρείττονα, 
μὴ φέρων τὴν ἄλογον καὶ ἰδιωτικὴν πίστιν. 
Orig. T. V. in Joann. ὁ 4. T. I. p. 172, ed. 
Lommatzsch. 


368 GNOSTICISM. 


ion and a mythical, popular faith, has its necessary ground in the fact, 
that antiquity was destitute of any independent means, adapted alike to 
all the stages of human culture, for satisfying the religious want. Such 
a means was supplied for all in the faith in great historical facts, on 
which the religious consciousness of all men alike was to depend. The 
emancipation of religion, as well from all dependence on the elements 
of the world, of which emancipation we have spoken in the history of 
worship, as from dependence on the wisdom of the world, which knew 
not God in his wisdom, was thereby secured. Now, as in the history 
of worship we observed a reaction of the earlier principle, which would 
force back religion once more under the yoke of the elements of the 
world ; so in the Gnosis we observe a reaction of this kind, whereby 
religion was to forfeit on another side the freedom achieved for it by 
Christ, and to be made again dependent on human speculation. Chris- 
tianity gave a simple, universally comprehensible word for the solution 
of all the enigmas which had occupied all thinking minds ; — a practi- 
cal answer to all the questions, with the answering of which speculation 
had busied itself in vain. It disposed tlie heart to a tone of feeling, by 
virtue of which, doubts which could not be resolved or got rid of by the 
efforts of speculative reason, were to be practically vanquished. But 
Gnosticism would make the system of religion depend once more on a 
speculative solution of all these questions; would in this manner first 
lay for it a firm foundation and provide for the correct understanding 
of it, so that men were in this way first to learn to comprehend Chris- 
tianity, first to attain that true firmness of conviction, which no longer 
depended on any external fact. 

Now, with regard to the speculative element in these systems, we may 
remark that itis not the product of reason divorced from history, and 
resolving to draw the whole out of its own depths. As we noticed in 
the general Introduction, men had turned back again from the rational- 
ist principle, with which the bloom and vigor of the ancient history 
ended, into which Greek and Roman culture finally resolved itself, and 
had begun to search after the vestiges of the revelation of divme things 
in history. The empty void into which a mere negative philosophy 
merges, had taught the human spirit, craving after the real by virtue 
of an instinctive necessity, to seek again after a more positive philoso- 
phy. We have seen how, in this way, the efforts of a revived Platon- 
ism to explore and compare together the theologumena of ancient peo- 
ples, had arisen. The example of a Plutarch has shown us how this 
tendency, proceeding out of Platonism itself, led to the fountains of the 
ancient East. Platonism aimed to tncorporate itself, it is true, with 
every thing else; as this indeed resulted from the peculiar character 
of the Grecian mind; but itself procured an entrance thereby for the 
Oriental spirit, and the latter now revolted against all dominion of the 
Grecian spirit. It was for subjecting the Grecian element to its own 
sway, and in its lofty flights soared far beyond the limits within which 
the Platonic philosophy had caused reason, confined wholly within it- 
self, to remain contented. The profound Plotinus felt himself -called 
upon afterwards to restore the original Platonism, as he believed it 


GNOSTICISM. 369 


should be systematically understood, to its purity and independence. 
He must seek to release the Grecian spirit from the dominion of the 
Oriental ; must stand forth as the defender of the old Hellenic philoso- 
phy against the haughtiness and pride of the Oriental spirit, as he saw 
it exhibited in the Gnostics.} 

Accordingly we may trace, in the Gnostic systems, different ele- 
ments, although not blended together after the same manner in all, — 
elements of Platonic philosophy, of Jewish theology, and of old Oriental 
theosophy ; and a more enlarged acquaintance with the different. re- 
ligious systems of interior Asia might perhaps furnish many new par- 
ticulars, throwing light on the connection of these systems; but at the 
same time, great caution should doubtless be employed, lest, from an 
agreement which might spring from an inner ground, from the same 
essential tendencies of human nature, which result in like phenomena 
under like circumstances, the conclusion should be directly drawn that 
there had been some inter-communication from without. This Gnosis 
arrayed itself against Judaism, as a religion too material, too earthly, 
too confined, too little theosophic ; — for how devoid of spirituality, how 
bald, how diminutive and empty must Judaism have appeared indeed, 
to men of this intellectual bent, compared with the old, colossal reli- 
gious systems of Asia; although, to him who understands the great pur- 
pose which religion is designed to answer in behalf of mankind, this 
same comparison which led them to despise Judaism, first discloses its 
full worth in relation to the religious development of humanity. Those 
ancient religions seemed, in their enigmatical shapes, where man is 
inclined to look for lofty wisdom much more than in what is simple, to 
promise them far greater insight into the questions which excited their 
inquiries. ! 

Among the old Oriental systems of religion, Parsism, or the doc- 
trines of Zoroaster, had particularly, by means of the intercourse of 
nations through many ages, and the power of the Dualistic element, 
which found a point of sympathy and union in the prevailing tone of 
the minds of this period, acquired great credit and influence, — of 
which the Gnostic systems are themselves an evidence. Yet this doc- 
trine appears here not to have been seized in a way suited to the origi- 
nal spirit of Parsism; for this was a practical spirit. According to 
Parsism, the creation of the good principle uniformly comes first ; pow- 
ers of the kingdom of light are everywhere at work in the world ; — 
Ahriman is but the disturbing and destructive principle. While the 
votary of this system exercises an active and formative influence on 
nature, governs and directs its wild energies and sets limits to destruc- 
tion, he acts as a warrior in the service of Ormuzd for the overthrow 
of Ahriman. But in the Gnostic systems, though not in all alike, this 
practical element, this love of nature, retreats farther into the back- 
gin Another spirit has here pervaded and remodeled this scheme. 

he power of the ungodly principle in the world appears greater ; and 
hence arises the tendency to represent the spirit in affinity with God as 


1 See Ennead. I. |. IX. 


370 GNOSTICISM. 


abstaining from nature, which is alien from it, rather than as exerting 
upon it a shaping and formative influence. We recognize in the Gnos- 
tic systems, considered on this side, rather the spirit of Brahmanism, 
and especially of Buddhaism, — that longing of the soul for release 
from the bonds of matter, (the world of Sansara,) of nature ; — for 
reunion with the primal spirit, from whom all life has flowed ; that 
striving after entire estrangement from human passions, and from all 
sublunary things, which strove to pass beyond the limits of finite exist- 
ence. Though there is no need of looking after causes in the shape 
of external influences, to account for such a direction of minds, which 
might easily take this peculiar tone from inward causes, without any 
impulse whatever from without; and although even such external influ- 
ences themselves could not well be comprehended in their significancy, 
without that point of union in the inner development of the spiritual 
world, which has just been referred to, yet we have reason, notwith- 
standing, to suppose an influence also of tendencies and ideas originat- 
ing in those remote countries of the East. New investigations and 
discoveries have pointed out the way through which Buddhaism might 
spread its influence, even to districts within the compass of the Roman 
empire. 

Laban the Gnostic systems contain elements which had been de- 
rived from various ancient systems of religion, yet they will never 
admit of being explained as resulting simply from the mixture or com- 
bination of such elements ;—it is a living principle peculiar to them- 
selves, which animates most of these combinations. In the first place, 
the age in which they were produced, stamped them with an altogether 
peculiar character; for we may often observe that, in times of great 
excitement, certain tendencies are imparted to a whole series of intel- 
lectual phenomena resulting from such times, even where they stand in 
no outward contact or connection with one another. There are certain 
tendencies and ideas which exercise a wonderful power over everything 
belonging to such periods. At the present time, it was the power of 
the Dualistic principle, which harmonized with the prevailing temper 
of the age, and in which the latter saw itself reflected.1 The ground- 
tone in many of the more serious minds of this period, was a conscious- 
ness of the power of evil, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing 
state of things, aspiration after something beyond the limits of this 
earth, the felt necessity of some new and higher order of things. This 
fundamental tone also pervades the Gnostic systems ; but upon this 
feeling Christianity exerted an altogether peculiar influence, without 
which the greater part of the Gnostic systems would have come to an 
entirely different result. It was the idea constituting the peculiar 
essence of Christianity, the idea of redemption, which modified this 
fundamental tone of those systems ; although they were capable of seiz- 
ing this idea only on a single side, and not in its whole compass and 
with all the consequences resulting from it. When, in the Gnostic sys- 


1 Just as the progressive movement in acquired, so the progressive movement in 
our own time enables us to explain the the period of which we are speaking, ex- 
power which the Pantheistic principle has plains the power of the Dualistic principle. 


GNOSTICISM. 3871 


tems, the amazing impression is described, which the appearance of 
Christ produced in the kingdom of the Demiurge, as revealing a new 
and mighty principle which had entered the precincts of this lower 
world, this was but a reflex image of the powerful impression which the 
contemplation of the life of Christ, and of his deeply working influence 
on humanity, had left on the minds of the founders of these systems. 
It is evident how all earlier institutions seemed to them, in comparison 
with Christianity, as nothing ; how the latter appeared to them as the 
commencement of a great revolution in the life of the race. The ideas 
of the restoration of a disturbed harmony of the universe ; of the con- 
ducting of a fallen creation back to its original source ; of the reunion 
of the earth with heaven; of the revelation of a higher, godlike life 
in humanity, a life transcending the limits of mere human nature ; of 
a new process of development which had entered into the whole earth- 
ly system of the world —these and such were the ideas which, from 
this time onward, formed the central pot of these systems. The pecu- 
liar and distinguishing aim of these Gnostics is, to grasp the appearance 
of Christ, and the creation proceeding from him, in their connection 
with the whole evolution of the universe. In that theogonic and cosmo- 
gone process of theirs, in which they go back to the original ground 
of all existence, everything is referred backwards and forwards to the 
fact of Christ’s appearance. What the Apostle Paul says respecting 
the connection of the redemption with the creation, they made the 
central point of a speculative system, and endeavored to understand 
speculatively. 

As it respects the particular class to which their speculations belong, 
these Gnostics are Oriental Theosophists ; — men with whom, for the 
most part at least, the Oriental element had far the preponderance over 
the Grecian. They differed radically from the thinkers of the West. 
They moved rather amidst etuitions and symbols than conceptions. 
Where the Western thinker would have framed to himself an abstract 
conception, there stood before the soul of the Gnostic a living appear- 
ance, a living personality in vivid intuition. The conception seemed 
to him to be a thing without life. In the eye of the Gnostic every- 
thing became hypostatized, which to the Western thinker existed only 
as a conception. The image, and what the image represented, were, in 
the Gnostic’s mode of representation, often confounded together ; so 
that the one could not be divided from the other. Hurried along, in 
spite of himself, from intuition to intuition, from image to image, by 
the ideas floating before or filling his mind, he was in no condition to 
evolve these ideas and place them in the clear light of consciousness. 
But if we take pains to sift out the fundamental thoughts lying unde- 
veloped in their symbols, and to unfold them clearly to our conscious- 
ness, we shall see, gleaming through the surface, many ideas, which, 
though not understood by their contemporaries, were destined, in far 
later ages, to be seized upon once more, and to be more fully carried 
out by a science regenerated through the influence of faith.! Intuition, 


1 We mean, e. g., the ideas lying at the attached themselves to Judaism, respecting 
root of the systems of those Gnostics who the connection of the Old with the New 


372 GNOSTICISM. 


anticipating the lapse of ages, here grasped in an immediate way, what 
the process of logical analysis was to master only after long and various 
wanderings beyond and short of the truth. 

The questions about which they especially busied themselves were 
these: how to explain the transition from the infinite to the finite ? — 
how to conceive the beginning of the creation ? — how to conceive of 
God as the author of a material world, so alien from his own essence ? 
— whence, if God is perfect, the imperfections of this world ? — 
whence the destructive powers in nature ? — whence is moral evil, if a 
Holy God is man’s creator ?— whence the great diversity of natures’ 
existing among men themselves, varying from minds which may prop- 
erly be called godlike, to those which appear to be utterly abandoned 
to blind passions and without the vestige of a rational and moral 
nature ? 

Here Christianity separated entirely what belongs to the province of 
religion, from what belongs to speculation and to a merely speculative 
interest. And just by so doing, Christianity preserved religion from 
the danger of confounding things divine with the things of this world, — 
the intuition of God with that of nature. It directed the eye of the 
mind beyond that whole series of the phenomena of the world, where, 
in the chain of causes and effects, one thing ever evolves itself out of 
another, to that almighty creative Word of God, by which the worlds 
were framed; so that things which are seen were not made of things 
which do appear. Hebr. 11:8. The creation was here apprehended, 
as an incomprehensible fact, by the upward gaze of faith, which rose 
above the position of the understanding, the faculty which would derive 
all things from one another, which would explain everything, and hence 
denies all immediate truth. ‘This one practically important truth, the 
church was for holding fast in the doctrine of the creation from noth- 
ing ; — taking her stand in opposition to the ancient view, which would 
condition God’s act of creation by a previously existing matter; and 
which, in an anthropopathic manner, conceived of Him, not as the free, 
self-sufficient Author of all existence, but as the fashioner of a material 
already extant. The Gnosis would not acknowledge any such limits to 
speculation. It would explain—clear up to the mental vision, how God 
is the source and ground of all existence. It was thus obliged to place 
in the essence of God himself a process of development, through which 
God is the ground and source of all existence. From overlooking the 
negative sense of the doctrine concerning the creation from nothing, 
it was led to oppose against it the old principle, ‘‘ Nothing can come 
out of nothing.” It substituted in place of this doctrine, the intuitive 
idea of an eflux of all existence out of the supreme being of the Deity. 
This idea of an emanation admits of being presented under a great 
variety of images; under the symbol of an evolution of numbers out 
of an original unity; of an eradiation of light from an original light ; 
of a development of spiritual powers or ideas, acquiring self-subsistence ; 


Testament; respecting the relation of the Christianity ; respecting inspiration, and the 
prophetic element in the Old Testament to organic connection in history generally. 


GNOSTICISM. 373 
of an expression in a series of syllables and tones, dying away gradu- 
ally to an echo. 

The idea of such an emanation answers to an obscure presentiment, 
— deeply seated in the human soul, — of the positive element lying at 
the root of the negative definition of the creation from nothing; and in 
this presentiment it found a foot-hold; but at the same time it gave oc- 
casion for a host of speculations, by which men would easily be led fur- 
ther astray from, and in effect, would entirely lose sight of, the practi- 
cally important ends of religious faith. 

According to this view, God was represented as the self-included, 
incomprehensible and original source of all perfection! From this 
incomprehensible essence of God to finite things, it is impossible to con- 
ceive of an immediate transition. Selflimitation is the starting point, 
whence a communication of life on the part of God — the first passing 
into manifestation of the hidden Deity——begins; and from this pro- 
ceeds all further self-developmg manifestation of the divine essence.? 
Now, from this first lnk in the chain of life are, in the first place, 
evolved the manifold powers or attributes, dwelling in the divine 
essence, which, until that first self-affirmation, were all hidden in the 
abyss of that essence; each of which attributes presents, on one par- 
ticular side, the whole divine essence, and to each of which, in this 
view, are applied the appropriate titles of God.? These divine powers, 
evolving themselves to self-subsistent being, are hence the germs and 
principles of all further evolution of life. The life contaimed in them 
developes and individualizes itself more and more; and in such a way, 
that the successive grades of this evolution of life are ever sinking 
lower, the spirits ever becoming feebler, the further they are removed 
from the first link in the series. Here, we must admit, the Gnosis, 
in attempting to explain the incomprehensible, falls continually into an- 
thropopathism, and, without being aware of it, transfers to the eternal 
the relations of time. 

But supposing the origin of a purely spiritual world in affinity with 
God might thus admit of being explained, that the evolution of different 
grades of perfection in the spiritual world might thus be made clear to 
the imagination ;— yet how explain, by an emanation from God, the 
starting into existence of the sensible world ; how account for the ori- 
gin of evil? Even with regard to this last mentioned problem, the 
rock on which speculation has so often split, injuring in no slight 
measure the attribute of God’s holiness and the freedom of rational, 
accountable beings, the Gnosis was for giving speculation an unbounded 
range. If God has bestowed on man a free will, and if this free will is 


1 The Unfathomable Abyss, (βύϑος,) ac- 
cording to Valentine, exalted above all pos- 
sibility of designation, — of whom, properly 

ing, nothing can be predicated ; — the 
ἀκατονόμαστος of Basilides, the ov of Philo. 
2A πρώτη κατάληψις ἑαυτοῦ, the πρῶτον 
καταληπτὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ, hypostatically repre- 
sented in ἃ νοῦς or λόγος. 

8 Hence the different meanings given by 

the Gnostics to the word αἰών, which, be- 


VOL. I. 


sides its primitive signification, eternity, is 
used by them to denote sometimes the 
Eternal, as a distinguishing attribute of the 
Supreme Essence, sometimes those original 
divine powers above described, sometimes 
the whole emanation-world = πλήρωμα, as 
contradistinguished from the temporal world. 
In the last mentioned sense it is employed 
by Heracleon. Orig. T. XIII. in Joann. 
c Ll. 


374 GNOSTICISM. 


the cause of evil—said the Gnostics —its cause reverts back to God 
himself. They would not allow of any distinction between permission 
and causality on the part of God.! We see, in fact, how it is, that if 
speculation is not content to acknowledge evil as a fact, as the act of 
the creaturely will forsaking its natural dependence on God, and to be 
explained from no other cause or quarter; if speculation must explain 
evil or its origin; then it must be driven either to violate God’s holi- 
ness and deprive the opposition between good and evil of its objective 
significancy, thus undermining the ideas of moral good and evil as to 
their essence, by tracing back the causality of the latter to God, which 
doctrine does indeed lie involved in Pantheism ;—or else it will limit 
God’s almighty power, by supposing an absolute evil, an independent 
ground of it beyond the divine control; which is done by Dualism. 
Yet Dualism is driven, notwithstanding, to the very thing which it chief 
ly labors to avoid. The idea of evil, which it would firmly maintain, it 
must really sap at the root, inasmuch as it imputes it to an outward 
cause, and makes of it a self-subsistent nature, working with necessity ; 
and thus it must, at the same time, involve itself in the contradiction 
of supposing an independent existence out of God; therefore, since ab- 
solute independence (aseity) can be predicated only of God, a God 
who is not God, not good. In avoiding the first of these rocks, the 
Gnostics foundered on the last. 

They deemed it necessary to unite with the doctrine of emanation 
that of Dualism, and sought to explain by the commixture of two hos- 
tile kingdoms, by the products of two opposite principles, the origin of 
a world not answering to the divine idea, with all the defects cleaving 
to it, all the evils it contains. And this hypothesis opened a wide field 
for their speculations and their fanciful images. At this point were 
evolved two different modes of contemplation, which still, however, in 
these times of religious and philosophical eclecticism, do not stand so 
directly opposed to each other, but often come in contact and com- | 
mingle at various intermediate points ; — and in the end they are found 
to be based on the same fundamental idea, though conceived on the one 
side under a more speculative, on the other, under a more mythical 
form. In one of these general schemes, the element of Grecian specu- 
lation, in the other that of Oriental intuition, chiefly predominates ; and 
hence these different modes give rise to the distinction of an Alezan- 
drian and of a Syrian Gnosis (which latter was particularly modified 
by the influence of Parsism) — im so far as these two forms of Gnosis 
may be opposed to each other in abstracto, without any reference to the 
cases where, in the varied phenomena of these times, they are found to 
intermingle. In the former, the Platonic notion of the ὕλη predomi- 
nates. ‘This is the dead, the unsubstantial—the boundary that limits 
from without the evolution of life, in that step-wise progression whereby 
the perfect is ever evolving itself into the less perfect. This ὕλη, again, 
is represented under various images —as the darkness that exists along 
with the light; as the void (κένωμα, κενόν) in opposition to the fulness 


1 Τὸ μὴ κωλυον, αἴτιόν ἐστιν, their usual motto in opposing the doctrine of the church. 


ALEXANDRIAN AND SYRIAN GNOSIS. 375 


of the divine life; as the shadow that accompanies the light; as the 
chaos, the staenant, dark water. This matter, dead in itself, possesses 
by its own nature no active power, no nisus. As life of every sort is 
foreign to it, itself makes no encroachment on the divine. But since 
the divine evolutions of life (the essences developing themselves out of 
the progressive emanation) become feebler the further they are removed 
from the first link in the series; since their connection with the first 
becomes more loose at each successive step, hence, out of the last step 
of the evolution proceeds an imperfect, defective product, which cannot 
retain its connection with the divine chain of life, and sinks from the 
world of AZons down into the chaos ; — or— which is the same notion 
somewhat differently expressed — a drop from the fulness of the divine 
life spills over into the bordering void.’ Now first, the dead matter, by 
commixture with the living, which it wanted, receives animation. But 
at the same time also, the divine living particle becomes corrupted by 
mingling with the chaotic mass. Existence becomes multiform; there 
springs up a subordinate, defective life. The foundation is laid for a 
new world; a creation starts into being beyond the confines of the world 
of emanation. But since now, on the other hand, the chaotic principle 
of matter has acquired a sort of life, hence there arises a pure active 
opposition to the godlike —a barely negative, blind, ungodly nature- 
power, which obstinately resists all plastic influence of the divine ele- 
ment: hence, as products of the spirit of the ὕλη, (of the πνεῦμα ὑλικόν.) 
Satan, malignant spirits, wicked men, in all of whom no reasonable, 
no moral principle, no principle of a rational will, but blind passions 
only have the ascendancy. ‘There is the same conflict here as in the 
scheme of Platonism, between the soul under the guidance of divine 
reason, the νοῦς, and the soul blindly resisting reason,?—— between the 
προνοία and the ἀνάγκη, the divine principle and the natural. 

As Monoism contradicts what every man should know immediately — 
the laws and facts of his moral consciousness ; so Dualism contradicts 
the essence of reason which demands unity. Monoism, shrinking from 
itself, leads to Dualism; and Dualism, springing from the desire to 
comprehend everything, is forced by its very striving after this, through 
the constraint of reason, which demands unity, to refer back the duality 
to a prior unity, and resolve it into this latter. Thus was the Gnosis 
forced out of its Dualism, and obliged to affirm the same which the 
Cabbala and the New Platonism taught; namely, that matter is nothing 
else than the necessary bounds® between being and not-being, which can 
“be conceived as having a subsistence for itself only by abstractiont — as 
the opposite to existence, which, in case of an evolution of life from God, 
must arise as its necessary limitation.® In some such way, this Dual- 
ism could resolve itself into an absolute Monoism, and so into Pantheism. 


1 According to the schemes of the Ophites * By a λόγος νόϑος, according to the New 
and of Bardesanes. Platonists. 

2 See Plato leg. lib. X. p.87-91,v.IX.; ὅδ Thus the Gnostics in Irenzus, Lib. II. 
ed. Bipont. Plutarch. Quest. Platonic, 6. 4, are careful to defend themselves against 
qu. IV. the charge of Dualism: Continere omnia 

8 As it were the outer shell of existence, patrem omnium, et extra Pleroma esse nihil; 
τ" Ῥ. et id, quod extra et quod intus. dicere eos 


376 GNOSTICISM. 

The other scheme accommodated itself more to the Parsic doctrine 
concerning Ahriman and his kingdom ; —a doctrine which it would be 
natural, especially for those Gnostic sects which originated in Syria, to 
appropriate to themselves. This theory assumed the existence of an 
active, turbulent kingdom of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroach- 
ments on the kingdom of light, brought about a commixture of the light 
with the darkness, of the godiike with the ungodlike. Different as these 
two modes of contemplation may appear in description, yet we may recog- 
nize in them both the same fundamental idea. In all cases where the lat- 
ter mode of contemplation becomes somewhat more speculative, it passes 
into the former; as will be seen in Manicheism, which, more than any 
other Gnostic system, wears the stamp of the Parsic religion; and in all 
cases where the former mode of conception assumes a more poetic dress, 
strives to present itself more vividly to the imagination, it passes im- 
perceptibly into the latter; and this it might do sometimes with the 
distinct consciousness, that the whole was but a symbolical dress, where- 
by abstract conceptions were to be rendered more vivid to the imagina- 
tion. We have an example of this kind in the profound thinker, Ploti- 
nus, who was very far from being inclined to substitute a conflict of 
principles beginning at a certain point, in the place of a development 
going on with immanent necessity, from first to last, even to the ex- 
treme bounds of all existence. 

Even among the Platonists there were those who supposed, that along 
with an unorganized, inert matter, the substance of the corporeal world, 
there existed from the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, an un- 
godlike soul, as its origimal moving and active principle. As the 
inorganic substance was organized into a corporeal world by the plastic 
power of the Deity, so by the same power, law and reason were com- 
municated to that turbulent, irrational soul. Thus the chaos of the 
ὕλη was transformed into an organized world, and that blind soul into 
a rational principle—a mundane soul, animating the universe. As 
from the latter of these proceeds all rational, spiritual life in humanity ; 
so from the former proceeds all that is irrational, all that is under the 
blind sway of passion and appetite — all malignant spirits are its proge- 
ny. It is easy to see how the idea of this ψυχὴ ἄλογος, brooding over 
chaos, would coincide with the idea of a Satan originally presiding over 
the kingdom of darkness.? 

In the system of the Sabzeans, or disciples of John,* which was allied, 


secundum agnitionem et ignorantiam, sed 
non secundum localem distantiam. The 
lower creation was comprehended in the 
Pleroma, velut in tunica maculam. 

1 As, for example, when Plotinus repre- 
sents matter as being seized with a longing 
after light or the soul, and describes how it 
darkens the light in attempting to embrace 
it. Plotin in Enneas. I. lib. VIII. c. 14: 
Ὕλη παροῦσα προσαιτεῖ, καὶ οἷον ἐνοχλεῖ, 
καὶ εἰς τὸ εἴτω παρελϑεῖν ἐϑέλει, τὴν δὲ 
ἀλλαμψιν καὶ τὸ ἔκειϑεν φῶς ἔσκότωσε τῇ 
μίξει. 

2See Plutarch. de anime Procreat. e 


Timo, particularly ο. 9. Opera ed. Hutten. 
T. XIII. page 296. 

8 This sect of the Sabsans, (Samriorai, 
from 2¥,) Nazareans, Mandeans, (accord- 
ing to Norberg, from yyy}, μαϑηταί or γνω- 
orikoi,) evidently took its origin from those 
disciples of John the Baptist, who, contrary 
to the spirit and intention of their master, 
adopted, after his martyrdom, a course hos- 
tile to Christianity. We find traces of them, 
mixed up with fabulous matter, in the 
Clementines and in the Recognitiones Cle- 
mentis, perhaps also in the ἡμεροβαπτισταῖς 


ALEXANDRIAN AND SYRIAN GNOSIS. 377 
beyond doubt, by derivation, with the Syrian Gnosis, there does appear, 
indeed, to have been an independent kingdom of darkness, with its own 
powers ; but this has no influence on the higher kingdom of light. The 
thought conceived by one of the genii belonging to the world of light, of 
separating himself from the great primal Fountain, for whose glory all 
creatures should exist, and of establishing a separate and independent 
world in chaos — was the original cause of the intermingling of the two 
kingdoms — the beginning of the visible world, which is founded on 
territory won from the kingdom of darkneés, from chaos ; and which 
now the powers of darkness, impatient of any encroachment on their 
province, seek either to wrest away and bring into their own possession, 
or else to destroy. When the genius who belongs to the third grade in 
the evolution of life, when Abatur reflects himself on the dark water of 
chaos, there springs up from his image an imperfect genius, formed out 
of the mixture of this light-nature with the substance of darkness, and 
destined to a gradual transfiguration. This is Fetahil, the world-builder, 
from whose awkwardness results all the imperfections of this world. 
Also in the system of the Syrian Bardesanes, matter is represented as 
being the genitor of Satan. 

Thus it is evident enough here, how the modes of conception pecu- 
liar to the Syrian and to the Alexandrian Gnosis pass, on this side, 
over into each other. It might also admit of a question, perhaps, 
whether we can properly speak of a Gnosis originally Alexandrian ; 
whether Syria is not the common home of everything that goes under 
this name,— whence it was merely transplanted to Alexandria, in 
which latter place it received a peculiar stamp from the Hellenic, Pla- 
tonizing tendency which there prevailed. At Alexandria, such a 
Gnosis could easily find many points on which to attach itself, in a cer- 
tain Jewish, ideal philosophy of religion already existing there ; but in 
this, however, the Platonic and Western element, which confined itself 
more strictly to the pure ideal position, and did not directly hyposta- 
tize the idea into intuitions, too strongly predominated to admit the pos- 
sibility of its resulting, without the influence of the pure Orientalism 
from Syria, in the peculiar character of the Gnosis. 

It might be thought, that this two-fold theory would have resulted in 
a corresponding difference of practical spirit. As the Syrian theory 
supposed an active kingdom of evil, which was one and the same with 
the kingdom of matter, we might conclude from this, that it made the 
renunciation of this hated matter and its hostile productions, the great 
point in its system of morals. Since, on the other hand, the Aleran- 


and γαλιλαίοις of Hegisippus; see F. Walch. 
de Sabxis comment. Soc. Reg. Gott. T. 
IV. Part. philol. From this sprung up af- 
terwards a sect, whose system, formed out 
of the elements of an older eastern theoso- 
pay. has an important connection with the 
istory of the Gnosis. A critica] examina- 
tion of their most important religious book, 
published by Norberg, the Liber Adami, 
may furnish much additional information 
on this subject. See a review of this work 


32* 


by Gesenius, in the Jenaischen Literatur- 
Zeitung, J. 1817, No. 48-51, and (Kleu- 
ker’s 1) review in the Gottingschen Anzeigen. 
1 The idea here may be compared wholly 
with the Ophitic idea of the Ophiomorphus, 
(see below,) although the latter, in the Ophi- 
tic system, appears possessed of a malig- 
nant nature; and yet the Ophitic system, 
so far as it concerns its speculative ideas, is 
in very many respects nearly related to the 
Alexandrian system of Valentinus. 


378 GNOSTICISM. 


drian Gnosis considered matter in the light of an unorganized sub- 
stance, and the divine as the forming principle of matter, we might 
suppose that it would adopt no such negative theory of morals, but be 
inclined rather to make the active melioration of the world, by the 
power of the divine element, the principle of its moral system. This 
conjecture would be rendered still more probable, by comparing several 
of the Alexandrian with the Syrian systems. - 

But we must see, as we enter more deeply into the matter, that the 
difference of practical tendencies is not so much grounded in the differ- 
ence of these principles, as it is true that a different shaping and ap- 
plication is given to the principles themselves, by virtue of the diversity 
of intellectual bents; and that all the principles derived from other 
quarters receive, through the general, intellectual bent which appropri- 
ates them to itself and the peculiar spiritual temperament of this period, 
an application which needed not necessarily to flow from them, by them- 
selves considered. We have seen,! indeed, how Dualism, in its primi- 
tive form among the Persians, by no means carried along with it the 
tendency to an ascetic, inactive renunctation of the world; but how an 
active life, and the exercise of a plastic influence on the outward world, 
in the conflict for the kingdom of light, developed itself therefrom. 
And yet the same principle received, through the influence of the pre- 
vailing tone of mind in this period, another application. But in Plato- 
nism, two points of view were proposed, and its practical influence was 
conditioned by the predominance of the one or the other. On the one 
side, Platonism represented the soul as the plastic power in the world ; 
—it made the ideas actualize themselves in becoming, stamp them- 
selves in the ὕλη. The self-manifestation of these ideas, striving to 
overpower the ὕλη, should press forward to meet their kindred spirit, 
in its contemplation of the world in all its aspects, — in all appearances 
of the beautiful and good. Through the symbols — though madequate 
to the original type — of the ideal harmony of the universe in the sen- 
sible world, the recollection of the original Former himself was to be 
called up in the spirit that belonged to the higher world, and the crav- 
ing after this awakened within it ;— by means of this contemplation, 
the soul was to become gradually winged. But on the other side, Pla- 
tonism taught that there was a resistance of the ὕλη against these ideas, 
which was not to be entirely vanquished ; it presented to consciousness 
that opposition between the idea and the manifestation, which could 
never be overcome. According to this view, evil is, in this world, a 
necessary antithesis to good. ‘This is inseparable from the relation of 
the idea to the ὕλη ; and hence it is only by contemplation, rising to 
the spiritual world of ideas, that one can soar above this opposition, 
which must always necessarily continue to exist in this lower region. 
At all events, it was from this position that the aristocratic principle 
of the ancient world, of which we have before spoken, took that direc- 
tion, by virtue of which the contemplative life was exalted far above 
the practical; as in like manner, this defect — though more or less 


1 See above, p. 376. 


THE DEMIURGE. 379 


tempered, in proportion to the greater or less reaction of the Christian 
principle — cleaves to the Gnostic systems generally. Now in pro- 
portion as the one or the other of these sides of the Platonic theory 
predominated, there came to be united with Platonism, cither a more 
practical, esthetico-artistic, or an ascetic, contemplative tendency. 
Platonism contains within it, considered on that first side, the genuine 
principle for the construction of the system of ethics; but in order to 
the actualization of what lies within it, it is requisite, that the other 
side should retreat into the back-ground. This Dualism must be prac- 
tically annulled ; a means must be given of reconciling the opposition 
between the idea and the manifestation, and this could be mediated 
only by the fact of a redemption of mankind. Thus Platonism points 
away to Christianity, through which alone the ethical problems grounded 
in the Platonic ideas could be actually realized. 

Now the spiritual tone of this period, which lies at the root of all 
those Gnostic systems, out of which sprung hatred and contempt of the 
world, the predominant Oriental principle of utter estrangement from 
the world and from all human affections, tended to give prominence to 
one of those sides and to repress the other; and the same thing, in- 
deed, is manifested in the ethics peculiar to the later Platonism gener- 
ally, if we’ except Plotinus. One of these Gnostics, Marcion, united, 
in fact, as we shall see, with the doctrine of the ὕλη, a tendency in 
other respects altogether foreign from Platonism. 

The most essential difference between the Gnostic systems, and the 
one which is best suited also to be made the basis of their distribution, 
is that which arises from their different degrees of divergence, in re- 
spect to what constitutes the peculiarity of the Gnostic view of the uni- 
verse, from the purely Christian view. It is the Dualistic element car- 
ried out ; — by virtue of which those oppositions, — which Christianity 
exhibits as conflicting with the original unity in creation, as having first 
originated in the fall of the creature, and only to be removed by the 
redemption, — these oppositions are considered as original, grounded in 
the very principles of existence ;—— hence, also, as being of such a 
kind that they could not be overcome by the redemption itself ; — the 
oppositions between a temporal, earthly, and a higher, invisible order 
of things; between the natural, the purely human, and the divine. 
This opposition, so apprehended, must be extended moreover to the re- 
lation of Christianity to the creation, to nature and history. Where 
this opposition generally was seized in its most sharp and decided 
form, nothing less could be supposed than an absolute opposition also 
between Christianity and the creation — between nature and history. 
Christianity must make its appearance as an altogether sudden thing, 
as a fragment disconnected from everything else, as something coming 
in wholly without expectation. According to this view, no gradual 
development of the Theocracy, as an organically connected whole, 
could be admitted. The connection, also, must be broken between 
Christianity and Judaism. And all this becomes concentrated in the 
form of relation in which the Demiurge was conceived to stand to the 
Supreme, perfect God, and the world of AZons. Everything depends, 


880 GNOSTICISM. THE DEMIURGE. 


then, on the circumstance, whether an absolute opposition was made to 
exist here, or room was still left for some sort of mediation. It is man- 
ifest, how deeply this difference must affect everything that pertains to 
the province of morals and religion. 

In the following respect, all these Gnostics agree; they all held, as 
we remarked above, to a world consisting of the pure emanation of life 
from God, a creation evolved directly out of the divine-essence,! far 
exalted above the outward creation produced by God’s plastic power, 
and conditioned by a preéxisting matter. They agree moreover in 
this, that they did not admit the Father of that higher world of ema- 
nation, to be the immediate author of ths lower world, but maintained 
that the lower creation proceeded from the World-former, (δημιουργός, ) 
a bemg of kindred nature with the universe formed and governed by 
him, and far inferior to that higher system and the Father of it. But 
here arose a difference among them; for while they all maintained the 
fact of such a subordination, they did not agree in their conceptions as 
to the particular mode of its existence. Some, taking their departure 
from ideas which had long prevailed among certain Jews of Alexan- 
dria, (as appears from comparing the Alexandrian version of the Old 
Testament, and from Philo,) supposed that the Supreme God created 
and governed the world by ministering spirits, by the angels. At the 
head of these angels stood one, who had the direction and control of 
all; hence called the opificer and governor of the world. This Demi- 
urge they compared with the plastic, animating, mundane spirit of 
Plato and the Platonicians,? which, too, according to the Timzeus of 
Plato, strives to represent the ideas of the Divine Reason, in that 
which is becoming and temporal. This angel is a representative of the 
Supreme God on this lower stage of existence. He acts, not indepen- 
dently, but merely according to the ideas inspired in him by the Su- 
preme God ; just as the plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates 
all things after the pattern of the ideas communicated by the Supreme 
Reason, (voic.2) But these ideas transcend the powers of his own lim- 
ited nature; he cannot understand them; he is merely their uncon- 
scious organ; and hence is unable himself to comprehend the whole 
scope and meaning of the work which he performs. As an organ under 
the guidance of a higher inspiration, he reveals what exceeds his own 
power of conception. And here also they fall in with the current 
ideas of the Jews, in supposing that the Supreme God had revealed 
himself to their Fathers through the angels, who served as ministers 
of his will. From them proceeded the giving of the law by Moses. In 
the following respect, also, they considered the Demiurge to be a rep- 
resentative of the Supreme God ;— as the other nations of the earth 
are portioned out under the guidance of the other angels, so the Jew- 
ish people, considered as the peculiar people of God, are committed to 
the especial care of the Demiurge, as his representative. He revealed 


1 mye diy. παράδειγμα of the Divine Reason hyposta- 

2 The δεύτερος ϑεός, the ϑεὸς γενητός. tized. ἢ ; Ἴ 

8 The ὃ pie ζῶον, ---- ἃ vantage to the * According to the Alexandrine version 
γενητόν, the ϑεὸς γενητός of Plato, — the of Deuteron. 32: 8, 9: Ὅτε διεμέριζεν ὁ 


CLASSIFICATION OF GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 381 
also among them, in their religious polity, as in the creation of the 
world, those higher ideas, which himself could not understand in their 
true significancy. The Old Testament, like the whole creation, was 
the veiled symbol of a higher mundane system, the veiled type of Chris- 
tianity. 

Dinca the Jewish people themselves, however, they carefully dis- 
tinguished, after the example of the Alexandrians, between the great 
mass, who are barely a representative type of the people of God, (the 
Israelites according to the flesh, the Ἰσραὴλ αἰσϑητός, κατὰ σάρκα.) and the 
smaller number, who became really conscious of their destination as the 
people of God, (the soul of this mass, the spiritual men of Philo; the 
Ἰσραὴλ πνευματικός, νοητός ; the truly consecrated race, living in the con- 
templation of God ; the ἀνὴρ ὁρῶν τὸν ϑεόν ; the πνευματικοί, γνωστικοί, as 
contradistinguished from the ψυχικοί, πιστικοί.)ὺ The latter, with their 
sensual minds, adhered to the outward form, perceived not that this was 
barely a symbol, and therefore entered not into the meaning of the 
symbol.! Thus those sensual-minded Jews knew not the angel by 
whom God revealed himself.in all the Theophanies of the Old Testa- 
ment; knew not the Demiurge in his true relation to the hidden, Su- 
preme God, who never reveals himself in the sensible world. Here, 
too, they confounded type and archetype, symbol and idea. They rose 
no higher than to this Demiurge ; they held him for the Supreme God 
himself. Those spiritual men, on the contrary, clearly perceived, or at 
least divined, the ideas veiled under Judaism ; they rose above the De- 
miurge, to the knowledge of the Supreme God; they are, therefore, 
properly his true worshippers, (ϑεραπεῦται.) The religion of the former 
was grounded barely on a faith of authority; the latter live in the con- 
templation of divine things. The former needed to be schooled and 
disciplined by the Demiurge — by rewards, punishments, and threats ; 
the latter need no such means of discipline; they rise by the buoyancy 
of their own minds to the Supreme God, who is only a fountain of 
blessedness to those that are fitted for communion with him; they love 
him for his own sake. 

When now these Jewish theosophists of Alexandria had come over to 
Christianity, and with this new religion had united their previous ideas, 
they saw the spirit of the Old Testament completely unveiled by Chris- 
tianity, and the highest idea of the whole creation brought clearly to 
light. The scope and end of the whole creation, and of all human 
development, now for the first time became clear. As far as the Su- 
preme 4on,*? who appeared in the person of Christ, is exalted above 
the angels and the Demiurge, so far does Christianity transcend Juda- 


ὕψιστος ἔϑνη, ἐστησεν ὅρια ἐϑνῶν κατὰ 


ἀριϑμὸν ἀγγέλων ϑεοῦ, καὶ ἐγενήϑη 
μερὶς κυρίου λαὸς αὐτοῦ Ἰακώβ. 

1 Thus in the epistle ascribed to Barnabas, 
it is asserted by a moderate Gnostic, who 
had as yet by no means attained to that 
higher Gnosis which resulted from the mix- 
ture of the Alexandrian idealism with Sy- 
rian theosophy, that the Jews had altogeth- 
er misunderstood the ceremonial law, in 


observing it outwardly, instead of seeing in 
it an allegorical representation of universal 
religion and moral truths. The Gnosis 
furnished the key which first unlocked this 
its true meaning. 

2 See above, Part I. p. 56, etc., respecting 
the two religious positions according to 
Philo. 

8 Νοῦς or λόγος. 


382 GNOSTICISM. 


ism and the whole earthly creation. The Demiurge himself now per- 
ceives entering into his province a revelation of a higher system of 
things, and serves henceforth as its self-conscious organ. 

If the law was called by Jewish theologians a law dispensed by angels, 
with a view to mark, in this way, its divine, as opposed to a merely 
human, origin — this designation is, on the other hand, employed in the 
apostolic letters, for the purpose of clearly setting forth the superiority 
of Christianity to Judaism, — of exhibiting the former as the absolute 
religion, for which all the earlier fragmentary revelations of the divine 
councils only served to prepare the way. The all-embracing revelation 
of God inthe Son, through whom God himself enters immediately intd 
fellowship with the creature, is opposed to the revelation mediated by the 
instrumentality of individual angels — individual godlike powers. By 
the manifestation of the comprehending whole, everything partial is 
rendered superfluous.! The inventions of the Gnostics, in which the 
whole matter is spun out into a mythical form, turn on this profound 
idea. 

In what the Gnostics who adopt this point of view say about the rela- 
tion of the Demiurge, of his creation, of his previous dominion, to the 
appearance of Christ and of Christianity, we have a glimpse of ideas, 
in themselves profound. They endeavor to express how the whole was, 
at least in idea, in the germ, implanted in the original creation, which 
was to be actually realized and fulfilled only by Christianity ; — how 
reason, attaining first through Christianity to the full and clear con- 
sciousness of the ideas incorporated in and stamped upon creation, was 
to express these in an actual manifestation; —a great and fruitful 
thought, which, obscurely divined by the Gnosis, waited to receive its 
clear and discreet exposition from a future science, striking root in 
Christianity. The Gnosis bore within it the germ, first presented as a 
poetic intuition, of a true philosophy of history. 

The other party of the Gnostics consisted mainly of such as, before 
their coming over to Christianity, had not been followers of the Mosaic 
religion, but had already, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an 
Oriental Gnosis, opposed as well to Judaism as to all popular religions, 
like that of which we find the remams in the books of the Sabzeans, 
and of which examples may still be found in the East, among the Per- 
sians and the Hindoos. ‘They regarded the Demiurge with his angels, 
not simply, like the former class, as a subordinate, limited being, but as 
one absolutely hostile to the Supreme God. The Demiurge and his angels 
are for establishing their independence within their limited sphere. 
They would tolerate no foreign dominion within their province. What- 
ever higher existence has descended into their kingdom, they seek to 
hold imprisoned there, so that it may not ascend again above their nar- 
row precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the world- 
forming angels coincided, for the most part, with the kingdom of the 
deceitful star-spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile 
him by various arts of deception, — and who exercise a tyrannical sway 


1 See Heb. 2. Ephes. 3: 10, and the words of Christ to Nathanael. 


CLASSIFICATION OF GNOSTIC SYSTEMS. 383 


over the things of this world.1_ The Demiurge is a limited and limit- 
ing being ; proud, jealous, revengeful ; and this his character expresses 
itself in the Old Testament, which proceeded from him. 

Believing that they found in the Old Testament so many qualities 
attributed to God which were anthropopathic— so much which was at 
variance with the Christian idea of God and with moral perfection, it 
would indeed have been natural for these Gnostics, had they lived in a 
different spiritual atmosphere, to consider all this as the result of hu- 
man error, whereby the true idea of God had become vitiated. But to 
refer this to a subjective cause, and explain it psychologically, lay alto- 
gether remote from their habit of contemplation. To them Judaism no 
less than paganism appeared, as opposed to Christianity, something too 
positively veal to admit of being satisfactorily explained in any such 
way as this. They fancied in the life of nations they could trace the 
influence of self-subsistent spiritual powers, who controlled the general 
consciousness. What St. Paul says of the principalities and powers, 
(ἀρχαῖς and ἐξουσίαις.) they referred to these agents. As in paganism 
they saw the kingdom of the demons, so in Judaism they saw the king- 
dom of the Demiurge. And so while they acknowledged the history of 
the Old Testament to be true, they were led to transfer whatever ap- 
peared to them defective in the idea of God in the Old Testament, to 
the Demiurge himself. The reflected image of this being, they saw 
in the character and in the conceptions of the people devoted to his 
service. Even in nature, where they beheld the dominion of an iron 
necessity, governing by invariable laws and sparing nothing, they be- 
lieved the God of holy love, revealed through Christ, was not to be 
found. They saw, manifesting itself there, a plastic power indeed, but 
inadequate to master its material, to subdue the destructive agencies 
which resisted its efforts. They beheld the old chaos once more break- 
ing loose ; the wild energy of the ὕλη, revolting without control against 
the dominion which the formative Power would exercise over it, — cast- 
ing off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had begun. 
Thus they recognized here a powerful, indeed, but not all-powerful 
Demiurge, against whose supremacy the ὕλη, which he sought to sub- 
ject to his will, was ever rebelling. The same jealous being, limited in 
his power, ruling with despotic sway, whom they found in the Old Tes- 
tament, they imagined they saw in nature. At the bottom of these 
peculiar views lay the truth, that even on the foundation of the Old 
Testament, religion could not as yet be wholly emancipated from the 
principle which ruled in the ancient world; although a higher, theistic 
element was here revealed in opposition to that principle. This could 
be brought about only by the redeeming power of the gospel. These 
Gnostics judged thus: —the supreme God, the God of holiness and 
love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible world, has re- 


1 Accordingly, in the system of these Sa- important part in everything that is bad. 
beans, the seven star-spirits and the twelve To their deceptive arts, the Sabzeans traced 
star-spirits of the zodiac, who sprung from _ the origin of those detested religions, Juda- 
an irregular connection between the cheated ism and Christianity. 

Fetahil and the spirit of darkness, play an 


384 GNOSTICISM. 


vealed himself in this earthly creation only by certain divine seeds of 
life, scattered among men, the germination of which the Demiurge 
strives to check and suppress. ‘The perfect God is, at most, known 
and worshipped in mysteries alone by a few spiritual men. Now this 
God, through his highest Adon, let himself down at once, without any 
forgoing preparation, to this inferior system, for the purpose of drawing 
upward to himself those higher and kindred spiritual natures which are 
here held in bondage. Christianity finds nowhere in the whole creation 
a point of entrance, except in those theosophic schools where a higher 
wisdom, in the form of secret doctrines, has been handed down from age 
to age. 

This difference between the Gnostic systems was one of great impor- 
tance, both in a theoretical and a practical pomt of view. The Gnostics 
of the first class, who looked upon the Demiurge as an organ of the 
supreme God, and his representative, the fashioner of nature according 
to his ideas, the guiding spring of the historical evolution of God’s king- 
dom, might, consistently with their peculiar principles, expect to find 
the manifestation of the divine element in nature and in history. The 
were not necessarily driven to an unchristian hatred of the world. 
They could admit that the divine element might be revealed even in 
earthly relations; that everything of the earth was capable of being 
refined and ennobled by its influence. They could therefore be quite 
moderate in their ascetic notions, as we find the case actually to have 
been with regard to many of this class; although their notion of the 
ὕλη continually tended to the practically mischievous result of tracing 
evil exclusively to the avorld of sense ; and although their over valua- 
tion of a contemplative Gnosis might easily prove unfavorable to the 
spirit of active charity. On the contrary, the other kind of Gnosis, 
which represented the Creator of the world as a nature directly op- 
posed to the supreme God and his higher system, would necessarily 
lead to a wildly fanatical and morose hatred of the world, wholly at 
war with the spirit of Christianity. This expressed itself in two ways; 
among the nobler and more sensible class, by an excessively rigid asce- 
ticism, by an anxious concern to shun all contact with the world — 
though to fashion and mould that world constitutes a part of the Chris- 
tian vocation. The morality, in this case, to make the best of it, could 
be only negative, only a preparatory step of purification in order to the 
contemplative state. But the same eccentric hatred of the world, 
coupled with pride and arrogance, might also lead to wild enthusiasm 
and a bold contempt for all moral obligations. The principle once 
started upon, that the whole of this world is the work of a finite, un- 
godlike spirit; that it is not susceptible of any revelation of divine 
things ; that the loftier natures who belong to a far higher world, are 
here held in bondage; these Gnostics easily came to the conclusion, 
that everything external is a matter of perfect indifference to the inner 
man, — nothing of a loftier nature can there be expressed ; the outward 
man may indulge in every lust, provided only that the tranquillity of 
the inner man is not thereby disturbed in its meditation. The most. 
direct way of showing contempt and defiance of this wretched, hostile 


CLASSIFICATION OF G@NOSTIC SYSTEMS. 3885 


world was, not to allow the mind to be affected by it in any situation. 
Men should mortify sense by braving every lust, and still preserving 
the tranquillity of the mind unruffled. ‘‘ We must conquer lust by in- 
dulgence, — said these bold spirits — for it is no great thing for a man 
to abstain from lust who knows nothing about it by experience. The 
greatness lies in not being overcome by it, when clasped in its embrace.””! 
Though the reports of enemies ought not be used without great caution 
and distrust, and we should never forget that such witnesses were liable, 
by unfriendly inferences or the misconstruction of terms, to impute to 
such sects a great deal that was false; yet the characteristic maxims 
quoted from their own lips, and the coincident testimony of such men 
as Irenzeus and Epiphanius, and of those still more unprejudiced and 
careful inquirers, the Alexandrians, places it beyond all reasonable 
doubt, that they not merely expressed, but even practised, such princi- 
ples of conduct. Besides, that enemy of Christianity, the Neo-Platonic 
philosopher Porphyry, corroborates this testimony by citing from the 
mouth of these persons maxims of a similar import.” “A little stand- 
ing pool,” said they, “may be defiled, when some impure substance 
drops into it; not so the ocean, which, conscious of its own immensity, 
admits everything. So little men are overcome by eating ; but he who 
is an ocean of strength (ἐξουσία, probably a cant term of theirs, founded 
on a misinterpretation of St. Paul’s language, 1 Corinth. 8: 9; 6: 12) 
takes everything and is not defiled.” Not only in the history of Chris- 
tian sects of earlier and more recent times, but also among the sects of 
the Hindoos, and even among the rude islanders of Australia, instances 
may be found of such tendencies which defied all moral obligations — 
tendencies that have arisen from speculative or mystical elements, or it 
may be from some subjective caprice setting itself in opposition to all 
positive law. In the connection of the present period, the false striving 
of the subjective spirit after emancipation, after breaking loose from all 
the bonds, holy or unholy, whereby the world had been hitherto kept to- 
gether, is quite apparent. And this aim and tendency might seem to 
have found a point of union in that unshackling of the spirit, so radical- 
ly different in its character, which Christianity brought along with it. 
This difference shows itself, again, in the views entertained of partic- 
ular moral relations. The Gnostics of the last-mentioned class either 
enjoined the life of celibacy, or expressed their abhorrence of marriage 
as being an impure and profane connection, or else — on the principle 
that whatever pertained to sense was indifferent, and that men needed 
but to defy the Demiurge by despising his stringent laws — they justi- 
fied the gratifying of every lust. Those of the first class, on the con- 
trary, honored marriage, as a holy estate; and on this subject also, 
found in Christianity the complete fulfilment of a revelation introduced 
mto the Demiurge’s world, as the type of a higher order of things ; and 
the Valentinian Gnosis, which invariably regarded the lower world as a 
symbol and mirror of the higher, which sought to trace the manifes- 
tation of the same supreme law in various gradations, at different 


1 Clemens Stromat. lib. Il. f. 411. 2 De abstinentia carn. lib. I. § 40, et seq. 
VOL. I. 33 


386 GNOSTICISM. DOCETISM. 


stages of existence, saw in the relation of marriage, as elsewhere, the 
type of a higher relation pervading every stage and degree of existence, 
from the highest link of the chain downwards. We may here observe 
in the Valentinian Gnosis, the first attempt, originating in the influence 
of Christianity, to understand in a scientific way the true significance 
of marriage, in its connection with the laws of the universe—a point 
which the mind of Plato was striving to reach in the Symposium ; but 
which could not be truly reached and adequately presented until Chris- 
tianity had led men to recognize the unity of God’s image in both the 
sexes, and their relation to each other, and to the common type of hu- 
manity residing in that unity. 

The difference between these two tendencies of the Gnostic principle 
was strongly manifested, again, in the different ways of contemplating 
Christ’s person. All Gnostics, it is true, were in a sense agreed in this 
respect; that as they distinguished the God of heaven from the God of 
nature, and hence, too, separated beyond necessity the invisible from the 
visible world, the divine from the human, — so they could not acknowl- 
edge the unity of the human and divine natures in the person of Christ. 
Yet as in the first of these cases we remarked an important difference 
between the two predominant tendencies of the Gnostic systems, so we 
may observe an important difference, too, m the case last mentioned. 
We find here an essential gradation in the views entertained of the 
relation of the divine and human natures in Christ. Some regarded 
the humanity of Christ as real, and as possessed of a certain dignity of 
its own; yet, as they made two Gods of the one God of heaven and of 
nature, and represented the creator of the latter to be nothing more 
than the organ of the former ; so they divided the one Christ into two 
Christs —a higher and a lower, a heavenly and an earthly Christ — 
the latter serving merely as the organ of the former ; and this, not by 
an original and inseparable union with him, but in such sense that the 
former first united himself with the latter at his baptism in the Jordan. - 
But the other species of Gnosis, denying, as it did, all connection of 
Christianity with Judaism, and all progressive development of the king- 
dom of God among men; representing, as it did, the God of Christ 
and of the gospel as a different being from the God of nature and of 
history, must necessarily do away the connection of Christ’s appearance 
with nature and with history. The notion, so pleasing to the fantastic 
taste of the East,! and which had long obtained currency among the 
Jews, that a higher spirit has the faculty of representing himself to the 
outward eye in various forms, deceiving the senses, though in them- 
selves without substance, was applied to Christ. One entire and im- 
portant part of his earthly existence and of his personal being was criti- 
cized away ; his whole humanity was denied, and whatever appertained 
to Christ’s human appearance represented as a mere deceptive show, ὦ 
mere vision.2. Yet we can in nowise agree with those who hold that 
Docetism was only one form in which a decided tendency to idealism 


1 We have only to think of the Hindoo tained by one Jewish sect respecting the 
Maia, and the host of Indian myths. angelophanies, noticed in Justin M. Dial. 
2 Just as Philo's idea of the Old Testa- c.Tryph. See vol. 1. p. 42. 
ment theophanies led to the views enter- 


DIFFERENT VIEWS OF CHRIST’S PERSON. 387 


and rationalism manifested itself— a form thames modified by the 
prevailing notions of the age; so that the Docetw, had they lived at 
some other period, would have substituted in place of the historical 
Christ a mere ideal one. We should be careful to distinguish the 
proper essence of the heretical tendency from the symptoms through 
which it expressed itself. Docetism may be the result of very different 
tendencies of mind —a tendency to supranaturalism, or a tendency to 
rationalism. There might be united with it, an interest at bottom to 
give all possible prominence to this supernatural and real element in 
Christ’s appearance. Docetism, at this point, supposed a real, though 
not sensible Christ; and a real impartation of Christ to humanity. 
Christ gave himself, according to this view, to humanity, as a source of 
divine life. He presented himself sensibly to the eyes of men, not in 
his true, divine nature, but only so as to be perceived by them, yet 
without coming himself into any contact with matter, in an unreal veil 
of sense. His appearance was something truly objective ; but the sen- 
sible form in which this was apparent to men was merely subjective. 
This was the only possible way m which men, under the dominion of 
sense, could come into any contact with a nature so divine. A mode 
of apprehension turned exclusively in the direction of supranaturalism, 
might lead in this case to a total denial of the reality of the natural 
element in Christ. But under this form of Docetism might be lurking, 
also, a tendency which would have resulted in an entire evaporation of 
Christianity, in turning the life of Christ into a mere symbol of a spir- 
itual communication from God, in substituting the idea of God’s re- 
deeming power in place of the historical Redeemer ; in a word, there 
might eventually spring out of a tendency of this sort, an opposition to 
historical Christianity — and that this did actually come about, will be 
shown hereafter by specific examples. 

When these Gnostics, with their system ready made, looked into the 
scriptures of the New Testament, they had no difficulty in finding it all 
there, since they were only on the search for points of coincidence. 
Trusting to the inner light of their higher spiritual nature, which was 
to make all things clear to them, they gave themselves but little con- 
cern about the letter of the religious records. In all cases, they were 
for explaining outward things from within — that is, from their intui- 
tions, which were above all doubt. They disdained the helps necessary 
to unfold the spirit contained under the cover of the word; they 
despised the laws of thought and of language,! and were thus exposed, 
in interpreting the records of religion, to all manner of delusion ; while 
they had power also to charm others, as ignorant of those laws as they 
were themselves, within the circle of their intuitions and symbolical 
representations. Understanding, for instance, the term ‘ world,” 
wherever it occurs in the New Testament, in one and the same sense, 
neither distinguishing nor separating the objective from the subjective 
world, they could easily demonstrate the position, that the whole earthly 


1 Origin, in Philocal. c. 14, shows how _ their errors in biblical interpretation by the 
much the Gnostics were strengthened in dyvoia τῶν λογικῶν, 


388 GNOSTICISM — GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS 


creation betrays defects, and could not have proceeded from the Su- 
preme and perfect God. The parables, for whose simplicity and pro- 
found practical meaning they seem to have been endowed with no 
sense, were specially welcomed by them, because in these, when the 
point of comparison was once dropped, an arbitrary interpretation had 
the fullest scope. The controversy excited, however, by this arbitrary 
biblical interpretation of the Gnostics, had one good effect, in turning 
the attention of their opponents to the necessity of a sober, grammatical 
method of scriptural interpretation, and leading them to establish the 
first hermeneutical canons ; as may be seen from numerous examples in 
Irenzeus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen. 

As the opinion that falsehood was allowable and might even be neces- 
sary to guide the multitude, was a principle inbred into the aristocratic 
spirit of the old world; and as the justification of falsehood, therefore, 
could not be wholly cut off, and the unconditional obligation of truth- 
fulness, arising from the fact that all are alike rational, all created alike 
in the image of God, could not be brought home to the general con- 
sciousness of mankind except by means of Christianity ; so it was ever 
found to be a consequence of the reaction of that old aristocratic spirit 
with which Gnosticism was connected, that the principle, Falsehood is 
lawful for a good purpose, once more slipped in. By means of the 
opposition which the Gnostics set up between psychical and spiritual 
men, they could defend the practice of descending from one of these 
positions to the other, and of saying what was false to men of the lower 
stage, because they were not prepared to receive the pure truth. This 
principle influenced their interpretation of the New Testament; and 
they were the inventors of the exegetical theory of accommodation. 
Many among them asserted that Christ and the apostles expressed them- 
selves differently, according to the different standing of those whom 
they addressed. They accommodated themselves to these different 
positions ; — to the natural men, (the ψυχίκοι,} those who stood on the 
ground of blind, unconscious faith — faith on outward authority and on 
miracles, (those who were tied down to Jewish prejudices,) they spoke 
only of a Demiurge, for in truth the limited capacities of these men 
were unfitted for anything higher. The higher truths from the world 
of Atons, and relating to that world, they had communicated to none 
but a small circle of the initiated, who by virtue of their higher, spirit- 
ual nature, (πνευματικοί, ) were capable of understanding such truths. 
But in all other cases, they had simply hinted at these truths in isolated 
figures and symbols, intelligible to such natures alone. That higher 
wisdom they had spoken, as Paul declared, 1 Corinth. 2: 6, only in 
the living word, among such as were perfect; and it was only by the 
living word, within the circle of the initiated, that it was to be contin- 
ually handed down. The knowledge of this secret tradition, therefore, 
was the only true key to the more profound exposition of scripture. 
Though other church teachers, whom the spirit of Platonism had too 
strongly influenced, were not wholly exempt from that aristocratic ele- 
ment, yet the clear and earnest Christian spirit of Irenzeus took a 


AND SECRET DOCTRINES. 889 


bold and decided stand against it. ‘‘ The apostles,’’ he said,! “‘ who 
were sent forth to reclaim the erring, to restore sight to the blind, to 
heal the sick, assuredly did not accommodate themselves to the exist- 
ing opinions of their hearers; but spoke to them according to the rev- 
elation of truth. What physician who desires to heal the sick, will 
yield to the whims of his patient, instead of prescribing to him so as to 
effect his cure? The apostles, those disciples of truth, are strangers 
to all deception, because deception has nothing in common with truth, 
any more than darkness has with light. Our Lord, who is himself the 
truth, for that very reason could not deceive.” 

Others, relying on the principles of their Gnosis, ventured to subject 
the whole New Testament to the boldest criticism, affirming it to be im- 
possible, from the instructions of the apostles alone, to get at the pure 
doctrines of Christ; for, said they, the apostles themselves were still 
somewhat fettered, with the rest, by psychical or Jewish opinions. The 
spiritual man (the Pneumaticus) must sift the “ natural” from the 
“spiritual”’ in their writings. Or they even went so far as to distin- 
guish in Christ’s discourses, what had been spoken by the natural 
Christ, under the inspiration of the Demiurge ; what had been expressed 
through him by the divine “ Wisdom,” which had not yet reached its 
full development, but still fluctuated between the province of the Demi- 
urge and the “‘ Pleroma;’’? and what had been spoken through him by 
the supreme Nus out of the Pleroma.? 

It is easy to see, that under this theosophic style of intuition and ex- 
pression is veiled a completely rationalistic mode of thinking, which 
strives to soar above the Christ and the Christianity of history. The 
view of a certain opposition betwixt the idea and its manifestation in 
primitive Christianity itself — of a perfectibility of Christianity, by rea- 
son of which it was to purify itself from that which, in its first form of 
manifestation, checked and vitiated the pure evolution of the idea —is 
here lying at bottom. In the person of Christ himself, a distinction is 
made between what belongs to the idea, and what belongs to the vitiat- 
ing element of the temporal appearance ; between the truth which he 
uttered by immediate inspiration, and what. he spoke from the inferior 
standing ground of reflection disturbed by temporal ideas. 

These Gnostics, or at least a portion of them, were not at all dis- 
posed to separate themselves from the rest of the church, and establish 
distinct communities of their own. ‘They were satisfied that the psy- 
chical natures were unable, from their lower station, to understand 
Christianity otherwise than in the form which had been given to it by 
the church; that they could reach nothing higher than the blind faith 
on authority ; that they were utterly destitute of a faculty for the higher 
spiritual intuition; — they were not for disturbing, therefore, these 
common followers of the church in their quiet faith;* they were for 
uniting with the ordinary congregations, and establishing, in connection 
with them, certain theosophic schools, certain Christian mysteries, into 


1 Lib. III. ¢. 5. 8 Vid. Iren. lib. III. ec. 2. 
2 The Sophia, Achamoth; see below. 4 Tode κοινοὺς ἐκκλησιαστικούς. 


985 


390 GNOSTICISM — PLOTINUS 

which all those persons should be admitted, in whom they discovered 
that higher faculty which was not bestowed on all. They complained, 
that they were refused admission to the fellowship of the church, and 
that they were called heretics, though they concurred in everything 
which the church taught.1 

But what would have become of the church, had they succeeded in 
their design of introducing within it such a distinction of two different 
positions in religion? ‘The essence of the church, which admits no 
such opposition, which rests on the fact of a common faith uniting all 
hearts in the same fellowship of a higher life, the peculiar character of 
Christianity itself, would have been thereby destroyed. Christianity, 
as we have seen, could let itself down again to a more Jewish position 
of the mind, it could wrap itself in a Jewish dress, and could be thus 
propagated in the consciousness of men who must be trained to Chris- 
tian freedom by a gradual process. The essentials of the church would 
still be retained, though in a form inadequate and coming from the re- 
action of an earlier stage of religious development. But had the church 
allowed room for the introduction within its bosom of such an opposition, 
it must have forfeited its very essence and existence. Hence the 
spirit, which throws off what it finds no way of digesting and assimilat- 
ing to its own nature, united together men of the most opposite theo- 
logical tendencies in a common resistance against this reaction, which 
threatened directly the very life of the church itself. 

Gnosticism had a two-fold conflict to sustain; a conflict with the 
Christian principle asserting its own independence, and another with 
Platonism. Plotinus, who in no part of his works openly attacks 
Christianity, felt himself under the necessity of standing forth as an 
opponent of the Gnostics, since in their speculations they pretended to 
outstrip Plato and the old Greek philosophy.? He evidently does them 
injustice when he asserts, that what they taught consisted partly in 
ideas borrowed from Plato, and partly in new inventions, hatched up 
for the purpose of forming a system of their own, but destitute of 
truth.2 Their opposition to Platonism was in no sense, assuredly, a 
capricious, far-sought thing, a mere striving to outdo antiquity; but it 
was one necessarily grounded in the religious and philosophical princi- 
ah from which they started, — as indeed Plotinus himself evinces by 

is mode of combating them. On those principles, whether regarded 
on the side of the Christian or of the Oriental theosophic element en- 
tering into them, the Gnostics were compelled to believe that they 
found in Plato intimations of the truth indeed, but not the true light 


1 Queruntur de nobis, quod, cum similia 
nobiscum sentiant, sine causa abstineamus 
nos acommunicatione eorum, et, cum eadem 
dicant et eandem habeant doctrinam, voce- 
mus illos hzreticos. ILren. lib. III. ¢. 15. 

2 He accuses them of perverting Plato’s 
doctrines, and of seeking to place them in 
an unfavorable light: Ὡς αὐτοὶ μὲν τὴν 
νοητὴν φύσιν κατανενοηκότες, ἐκείνου δὲ 
καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν μακαρίων ἀνδρῶν μῆ. 


They should not ἐν τῷ τοὺς “Ἕλληνας δια- 
σύρειν καὶ ὑβρίζειν τὰ αὑτῶν ἐν συστάσει 
παρὰ τοῖς ἀκούουσι ποιεῖν. Ennead. II. 1. 
IX. See also Porphyry’s life of Plotinus, 


c. 16. 

3"Ohwe γὰρ αὐτοῖς τὰ μὲν παρὰ τοῦ Πλά- 
τωνος εἴληπται, τὰ δὲ ὅσα καινοτομοῦσιν, 
ἵνα ἰδίαν φιλοσοφίαν ϑῶνται, ταῦτα ἔξω τῆς 
ἀληϑείας εὕρηται. 


AGAINST THE GNOSTICS. 391 
which could explain the history of the universe. To Plotinus, beyond 
question, this new tendency, regarded from his own point of view as a 
Greek philosopher, must have seemed, both in respect to what was 
true and what was false in it, a declension from the old healthy culture, 
a doctrine wholly at variance with the sober discipline of the Greeks. 
He looked upon it as a contagious, fanatical turn of thinking, which 
had taken possession of men’s minds and rendered them incapable of 
appreciating arguments from reason. Qn one side, the opposition of 
the Platonic principle to the Gnosis, in Plotinus, is directed against 
Christianity itself, against the Christian element admitted by the Gnos- 
tics ; on the other hand, it is coincident with the opposition which would 
arise out of the Christian principle itself against the Gnosis; and it is 
interesting to compare what Plotinus says, from this point of view, with 
the similar strictures made by Christian antagonists of the Gnostic 
heresy. 

In respect to the former of these cases, it 1s necessary to notice, 
first of all, his opposition to the teleological point of view. Though 
this might have found its place in the original Platonism, which was not 
rigidly pursued out to all its consequences, yet by the more severe and 
systematic deduction of the Neo-Platonic Monoism,? it is wholly ex- 
cluded. Nothing is admitted here but the immanent necessity of the 
conception, in its evolution from the Absolute to the extreme limit of 
all being. ‘The teleological element in the action of spiritual powers, 
which the Gnosis introduced, as well as the substitution of this transi- 
tive action in place of the immanent necessity of a process of devel- 
opment, could not but appear to Plotinus an anthropopathic vitiation 
of the νοητά, inasmuch as it transferred the notion of the end and the 
thereby determined beginning of an action, taken from human and 
temporal relations, to an order of things placed above and beyond 
these categories.? Accordingly, it seemed ridiculous to him that they 
should transfer to the Demiurge the relation of the human artist to his 
work, and say he created the world for his own glory. But those 
Gnostics whom we described as belonging to the first class, would by 
- nO means spurn such a comparison and analogy. They understood how 


' 1 When Plotinus says, — that the ancients 
have advanced many better things on spirit- 
ual matters, will be readily seen by such as 
have not been carried away by the delusion 
now spreading among men, (τοῖς μὴ ἐξαπα- 
τωμένοις τὴν ἐπιϑέουσαν εἰς ἀνϑρώπους 
ἀπάτην,) the question comes up, whether 
by this ἀπάτη is to be understood the spread- 
ing Gnosis, or the still more widely spread- 
ing Christianity. If the latter, then this 
would be the only passage in which he at- 
tacks Christianity; and it is singular that 
he should do so but once, and then in a 
manner so vague and indefinite. We should 
have to ascribe it to his indulgence towards 
a religious conviction which may have 
had its followers among his immediate 
friends. Polemical allusions, bearing against 
Christianity generally, have been found also 


by Creuzer in his review of the edition of 
Heigl, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1834, 
IL, and by Baur, in his investigations of 
this book of Plotinus, in his work on the 
Gnosis, p. 418, ete. Yet I cannot agree 
with the latter, in believing that all the pas- 
sages contain such allusions in which he 
would trace them. 

2So I think I may call the system of 
Plotinus, notwithstanding his doctrine of 
the ὕλη, which, however, has no positive 
existence, but only forms the boundary of 
all being. 

8 TO δὲ διὰ τί ἐποίησε κόσμον, ταὐτὸν τῷ 
διὰ τί ἐστι ψυχῆ, Καὶ διὰ τί ὁ δημιουργός 
ἐποίησεν; Ὃ πρῶτον μὲν ἀρχὴν λαμβα- 
νόντων ἐστὶ τοῦ ἀεί. 

4 Τελοῖον τὸ ἵνα τιμῷτο, καὶ μεταφερόν- 
των ἀπο τῶν ἀγαλματοποιῶν τῶν ἐνταῦϑα. 


992 GNOSTICISM — PLOTINUS 

to make a very good use of them on the principles of their own 
scheme, by which they sought to show how the highest stage of being 
symbolized itself in all the succeeding steps. 

Again, to Plotinus, who had assumed the immanent necessity of 
the process of cosmical evolution, in which every thing occupied the 
precise place which belonged to it as a part, the great question on 
which the Gnostics bestowed so much labor, — how to account for 
what is defective, how to account for evil—appeared quite as ab- 
surd as the answers which they gave to that question. The Christian 
doctrine of the fall must have appeared to him in the same light, on 
the principles of his own monozstic scheme of the universe. 

He says of the Gnostics, that they strove to rise above reason, and 
on that very account fell into wn-reason ; 1!— a proposition, however, 
which, understood according to the fundamental principle of Plotinus, 
strikes not barely against the fantastic speculation of the Gnosties, but 
also against the Christian notion of revelation, and against the Christian 
idea of divine grace. 

In the following case, too, Plotinus’ objection to the Gnostic princi- 
ple would bear also against the Christian doctrine. He represents it 
as a very absurd thing in the Gnostics, that they presumed to exalt 
themselves above the great heavenly bodies, — that they called their 
own souls and those of the worst men immortal and divine ; — while 
in the stars, whose regular courses manifested the presence of a soul 
acting without disturbance according to invariable laws, they could 
see nothing but perishable matter.2. To Plotinus the soul of man ap- 
peared vastly inferior to the soul, always like itself and exalted above 
ἣν change and all passion, which resided in those great heavenly 

odies. 

Though the charge of pride, which Plotinus brought against the 
Gnostics, was, in one view of it, the same which was urged on the 
side of paganism generally against the entire Christian scheme, yet in 
another view, where he complained of the arrogance and supercilious- 
ness of the Gnostics, and found in them nothing like humility, he 
might coincide with the Christian principle itself. ‘* Men without un- 
derstanding,” says he, ‘ follow after such discourses, in which they are 
told all at once, You shall be not only better than all men, but even 
than all gods; for pride is a mighty principle in men, and he who be- 
fore thought meanly of himself, and took his place with ordinary mor- 
tals,? begins to be elated, when he hears it said, You are a son of God, 
but the others, whom you admire, are not such. What they have re- 
ceived from the fathers, what they reverence, is not the right doctrine. 
But you are higher than the very heavens, and that although you have 


1 Τὸ δὲ ὑπὲρ νοῦν ἤδη ἐστὶν ἔξω vod πε- ἰδιώτης ἀνῇῆρ. In virtue of this combina- 


σεῖν tion of homogeneous predicates, it seems to 


2 Οὐδὲ τὴν μὲν αὐτῶν ψυχὴν ἀϑάνατον 
καὶ ϑείαν λέγειν καὶ τὴν τῶν φαυλοτώτων 
ἀνϑρώπων, τὸν δὲ οὐρανὸν πάντα καὶ τὰ 
ἐκεῖ ἄστρα μὴ τῆς ἀϑανώτου κεκοινωνηκέναι. 

8 Ὁ πρότερον ταπεινὸς καὶ μέτριος καὶ 


me that the ταπεινός refers here to mean- 
ness of condition, and that this passage 
cannot be reckoned with those in which a 
hit is intended against the Christian notion 
of humility. 


AGAINST THE GNOSTICS. 393 
done nothing at all.”! In this charge of arrogance against the Gnos- 
tics, in boasting of their loftier pnewmatie origin and nature, Irenzeus 
also agreed, when he says of them,” “* Whoever gives himself into their 
hands, is puffed up at once; thinks himself neither in heaven nor on 
earth, but to belong already to the Pleroma, and struts about full of 
pride.” We see here the unspeculative church father and the pagan 
philosopher perfectly agreed in attacking the spiritual pride of the 
Gnostics. Yet it may be asked, whether Plotinus would not be obliged, 
on his own position, to judge precisely in the same way of the Chris- 
tians, who gloried in having become, through grace, the children of 
God, and despised the religion and culture handed down to them from 
the fathers ; — whether, in writing that passage, he was not thinking at 
the same time, of the Christians as a body. 

Plotinus, who does not distinguish the several parties of the Gnos- 
ties,? thinking of those among them that held to the doctrine of an 
absolute opposition between the Demiurge and the Supreme God, and 
between the two orders of world, says their doctrine led to the same 
practical result as did the principles of the Epicurean school, which 
denied everything divine, and made pleasure the highest good. For 
were it true that this world is utterly estranged from everything god- 
like, so that the latter cannot reveal or realize itself in it, men might 
safely conclude that they had nothing else to do but to make the best 
they could out of pleasure and profit ;+ and so they would, did not their 
own moral nature teach them better than such a system.® To these 
fundamental principles, too, he very justly traces the great defect in 
all their systems, that they had nothing to say on the subject of moral- 
ity,6—and he sums up with these remarks: “To say, ‘ Look away to 
God,’ is nothing to the purpose, unless you are taught how you may be 
able to look away to him; for what hinders one, you might say, from 
looking to God, though one should neither abstain from pleasure, nor 
moderate one’s anger; since surely men may think of God’s name, at 
the same time that they abandon themselves to their passions. Virtue, 
which goes right forward to its end and dwells in the soul with wisdom, 


1 Κρείττων καὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, οὐδὲν πο- 


νήσας. 

2 Lib. III. Ὁ, 15. 

8 Baur has acknowledged this. See his 
work, just mentioned, p. 446. In respect to 
the theoretical part, the speculative view of 
the universe, the majority of the allusions 
in this book are doubtless to the great Val- 
entinian branch of the Gnostic system. In 
this I agree with Baur. In respect to the 
practical part, the attack seems to be direct- 
ed for the most part against the sheer Dual- 
istic and antinomian views. In fact, Por- 
phyry, the disciple of Plotinus, combats 
this tendency in his work on “ Abstinence 
from animal food.” I can find nothing in 
the book which may not be sufficiently well 
explained on this hypothesis, — nothing 
which, as Baur supposes, could refer direct- 
ly to the sect of Marcion. In reference to 
the latter, Plotinus would not have passed 


over without any notice the strictly moral 
spirit which pervaded the sect. The pre- 
eminently practical tendency of Marcion 
was in no sense calculated to bring on any 
collision between this school and the New 
Platonists. But it is noticeable that Por- 
phyry names no one of the Gnostics who is 
known to us, but others who are quite un- 
known. Of the works, too, which are said 
to have been the fruit of in:mense labor on 
the part of the Gnostics mentioned by him, 
we know nothing. Perhaps we might ob- 
tain more accurate information about an 
ante Christian Gnosis,if these works were 
in our hands. 

4"Iva μηδὲν καλὸν ἐνταῦϑα δὴ ὀφϑείη 
ὑπάρχον. 

5 Εἰ μήτις ty φύσει τῇ αὐτοῦ κρείττων 
εἴη τῶν λόγων τούτων. 

6 Μηδένα λόγον περὶ ἀρετῆς πεποιῆσϑαι. 


394 GNOSTICISM — CLASSIFICATION 


this enables one to see God. But when, without true virtue, God is 
named, it is only an empty name.” 

The most convenient basis which can be adopted for a classification 
of the Gnostic sects, is suggested by what has been said respecting the 
more important differences which obtained among them; that is, they 
may be referred to different classes, according as they were given to 
a sterner or a milder form of Dualism; according as they-represented 
the Demiurge as a being altogether alien from and opposed to the Su- 
preme God, or only as subordinate to him and acting even in the ante- 
christian period as his unconscious organ; according as they acknowl- 
edged the connection subsisting between the visible and invisible 
worlds, between God’s revelation in nature, in history and Christianity, 
— the union of the Old and New Testaments as belonging to the same 
whole of the theocratic development, or denied all this, and admitted 
of nothing but an opposition in these several respects. In short, we 
may divide the Gnostic sects into two classes; one attached, the other 
opposed to Judaism. If we may not always find the antithesis so 
sharply defined in fact as it is presented in our conception of it, but 
shall observe many shades of transition from the stiff and rigid to the 
more pliable and flowing forms of doctrine, yet we must remember that 
this is precisely what might be expected in such a time of ferment and 
confusion — the same thing, in fact, which occurs in other well-founded 
instances of opposition. It furnishes no ground of objection, there- 
fore, against the correctness of our division. 

As the first oppositions in the mode of apprehending Christianity 
arose from its birth-place in Judaism, the same was true also of the 
Gnosis ; though subsequently the latter developed itself into a tendency 
directly opposed to Judaism. We observed, in fact, among the Juda- 
izing sects themselves, Gnostic elements which were to be traced to 
mystical, theosophic and speculative tendencies existing among the 
Jews. Hence many phenomena may present themselves, which would 
leave us at a loss whether we ought to reckon them to Judaizing or to 
Gnostic sects; and as they are phenomena belonging to the boundaries 
of both, and constituting transition points between them, we may be in 
one sense right, whether we consider them as belonging to the end of 
the development of the Judaizing sects, or to the beginning of the de- 
velopment of the Gnostic sects. But wherever a phenomenon pre- 
sents itself, which in spirit and character belongs to a fundamentally 
Jewish mode of thinking, though it may be seen to contain individual 
elements of Gnosticism, yet we shall be obliged, notwithstanding, to 
refer it to the former system. Wherever certain tendencies or ideas 
predominate in the spiritual atmosphere of a period, they without fail 
become mixed up with everything which in any way presents a possible 
point of union for them, even though in other respects of a quite oppo- 
site tendency. This holds good of the religious tendency which shows 
itself in the Clementines.!. Although it must be conceded, that indi- 


11 must explain myself on this point, Gnostic sects, is connected, indeed, with the 
where I differ from Dr. Baur. The way difference existing between us in the mode 
in which we differ in our distribution of the of apprehending the entire system of Gnosti- 


OF GNOSTIC SECTS. 395 


vidual ideas, closely related to Gnosticism, are to be found in this 
work, yet the striving after a simplification of the doctrine of faith ; 
the doctrine of a primitive religion, simply restored by Moses and 
Christ; the purely Jewish conception of πίστις ; the prominence given 
to outward works, the assertion of their meritoriousness, and the pre- 
dominant tendency to the outward and practical life, — all which the 
Gnostic himself would ascribe to a psychical temperament, incapable 
of receiving the Gnosis, —all this is too characteristically distinctive 
of the Jewish fundamental position as opposed to the Gnosis, to leave 
it a moment doubtful, in which category we have to place this phenom- 
enon, while at the same time the work itself assumes a polemical atti- 
tude against Gnosticism, of which Simon Magus appears in this work 
as the representative. We must place the tendency of the Clemen- 
tines, as not belonging itself to Gnosticism, but as representing the ex- 
treme Jewish position, over against the system of Marcion. The 
extreme point of Judaism, most directly opposed to the Marcionitic 
heresy, we consider to be this: the Clementines recognize in Christian- 
ity nothing that is new ; Christianity is only a restoration of the pure 
religion of Moses. So far as the main question in the Clementines 
relates to the restoration of a simple, monotheistic, primitive religion, 
and Judaism is stript entirely of its prophetic element, we see in it 
rather a precursor of Mohammedanism, than a form of the manifesta- 
tion of Gnosticism. 

But while we are constramed to adopt this division of the Gnostics 
into two main classes, we may at the same time conceive of a two-fold 
modification of the second anti-Judaistic tendency. Lither, 6. g. 
Christianity was presented in direct opposition to Judaism; but, in 
compensation, brought into so much the closer connection with Pagan- 
ism, though not with the mythological, but speculative element of Hel- 
lenism ; or else Christianity was severed from all connection whatever 
with earlier systems, so that it might appear in its complete elevation, 
its eclipsmg glory, above all that went before it, — so that it might be 
free from all liability to corruption by elements from a preceding stage 
of culture. The first mentioned modification of Gnosticism, inasmuch 
as it brings Christianity into union with Paganism much more than with 
Judaism, must lose sight of the theistic principle itself as opposed to 
that of nature-religion, and hence must prove most injurious to the 
character of the Christian element. The second modification, on the 
other hand, comes into collision with the spirit of Gnosticism itself, by 
which it is on one side attracted, through the purely Christian interest, 
although misapprehended, which animates it. 

After these general remarks, we now proceed to consider the several 
Gnostic sects in detail ; and following the classification which appeared 


cism; and this difference, again, with the 1 [ readily acknowledge, with thanks, that 
fundamental difference in our theological I should, perhaps, not have come to this 
principles. I have not thought it proper to new modification of the division offered in 
enter any farther into the polemics of the my genetic development, and in the first 
question, inasmuch as the grounds for my edition of my Church History, without the 
own development of the subject lie in that impulse given me by the strictures on my 
development itself. classification by Dr. Baur. 


396 CERINTHUS. 
to us the most proper one, we shall speak first of those Gnostic sects, 
which, attaching themselves to Judaism, held to a gradual development 
of the Theocracy among mankind from an original foundation of it 
in the race. 


Particular Sects. 
1. Gnostic Sects attaching themselves to Judaism. 


CERINTHUS. — Cerinthus is best entitled to be considered as the inter- 
mediate link between the Judaizing and the Gnostic sects. To him the 
remark just made applies in all its force, that it may be disputed, whether 
he ought to be placed in the former or latter class of these sects ; since in 
him, as has been shown already, elements of Ebionitism and of Gnosti- 
cism are both found united. Hence even among the ancients, opposite 
reports from opposite points of view could arise respecting his doctrine, 
according as men gave prominence only to the Gnostic or only to the 
Judaizing element ;! and hence the dispute on this point could be kept 
up even to modern times. In point of chronology, too, Cerinthus is 
the one who may be regarded as representing the principle in its transi- 
tion from Judaism to Gnosticism; for he made his appearance in Asia 
Minor, near the extreme close of the apostolic age, when the tendencies 
allied to Essenism were now following out the Pharisaic Judaism which 
first mixed itself in with Christianity. As in the epistles which St. 
Paul wrote during his first imprisonment, we already find indications 
of the first appearance of such a phenomenon, we have no reason what- 
ever to call in question the tradition, which can be traced back to disci- 
ples of the Apostle John himself, on the credit of which Irenzeus certifies 
that Cerinth was a contemporary of this apostle, and was combated by 
him. There is nothing improbable in what Theodoretus reports,” that 
he began in Alexandria, received his first impulse from the theology 
of the Alexandrian Jews, drew from thence the germs of his doctrine, 
and made his appearance in Asia Minor only at a somewhat later time. 

We detect the Jewish principle in Cerinth, when he places a bound- 
less chasm between God and the world; and here comes in the hypoth- 
esis of numberless intermediate beings, or angels, — lower and higher 
orders of spirits — to fill up this chasm. In truth, the doctrme about 
the different classes of angels assumed in the later Jewish theology, a 
very important place. By the instrumentality of such angels, he 
taught, God created this world;—for it seemed to him beneath the 
dignity of the Supreme God that he should come into any immediate 
contact with a world so foreign from his essence.? At the head of these 


1To the Gnostic, by Irenzus, in whose 
account, however, the Judaizing element 
occasionally shines through ;— to the Juda- 
izing element, by the presbyter Caius, at 
Rome, and Dionysius, bishop of Alexan- 
dria, in their reports preserved to us by 
Eusebius. 

2 Heeret. fab. II. 3. 

8 Philo, too, thought it necessary to dis- 
tinguish, in the nature of man, the higher 
element, proceeding immediately from God, 


and the lower, which was formed by infe- 
rior spirits, — vid. de mundi opificio, § 24; 
and this notion finds something to fix itself 
on in Plato, (Timeus. T. LX. p. 326, ed. 
Bipont.,) where he says the eternal, the 
godlike in man proceeds from the Supreme 
God himself, the mortal from the subordin- 
ate gods, — to them was to be ascribed the 
ἀϑανάτῳ ϑνητὸν προσυφαίνειν. The doc- 
trine, too, afterwards further prosecuted and 
matured by the Gnostics, as we shall see, 


CERINTHUS. 397 
angels he placed one, who, in his whole activity at this stage of existence, 
in his relation to this lower world, was to represent the Supreme God, 
and without knowing him, serve as an instrument of his will! Cerinth 
held to the representation that the Mosaic law was given by the minis- 
try of angels ; and this representation he employed in the way already 
noticed, to explain, consistently with the divine origin of Judaism, its 
subordinate character. ‘The angel who stood at the head of the rest, 
he may have regarded, perhaps, distinctively, as the ruler of the Jewish 
people, and the being through whom the Supreme God revealed himself 
to them. Above him, the Jewish people, at least as a body, never 
could rise ; although a small number of enlightened persons, the spir- 
itual nucleus of the Israelitish people, formed an exception. Men be- 
lieved they possessed and worshipped in him, the Supreme God himself. 
A like distinction, indeed, had been also made by Philo. From the great 
mass of the Jews, who were destined to represent objectively the type of 
God’s people, but who possessed only an indirect knowledge of God 
as he presented himself in outward revelation and in his works gener- 
ally,.or in his Logos; or who considered the Logos to be the Supreme 
God himself, and whose God was the Logos, — from this common mass 
of the Jews, he distinguished those who had soared beyond all that is 
indirect and positive, to the region where the spirit comes into immedi- 
ate contact with the Absolute, the ὧν or the ὄν itself,—#in other words, 
those whose God is the Supreme God himself? In those passages of 
the Old Testament where, after an angel had spoken, God is introduced 
as speaking himself, Gen. 51: 18, Philo supposed he found presented 
that subordinate position or stage of religious development, at which the 
angel, through whom God reveals himself, is considered to be God him- 
self; or to which, rather, God, revealing himself in the form of an angel, 
lets himself down;—since in becoming all things to all, he becomes a 
man to men, exhibits himself in the likeness of man in condescending to 
meet them at their own position. These are the ones who confound God 
as he manifests himself in his works, with God as he is in himself, in 
his essence ; like persons who imagine that in the reflected image of the 
sun, they have its essential nature itself. Such representations the 
Gnostic theories may have originated ; although, by holding fast to the 


respecting the different elements in human 
nature, which sprang in part from the Su- 
preme God, and partly from the Demiurge, 
might lean on the same basis. 

1Thus we understand the doctrine of 
Cerinth, as exhibited by Irenzus, lib. I. ¢. 
26: “Nona primo Deo factum esse mun- 
dum docuit, sed a virtute quadam valde 
separata et distante ab ea principalitate 
que est super universa, et ignorante eum, 
qui est super omnia, Deum.” It is possi- 
ble, indeed, that Irenzus transferred to the 
doctrines of Cerinth, the character of the 
later Gnosis, with which he was more fa- 
miliar, and thus attributed to Cerinth what 
really did not belong to him. But it is at 
least in perfect keeping with the whole con- 
nection of his system, and finds confirma- 


VOL. I. 34 


tion when we compare it with other Gnostic 
systems, to suppose that he conceived one 
of the angels to be ruler over this stage of 
existence, and therefore designated him 
particularly as the former of the world. 

2 Οὗτος (6 λόγος) ἡμῶν τῶν ἀτελῶν ἂν 
εἴη ϑεὸς, τῶν δὲ σοφῶν καὶ τελείων ὁ πρῶ- 


toc. Legis allegor. 1. III. ὁ 73. See above, 
volulip. 57, 
8 Gen. 31: 13. Ὅτι τὸν ἀγγέλου τόπον 


ἐπέσχε, ὅσα τῷ δοκεῖν, ov μεταβαλὼν, 
πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μῆπω δυναμένου τὸν ἀληϑῆ 
ϑεὸν ἰδεῖν ὠφέλειαν. Καϑάπερ γὰρ τὴν 
ἀνϑήλιον αὐχὴν ὡς ἥλιον οἱ μὴ δυνάμενοι 
τὸν ἥλιον αὐτὸν ἰδεῖν ὁρῶσι, οὕτως καὶ τὴν 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ εἰκόνα τὸν ἄγγελον αὐτοῦ λόγον 
ὡς αὐτὸν κατανοοῦσιν. De somniis, 1]. I. 
41. 


398 CERINTHUS. 


side of fact and reality, they differ from the common Alexandrian the- 
ology, in which the Platonic and ideal elements much more predominate. 

The Christology of Cerinth is based on the common Ebionite way of 
thinking. His notions respecting Jesus up to the time of his inaugura- 
tion to the office of Messiah, appear to have been the same as we found 
among that class of Ebionites who denied the supernatural conception 
of Christ. In common with these, he traced back all divine attributes 
in Christ to that descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, which accompa- 
nied his baptism. The Holy Spirit, he regarded as the Spirit of 
the Messiah, (the πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ,) as the true heavenly Christ himself 
(ὁ ἄνω Χριστό.) By this Spirit, Christ was led to the knowledge of 
the Supreme God, who was before unknown to him. It was the same 
who through Christ revealed this unknown God, and who bestowed 
on Christ the supernatural power of working miracles. The lower, 
earthly Messiah, (ὁ κάτω Χριστός, the man Jesus, was only the vehicle 
and organ of that heavenly Christ, who wrought in him. If Christ, the 
crucified, proved a stone of stumbling to those Jews who conceived the 
idea of the Messiah in accordance with the common political spirit ; the 
same Jewish spirit presents itself in Cerinth, only under another form, 
corresponding to the theosophical, Magian turn of his mind. Cerinth 
had no conception of the divinity appearing in the form of a servant, in 
the extreme of self-humiliation. He was for no other Messiah than one 
who should manifest himself in splendor; for no other than a glorified 
Christ. The heavenly Christ, according to the doctrine of Cerinth, is 
superior to all suffering ;—~he withdrew from the man Jesus when he 
was given up to the pains of death. The very fact of his suffering 
proves that Jesus had been forsaken by that higher spirit, superior to 
all pain; for had he remained united with that spirit, he could not pos- 
sibly have been overcome by force, nor subjected to suffering or death. 
Accordingly it is probable that Cerinth attached no importance to this 
suffering, as connected with the work of redemption; yet possibly he 
may have regarded it as a proof of that piety and devotion to God, by 
which Jesus entitled himself to the highest reward. In consistency 
with his whole mode of thinking, he must now have supposed that 
the higher Christ united himself again with Jesus, who had shown his 
perfect obedience to the Supreme God under all sufferings, that by 
him he was awakened from death, and exalted to heaven. » But we 
have no information as to the farther development of his ideas. Ac- 
cording to a report of Epiphanius, he denied the resurrection of Jesus. 
Supposing this to have been so, the connection of his doctrines would 
have to be conceived, perhaps, somewhat after the following way: The 
higher Christ was not again to unite himself with the man Jesus, until 
he should establish him a victorious sovereign over the Messiah’s king- 
dom, and with him awaken all the faithful to share in his triumph. The 
report of Epiphanius, however, is not to be trusted ;—for as he went 
on the hypothesis, that the Apostle Paul had everywhere to encounter 
the followers of Cerinth, it is possible he may have been led, by some 
passages in the 15th chapter of the first epistles to the Corinthians, to 
impute to the latter an opinion which did not belong to him. 


CERINTHUS. 399 

Cerinthus agreed with the Ebionites, again, n maintaining that the 
Mosaic law continued, in a certain sense, to be binding on Christians. 
He may have held, perhaps, that by the heavenly Christ, Judaism in 
its highest sense, which was not yet clear even to the angels who gave 
the law, the Ἰουδαϊσμὸς πνευματικός (heavenly things typified by the 
earthly) had been revealed first;— that the earthly shadow, how- 
ever, would still continue, until the triumphant ushering in of the Mes- 
siah’s kingdom, or the beginning of the new and heavenly order of 
things. But since Epiphanius says of him, that he adhered in part to 
Judaism, and it is not probable that Epiphanius would have invented 
anything precisely of that sort;1 we may conclude that Cerinth did not 
look upon everything in Judaism as alike divine; but that, im some 
sort, like the author of the Clementines, and many of the Jewish, mys- 
tic sects, he distinguished an original Judaism from its later corrup- 
tions, and that he insisted on the continued obligation of only that 
part of the ceremonial law which he reckoned as belonged to the former. 

As an intermediate link and point of transition between the earthly 
and the new, heavenly and eternal order of the world, Cerinth, in com- 
mon with many of the Jewish theologians, placed a happy period of a 
thousand years, when Jesus, having triumphed, through the power of 
the heavenly Christ united with him, over every enemy, would reign in 
the glorified Jerusalem, the central point of the glorified earth. It was 
inferred from Ps. 90: 4, too literally understood, that as a thousand 
years is with God as one day, the world would continue in its then con- 
dition for six thousand years; and at the end of this earthly period of 
the world, would follow a thousand years of sabbaths (of uninterrupted 
blessedness) on the earth, when the righteous should be delivered from 
all their conflicts. It may be a question, indeed, whether he enter- 
tained such gross and sensual notions of this millenial sabbath, as 
Caius and Dionysius imputed to him. Such views would hardly be in 
keeping with his system as a whole. He spoke of a wedding feast — 
an image then commonly employed to signify the blessed union of the 
Messiah with his people ;? but any one who was not familiar with the 
figurative language of the East, and who interpreted his language un- 
der the bias of unfriendly feelings, might put a wrong construction on 
such images. Dionysius says, that in speaking of festivals and offer- 
ings, he was only seeking to palliate his gross, sensual notions. But 
what was his warrant for such a supposition? If Cerinth really taught 
such a grossly sensual Chiliasm, we should in this see something so 
wholly repugnant to the spirit of Gnosticism, so strongly preponderating 


1 Προσέχειν τῷ ᾿Ιουδαϊσμῷ ἀπὸ μέρους. 
It may be affirmed with certainty, that 
Epiphanius meant to denote in this way a 
partial observance of the Mosaic rites. As 
it was his object here to distinguish Cerinth 
from Carpocrates, who rejected Judaism, 
the phrase might be understood of a par- 
ial recognition of Judaism as a divine in- 
stitution, — partial, so far at least as he 
made angels only its authors. 


2 The Gnostics also described the blessed- 
ness of the πνευματικοί, when received into 
the Pleroma, under the image of a wedding 
feast, of a marriage between the σωτήρ and 
the σοφία, the spiritual natures and the an- 
gels, (see below.) Thus in Heracleon, “ dva- 
παυσις ἡ ἐν γώμῳ," cited by Orig. in Joann, 
T. X. § 14. 

8 Euseb. hist. eccles. lib. III. c. 28. 


400 BASILIDES. 


on the side of the Jewish point of view, as to make it necessary for us 
to rank him with the Judaists rather than with the Guostics. 
BASILIDES. — From Cerinth we pass to Basilides, who lived in the 
first half of the second century. It is m the highest degree probable, 
that Alexandria was the principal seat of his activity ;— the stamp of 
the Jewish-Alexandrian culture both im him, and in his son Isidorus,! — 
whose name denotes his Egyptian origin, —is too strongly marked to 
be mistaken. But the account given by Epiphanius, that Syria, the 
common birth-place of the Gnostic systems, was also the native land of 
Basilides, is not in itself improbable, though not absolutely certain. 
The doctrines of emanation and Dualism formed the ground-work of his 
system. ‘At the head of the world of emanation he placed that unre- 
vealed God, who is infinitely exalted above all representations and 
names. The medium of transition between this incomprehensible first 
ground, and all the following evolution of life, was the unfolding of the 
same into its several self-individualizing powers, which are so many 
names of the Ineffable. Man can conceive God only after the analogy 
of his own mind; and this analogy is bottomed on an objective truth, 
since the mind of man is God’s image. On this rests the truth lying 
at the root of the intellectual process through which we arrive at the 
formation of our conceptions of the divine attributes, and the truth lying 
at the bottom of these individual attributes themselves. But the 
Gnostic, incapable of distinguishing the objective and subjective, trans- 
ferred this to the evolution of objective existence from the divine, pri- 
mal essence. In order to the production of life—he conceived — it 
was necessary that the being who includes all perfection in himself, 
should unfvld himself into the several attributes which express the idea 
of absolute perfection; and in place of abstract, notional attributes, un- 
suited to the Oriental taste, he substitued living, self-subsistent, ever 
active, hypostatised powers: first, the intellectual powers, the spirit 
(voic,) the reason (Aéyoc,) the thinking power (φρόνησις,) wisdom (σοφία; 
next, might (δύναμις) whereby God executes the purposes of his wisdom ; 
and lastly the moral attributes, independently of which God’s almighty 
power is never exerted: namely, holiness or moral perfection (δικαιοσύνη,) 
where the term is to be understood according to its Hellenistic and He- 
brew meaning, — not in the more restricted sense of our word riyht- 
eousness.2 Next to moral perfection follows inward tranquillity, peace 
(eiphyn,) which, as Basilides rightly judged, can exist only in connec- 
tion with holiness: —and this peace, which is the characteristic of the 
divine life, concludes the evolution of life within God himself.t The 
number seven was regarded by Basilides, as it was by many theosoph- 
ists of this period, as a pane | number; and accordingly those seven 
powers (δύναμεις Ὑ together with the primal ground out of which they 


1 The name, however, is a singular one cially those of the second class, used this 
for the son of a person of Jewish descent. word to denote a moral quality only in 

2 Ὁ ἀκατονόμαστος, ἄῤῥητος. which there was more or less of defect, — 

8 ΤΊ is remarkable that Basilides employed the notion of justice or righteousness in its 
the word δικαιοσύνη, according to the Hel- more restricted sense. (See below.) 
lenistic and Hebrew usage, to denote moral _—_# Iren. lib. I. ο. 24; lib. II. ο. 16. Clem. 
perfection ; while the other Gnostics, espe- Strom. lib. IV. f. 539. 


BASILIDES. 401 
were evolved, constituted in his scheme the πρώτη ὄγδοας, the first octave, 
or root of all existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded 
to evolve itself farther and farther, into numberless gradations of exist- 
ence, each lower one being ever the impression, the antitype (dvtiryroc) 
of the higher. 

We perceive here, for the first time, that grand idea of Gnosticism, 
that one law, in different degrees and forms of application, pervades all 
the stages and kinds of existence, so that everything from highest 
to lowest is produced by a uniform law;—those general laws of the 
universe, after the knowledge of which science in its more profound in- 
vestigations feels itself impelled to struggle, although the attainment of 
the end, the complete resolution of the problem, must be reserved for the 
intuition of a higher state of existence. It is the striving to find the unity 
again in the endless multeity; to gain a knowledge of the πολυποίκιλος 
σοφία in its ἁπλότης, from the mirror of its self-manifestation. 

Might we safely judge from the opinions of later Basilideans, as they 
are presented by Irenzeus, and from the Basilidean gems and amulets, 
respecting the doctrines of the original school, it would appear that 
Basilides, holding to seven homogeneous natures in each gradation of 
the spiritual world, supposed that there were three hundred and sixty- 
five such regions or gradations of the spiritual world, answering to the 
days of the year. This was expressed by the mystical watch-word 
ἀβράξας, formed after the Greek mode of reckoning numbers by the 
alphabet.} 

Within this emanation-world, each was precisely what it ought to be 
at its own proper stage; but from the mixture of the godlike and the 
ungodlike arose disharmony, which must be reduced again to harmony. 

It is to be regretted, that at this point, a hiatus exists in the accounts 
we have of the system of Basilides. The question here arises, whether 
he followed the theory which attributed this mixture to a falling down of 
the divine germ of life into the bordering chaos, or the one which sup- 
posed a self-active kingdom of evil, and traced the mixture to an 
encroachment of this kingdom on the realm of light. 

After what has been said, however, in our introductory remarks, no 
very great importance can be attributed to this difference, so far as it 
would be likely to affect the particular shaping of the system. In an 
ancient writing of the fourth century,? some expressions are quoted 
from a work of Basilides,* in which the subject of discourse relates to 


1 ΤῸ may be, that this term, which denotes 
the whole emanation-world, as an evolution 
of the Supreme Essence, had some other 
meaning besides; but every attempt to ex- 
plain it would be arbitrary, since there are 
no certain data extant on which to proceed. 

2 The disputation of Archelaus and Mani, 
preserved to us in the Latin translation, c. 
55. In Fabricius’ edition of the works of 
Hippolytus, f. 193. 

8 Gieseler, it is true, in a review of his, 
(Studien und Kritiken, J. 1830, 5. 397.) has 
denied that Basilides the Gnostic is here in- 


94" 


tended. But I must agree with Baur, who, 
in his work on the religious system of the 
Manicheans, p. 85, pronounces the argu- 
ments of Gieseler not satisfactory. The qual- 
ification, “ Basilides antiquior,” can hardly 
be understood to mean, that a different per- 
son from that Basilides who had some time 
before been mentioned (c. 38, f. 175) in con- 
nection with Marcion and Valentine, was 
intended ; for the allusion to a person who 
had been named so far back, is too remote; 
it must necessarily have been more strong- 
ly marked. The “antiguior” may be very 


402 BASILIDES. 

a poor and a rich principle; the nature of the poor being represented 
as one which has supervened, obtruded itself upon things, as without 
root and without place.t These very obscure and enigmatical words 
are, indeed, only a fragment. But if we take into consideration, that 
in this whole work of Basilides, or at least in the portion to which this 
sentence forms the introduction, the subject relates to the antagonism 
of a good and evil principle, and that afterwards the manifestly Zoro- 
astrian doctrine concerning the kingdoms of Ormuzd and of Ahriman is 
alluded to,? it will appear probable that those obscure, introductory 
words are only a symbolical designation of these two principles. The 
good principle is the rich, the evil principle the poor element. The 
being ‘‘ without root and place,” characterizes the absoluteness of the 
principle, that emerges all at once, and mixes itself in the evolution of 
existence. Probably the poor was attracted, by a craving of need, 
toward the riches which were presented to view, and which excited in 
it an irresistible longing to abstract something for itself. Probably 
Basilides would next proceed to cite the Persian doctrine as corrobora- 
tive of his own dualistic theory. It comports with this view of the matter, 
if, as is stated by Clement of Alexandria, it be true, that he deduced the 
foreign element which united itself with the godlike nature of man, 


from a mixture of these principles.? 


well understood as referring to the age of 
Basilides as compared with that of Mani; 
and the “ quidam,” used with regard to a 
person who had been already named with 
others, does not strike me as so very singu- 
lar, especially in such a style of writing. 
But how can such slight reasons warrant us, 
when everything else perfectly agrees with 
the Basilides known tous, to suppose another 
living at the same period, who also must 
have taught dualistic doctrines? The trac- 
tatus of Basilides here cited is probably the 
same work with the ἐξηγητικώ, to which 
Clement of Alexandria refers. 

1 Per parvulam (here there is probably a 
false translation or a false reading) divitis 
et pauperis naturam, sine radice et sine loco 
rebus supervenientem, unde pullulaverit in- 
dicat. 

2 Que de bonis et malis etiam barbari in- 
quisiverunt. Here the barbari are the Per- 
sians, for the doctrine immediately cited is 
evidently the pure Parsie doctrine. The 
same form of presentation may perhaps be 
recognized also in the manner in which Isi- 
dorus, the son of Basilides, refers certain 
enigmatical expressions of Pherecides Sy- 
rius, 10 ἃ cope stretched out in the starry 
' heavens over the realm of light, a bulwark 
opposed to the kingdom cf darkness. Vid. 
Clemens Strom. |. VI. f. 621; Orig. ο. Cels. 
]. VI. c. 42; Pherecydis fragmenta, pag. 46, 
ed. Sturz. 

8 Tapayog καὶ σύγχυσις ἀργικῇ Clemens 
Strom. 1. II. f. 408. Gieseler, in the review 
mentioned in a former note, p. 396, has pre- 
ferred the signification of the word ἀρχικός, 


If the charges which Clement of 


“original,” —- which signification, indeed, 
etymologically, it unquestionably admits 
of, — and he refers what is here said to the 
fall and its consequences. He supposes 
“that Basilides, according to his rigid theo- 
ry of God’s justice, could not allow that 
human souls were thrown into these bonds 
of matter without previous guilt.” But 
neither indeed would deriving the distur- 
bance of the divine in individuals from the 
fall agree with the theory of justice, appre- 
hended in this rigid sense. According to this 
theory, on the contrary, each must atone for 
his own sin. And even if Basilides taught, 
as Gieseler assumes, that the divine germ 
of life became mixed with a dead matter, 
(ὕλη); yet nothing is gained in this way, 
which could avail any thing in carrying out 
the rigid theory of justice. The souls would 
still continue to suffer in consequence of an 
inevitable mischance; unless we may sup- 
pose that the first mixture of the spirit with 
matter was connected with guilt, and refer 
this mixture itself to a primitive fall in the 
world of spirits. But even in that case, 
what was at first connected with guilt, 
would, in its consequences, be to the souls 
afterwards produced, only an inherited mis- 
fortune. A theory of justice so rigid and 
narrow must generally, if it supposes a 
cosmical and historically cohering process 
of evolution, become involved in many dif- 
ficulties and contradictions. It may be 
conceived, perhaps, that Basilides supposed, 
in the first place, an original mixture of 
principles as the cause of all other distur- 
bances, and then still held fast to the prin- 


BASILIDES. 408 
Alexandria brings against Basilides, that he deified the devil, might 
have reference to his Dualism, this would furnish a certain proof, that 
he adopted the doctrine about Ahriman ;1 but this accusation is not to 
be so understood. It is to be considered as merely hypothetical; the 
arbitrary deduction of an inference from an assertion of Basilides, 
which does not belong here, but of which we shall have occasion to speak 
hereafter.” 

But whatever might have been the origin of this mixture of light and 
darkness, of the godlike and the ungodlike, it was obliged, according 
to this system, to subserve the purpose of the godlike, to accomplish 
the ideas of the divine wisdom, — of the law which regulates the en- 
tire evolution of life; since the kingdom of evil is, in itself, nothing — 
the godlike is the real; the element destined to triumph by its own 
nature. 

Light, life, soul, goodness, on the one hand — darkness, death, mat- 
ter, evil, on the other, — these were the corresponding members of the 
antithesis, which, according to Basilides’ system, extends through the 
whole progressive course of the world. Everywhere, as rust deposits 
itself on the surface of iron, darkness and death cleave to the fallen 
seeds of light and life; the evil to the good; the ungodlike to the 
godlike ; — while at the same time it is impossible that the original es- 
sence should, in this way, ever be destroyed. It must only purify 
itself by degrees from the foreign dross, in order to gain once more its 
original splendor ; —just as the iron needs to be cleansed from its rust, 
in order to recover its higher lustre. Such a process of purification 
he considered to be the whole course of the present world — which was 
formed for this end, namely, to separate the godlike from all foreign 
mixture, and conduct it back to its kindred element, to a reunion with its 
original source. 


ciple that all suffering is in some way or 
other a correlative of subjective sin. 

Now though the word ἀρχικός may un- 
doubtedly signify the original, yet the man- 
ner in which the words ἀρχῇ, λόγος ἀρχίκος, 
μοναρχία, are employed in the Alexandrian 
use of the language, is more favorable to 
my own view of the sense, and the connec- 
tion of the words seems to me to favor it 
likewise; for σύγχυσις signifies a confused 
mixture, and this requires some determina- 
tion. Now what it is that is mixed together, 
the word ἀρχική shows, —it is a mixing to- 
gether of principles. Doubtless I must ad- 
mit, that the words need not necessarily 
designate a confusion or intermingling of 
the potencies of light with a self-active king- 
dom of Ahriman, but that they may also 
denote the mixture of the fallen, divine 
germ of life with a dead ὕλη. But we can- 
not allow there is any force in the argument 
of Gieseler, that if Basilides had entertain- 
ed a theory closely related to the Zoroastrian 
Dualism, Docetism would have been the 
necessary result. We have already assert- 
ed, and must again repeat, that by such 
reasonings greater importance is ascribed 


to this difference than really belongs to it. 
Just as in the original Parsism, such a mix- 
ture of the kingdom of Ahriman with the 
kingdom of light might be supposed, and 
this world derived therefrom, without yet 
making the evil principle in the world of 
sense so radical a one as it is presupposed 
to be by Docetism; while, on the other 
hand, it would be possible to start from the 
notion of the ὕλη, and yet be led to Doce: 
tism, as the example of Marcion teaches. 

1 Clem. Strom. |. LV. f. 507: Θειάζων τὸν 
διάβολον. 

2 Here I must allow Gieseler to be right, 
and retract my former view of the matter. 

ὃ Basilides says this of all suffering of 
the fallen light-nature generally. “Pain 
and anxiety deposit themselves outwardly 
on things, like the rust on iron,” (ὁ πόνος 
καὶ ὁ φόβος ἐπισυμβαΐνει τοῖς πράγμασιν 
ὡς ὁ ἰὸς τῷ σιδήρῳ.) Strom. 1. IV. f. 509, a. 
In all this we see the spirit of the original 
Zoroastrian doctrine far more clearly ex- 
pressed than in the gloomy Dualism of other 
Gnostics, where the Zoroastrian doctrines 
appear as if modified by a tone of mind 
which did not spring from that system. 


404 BASILIDES. 

In the system of Basilides, we find contradictory elements. On the 
one hand, there prevails in it, by virtue of the Dualism and the mixture 
of the two principles, the idea of a natural necessity determining the 
fate of souls; but, on the other hand, he takes great pains to give dis- 
tinct prominence to the notion of justice, — ἃ justice which accurately 
weighs the amount of merit and demerit; and to the notion of a free 
will, which conditions the whole development and destiny of man. As 
in man’s life on earth, each moment stands connected with the one 
which preceded it, and is thereby determined, according to the differ- 
ent application he may give to it by his free will, so in Basilides’ 
scheme, the life of each individual man on earth stands connected, in 
the great refining process of the universe, with the preceding series of 
existences. Each one brings evil with him out of some earlier state of 
existence ; and has to atone for it and purify himself from it in the 
present life. Upon his moral conduct, again, in this earthly life, de- 
pends his condition in a subsequent state of existence. In this sense 
Basilides explains the words of Moses, respecting retribution until the 
third and fourth generation.1 Thus it is certain that the transmigra- 
tion of souls, within the sphere of humanity, occupies an important 
place in the system of Basilides. 

But here the question arises, whether he did not extend his doctrine 
about the transmigration of souls still further; whether he did not sup- 
pose that the soul migrated also into the brute animal kingdom. ‘This 
might seem, indeed, to jar with the Z'heodicee above noticed, which 
sprang out of the strict notion of justice; but the words of Basilides 
himself? express such a doctrine, when, in explainng Rom. 7: 9, he 
says: “I lived once without the law; that is, before I came into this 
human body, I lived in a bodily shape which is not subject to the law; 
in a brute body.” ‘There is evidently pre-supposed here a transposition 
of the soul from the organism of the brute body, which still holds the 
consciousness of reason enthralled, into the organism of the human 
body, in which it attains to free development, and hence to the con- 
sciousness of the moral law. Such a doctrine is closely connected, 
too, with the fundamental ideas of Basilides. From the kingdom of 
evil, of darkness, nothing positive can proceed —it is only like the rust, 
which deposits itself on iron. All that issues from the realm of light 
is life and soul. From the kingdom of darkness, which has mixed itself 
in with the products of the kingdom of light, that only springs which 
holds enthralled the light and the germs of life, — the souls every- 
where scattered, —— which does not suffer them to come to themselves. 
It is the bond of matter. Thus he was obliged to recognize also in the 


1 The proof of this is to be found in the and principles of their master. But the 


words of the Didascal. Anatol. in Clement 
of Alexandria, ed. Paris, 1641, f. 794: To- 
ϑεὸς ἀποδιδοὺς ἐπὶ τρίτην καὶ τετώρτην ye- 
νεὼν τοῖς ἀπειϑοῦσι, φασὶν οἱ ἀπὸ Βασιλεί- 
δου κατὰ τὰς ἐνσωματώσεις. It is true, the 
writer is here speaking only of the follow- 
ers of Basilides, and among these there 
were some who departed far from the spirit 


connection in which this doctrine stands 
with his principles, evinces that it must be 
actually considered as having originated 
with him. 

2 Preserved by Origin in the fifth book 
of his Commentary on Romans, T. IV. 
opp. f. 549. 


BASILIDES. 405 


brute kingdom a soul oppressed and confined by elements belonging to 
the kingdom of darkness. And this we should have to reconcile with 
his principle, already stated, respecting justice and divine retribution, 
in the following manner. As long as the soul is kept confined in that 
lower kingdom of nature, it lies prostrated under the destiny of that 
mixture, under the power of the nature which fetters it; but when it 
once attains to a free development of the rational principle, or of its 
light-nature, or when it has once passed over into the human organism, 
the law of rigid justice begins to apply in deciding the destiny of the 
free rational beings thus produced. 

- According to Basilides, then, there is no such thing as a dead na- 
ture. What is dead, has no existence for itself; it is only that which 
oppresses actual life, till the reaction of the latter becomes strong 
enough to burst the enveloping rind. Thus, throughout all nature, he 
perceives a life striving after release from the bonds of matter, in a 
progressive movement towards freedom, from the mineral kingdom, up- 
ward through the different stages of nature to man. Accordingly the 
ethics of Basilides was based on his cosmogonic doctrine, when proceed- 
ing on this principle of the identity of life and soul in all things,! he 
announced the law: ‘* Love must embrace all, because all things stand 
in a certain relation to all, —all things are closely akin to 8]1.᾽ 2 And 
so, in the purifying and evolving process of the universe, there pre- 
vails a two-fold law ;— the law of natural necessity in the evolution 
from below upward to man; and the progressive education, determined 
by the laws of the moral order of the universe, from man onward ; from 
this point, progress and regress, bliss and wretchedness, are conditioned 
on free self-determination. 

What we remarked concerning the place which the Demiurge occu- 
pied in the systems of the first class of Gnostic sects, applies to that 
angel, who, Basilides supposed, was set over the entire earthly course 
of the world, over the whole purifying process of nature and history. 
This being he denominates the ruler, (ὁ ἄρχων.) This Archon does 
not, according to his doctrine, act in his government of the world inde- 
pendently and arbitrarily ; but the whole proceeds ultimately from the 
overruling providence of the Supreme God. 

Three factors meet together in the remarkable doctrine of Basilides 
concerning providence ; — but the factor from which everythmg even- 
tually springs and on which everything depends, though through num- 
berless intermediate agents, is the Supreme God himself. From him 
comes the law implanted in the nature of all beings, according to which 
they develope themselves, and which conditions all influences by which 
they are capable of being affected — the law containing in itself the 
whole process of the development of the universe. The Archon does 
nothing more than give the impulse to the execution of that which 
is already grounded, so far as it concerns the inherent law and the im- 
planted power, in the individual beings themselves. He works on all 


1 As in Buddhaism. Td ἠγαπεκέναι ἅπαντα, ὅτι λόγον ἀποσώ- 
? The words of Basilides, as they are ζουσι πρὸς τὸ πᾶν ἅπαντα. 
found in Clement, Strom. 1. VI. f. 508: 


406 BASILIDES. 
in obedience to this law of nature derived from the Supreme God, and 
calls forth what is deposited and prepared in these laws of nature 
into action;—and in this guiding activity of his, he acts simply, 
though unconscious of it, as an instrument of the Supreme God. “ Al- 
though that which we call providence,” says Basilides, “‘ begins to be 
put in motion by the Archon, yet it had been implanted in the nature 
of things at the same time with the origin of that nature, by the God 
of the universe.” ἢ 

We see how Basilides endeavored to take a middle course between 
two opposite ways of conceiving the divine government of the world : — 
that which represented God as operating only in a transitive manner 
upon things without himself; and the other, the Neo-Platonic, which 
used the word providence to denote simply an eternal, immanent neces- 
sity in the universe, developing itself according to mvariable laws. 
Although, in his language, he approaches to the Neo-Platonic view,? 
yet he adopts nothing but what can be reconciled with the theistic view 
of the world; and in him we find fresh confirmation of what we have be- 
fore said respecting the relation of Gnosticism, to the Neo-Platonic 
philosophy. The recognition of a personal God, whose agency is con- 
tinually and everywhere concerned in the evolution of the universe, 
and the teleological moment, closely connected therewith, distinguish 
his fundamental position from that of Neo-Platonism. Hence, too, the 
communication of something higher, of something above nature and 
above reason, finds place in his system; while to Plotinus, on the other 
hand, that which is above reason must appear contrary to reason. 

Closely connected with Basilides’ doctrine respecting the angels, the 
different grades of the spiritual world, respecting the process of puri 
fication, and the training of incorporated souls, is that of his son Isido- 
rus, which, perhaps, we may properly refer back to the father, — that 
every soul, on becoming incorporated in a body, is attended by an 
angel, possessing some affinity with its peculiar nature, to whom is com- 
mitted the guidance of its particular process of purification, and of its 
particular training; and who, probably, after its separation from the 
body, was supposed to accompany it to the place of its destination con- 
ditioned by its conduct on earth— in this sense, a guardian spirit, 
which everywhere accompanies its kindred soul. Such a spirit, ac- 
cording to Isodorus, was the demon of Socrates.’ 


1 Clemens. Strom. 1. IV. f. 509: Ἡ πρό- beginning: ‘Ee? δὲ τὸ det καὶ τό οὔποτε 


volta δὲ, εἰ καὶ ἀπὸ (not ὑπὸ, because this 
impulse proceeds, indeed, from him, but is 
to be derived from another as the first 
cause,) τοῦ ἄρχοντος, ὡς φώναι, κινεῖσϑαι 
ἄρχεται, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγκατεσπάρη ταῖς οὐσίαις σὺν 
καὶ τῇ τῶν οὐσιῶν γενέσει πρὸς τοῦ τῶν 
ὅλων ϑεοῦ. It is true, Clement does not 
cite these words directly as the language of 
Basilides. But as he is treating of him in 
this whole passage, and as the expression 
ἄρχων is peculiar to Basilides, it scarcely 
admits of doubt, that Clement, who is bent 
on refuting Basilides on his own principles, 
makes use of his own words. 

2 Vid. Plotin. Ennead. III. 1. 11. at the 


μὴ τῷ κόσμῳ τῷδε φαμὲν παρεῖναι, THY πρό- 
νοίαν ὀρϑῶς ἂν καὶ ἀκόλουϑος λέγοιμεν τῷ 
παντὶ εἶναι, τό κατὰ νοῦν αὐτὸ εἶναι. 

8 Tsidorus cites, in the first book of his 
exposition of the prophet Parchor, so call- 
ed, a doctrine of this sort taught by the an- 
cients, as one of the loftier truths received 
by them: Φασὲ δὲ of ᾿Αττικοὶ μεμηνύσϑαι 
τινὰ Σωκρώτει παρεπομένου δαίμονος αὐτῷ. 
Καὶ ᾿Αριστοτέλης δαίμοσι κεχρῆσϑαι πών- 
τας ἀνϑρώπους λέγει συνομαρτοῦσιν αὐτοῖς 
παρὰ τόν χρόνον τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως. With- 
out doubt, from some writing falsely attrib- 
uted to Aristotle. Strom. 1. VI. f. 641. 


" 4 


BASILIDES. 407 


It appears evident from what has been said, how far Basilides was 
from adopting an absolute Dualism; how far he was from countenanc- 
ing an unchristian contempt or morose hatred of the world; how his 
system, perhaps, led those who studied it to recognize the revelation 
of one God in the creation, to observe the connection subsisting between 
divine things and natural, between grace and nature. His aim was, to 
make men conscious of the unity of God’s revelation in nature and in 
history, — to lead them “to consider the whole universe as one temple 
of God.’ The Zheodicee was with him a point of the greatest impor- 
tance. ‘Faith in the goodness, holiness, and justice of Providence stood 
more firmly fixed in his mind, than all things else. Whenever, in con- 
templating the course of the world, difficulties presented themselves to 
his mind, leading to perplexity and doubt, his last word ever was, “1 
will assert anything, sooner than I will allow a complaint or a slur to be 
cast on Providence.”’ ἢ 

From Basilides’ theory of the Archon in his relation to the Supreme 
God, we may easily infer what his opinion was of Judaism, and of its rela- 
tion to Christianity. The Jews are, it is true, in idea, and in the ideal sig- 
nificancy of their religion and of their national destination, that conse- 
erated people of the Supreme God, from whom the true knowledge and 
worship of the Most High was one day to proceed ; but in actual mani- 
festation, they appear only as a people devoted and consecrated to the 
Archon, who for a while constitutes the highest potence in the history 
of the world. The great mass of this people regarded him as the Su- 
preme and only God. It was the spiritual men alone among the Jews, 
they who constituted the spiritual Israel, that became actually con- 
scious of that ideal significancy, and in whom it attained to its realiza- 
tion. These alone soared beyond the Archon himself to the presentiment 
of the Supreme God, revealing himself through the other, as his uncon- 
scious instrument. They only could rise to the intuition of the ideas 
inspired by the Supreme God in the Archon, which the latter reveals 
under the cover of Judaism, without comprehending them himself. 
These ideas, not fathomed by the Archon himself, to whom they were 
exhibited under a sensuous covering and drapery answering to the in- 
ferior grade of his limited nature, form the connecting link betwixt this 
mediated and veiled revelation of the Supreme God in the Old Testa- 
ment and his immediate and unveiled self-manifestation in Christianity. 
Accordingly Basilides says, “ΚΞ Moses erected but one temple of God, 
and thus proclaimed one universe of God.’’? By this was hinted, as we 
find it somewhat similarly expressed in Philo, the universality of the 
reference, lying at the very foundation of Judaism. Basilides, how- 
ever, did not confine himself to the canonical writings of the Old Testa- 
ment alone. He made use of apocryphal scriptures besides, which are 


1 Πᾶν ἐρῶ, μᾶλλον ἢ κακὸν τό προνοῦν Philo and Josephus, also, both consider the 
ἐρῶ. Strom. |. IV. f. 506. temple as a symbol of the world, and carry 
2 Ἕνα δ᾽ οὖν νέων ἰδρυσάμενος τοῦ ϑεοῦ, the image into further details. Philo περὶ 
μονογενῆ τε κόσμον κατήγγειλε. Strom. μοναρχίας ]. 11.: Τὸ μὲν ἀνωτώτῳ καὶ πρὸς 
1. V. f.583,D. We perceive here, both in ἀλήϑειαν ἱερὸν ϑεοῦ νομίζειν τον σύμπαντα 
the thought and the expression, the ele- χρῆ κοσμὸν εἷναι, τὸ δὲ χειρότμητον. 
ments of an Alexandrian-Jewish education. 


408 BASILIDES. 


unknown to us — predictions of a certain prophet Parchor, and revela- 
tions passing under the name of the Patriarch Ham. We can hardly 
Suppose such writings were forged by him or his school. Probably 
they were works handed down from more ancient times; works which 
he used in good faith;—- monuments of some older ante-Christian 
source of the ideas lying at the root of the Gnosis. Perhaps he be- 
lieved that in these documents he found a still clearer exposition of the 
loftier truth transmitted in the form of secret doctrines, than he could 
find in the canonical scriptures of the Old Testament. He might easily 
explain it to his own satisfaction, how a people who had no recipiency 
for such ideas, would naturally have nothing to do with the books con- 
taining this higher truth, and so rejected them. 

We perceive here such an element of universality ---- and with this 
agrees the fact, that he did not confine the tradition of the higher 
truth in the ante-Christian period exclusively to the Jewish people, but 
supposed that he found indications of the same truth beyond the limits 
of that nation. We have seen, indeed, that he cites the doctrine of Zo- 
roaster as a testimony of the truth. The fact that he derived the tradi- 
tion of the higher wisdom from Ham, not from Shem, indicates perhaps 
that he acknowledged the authority of a tradition which was not He- 
brew. Itis not improbable, that he valued the wisdom of those who 
by the Greeks were called barbarians, above the Greek philosophy it- 
self. Yet it is certain, as appears from a remark of Isidorus, already 
cited, that he sought also in the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristo- 
tle, whether it was in their genuine works or in spurious writings at- 
tributed to them, the vestiges of that higher wisdom. In the passage 
from Isidore’s exposition of the prophet Parchor, which has come down 
to us, these vestiges of truth, to be found in the Greek philosophers, 
were not derived however from a common inward source, a reaction of 
the spiritual principle against paganism m the more eminent men, but 
from a source without themselves, a tradition received from another 
quarter. Yet the calm and considerate spirit of this school, and its 
more favorable judgment of the Greek philosophy, are evinced by the 
fact, that Isidorus does not fasten in this case on the Jewish fables re- 
specting the fallen spirits, who had intercourse with the daughters of 
men, and diffused the higher kinds of knowledge in the pagan world ; 
but upon the less fantastic, although not historical hypothesis of the 
Alexandrian-Jewish theology, according to which the Greek philoso- 
phers had borrowed such doctrines from the scriptures of the Old Tes- 
tament, through the medium of Egypt. ‘ And let no one believe,” says 
Isidore, ‘‘ that what we consider to be the peculiar property of the elect 
had been declared before by some philosophers ; for it is no discovery 
of theirs, but they have taken it from the prophets and appropriated it 
to themselves, and united it with their own pretended wisdom.”’? It 


1 Giving this turn to Plato’s expression, εὕρημα: τῶν de προφητῶν odeTepiodueror 
Ἕλληνες ἀεὶ παῖδες. προσέϑηκαν τῷ μὴ ὑπάρχοντι κατ’ αὐτοὺς 
23 Καὶ μή τις οἰέσϑω, ὅ φαμὲν ἴδιον εἶναι σοφῷ. Strom. 1. VI. f. 641. I now believe 
τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν, τοῦτο προειρημένον ὑπάρχειν the latter expression should be understood 
ὑπό τινων φιλοσόφων, ob yap ἐστιν αὐτῶν as neuter, “ the wisdom which does not ex- 


BASILIDES. 409 
is clear from this, what a low estimate was placed by this school on the 
Hellenic philosophy as compared with the Old Testament, and even 
with the ancient wisdom of the East. Isidore describes the Greek 
philosophers as men who merely give themselves the appearance of 
philosophizing.t He acknowledged in the Greek philosophy no original, 
but only derivative truth, and that alloyed by foreign corruptions. 

But the doctrine, above noticed, concerning a guardian angel, com- 
missioned to attend on every soul, may, perhaps, be considered as a 
proof that he did not by any means consider the pagan nations to be 
deserted and left destitute of all divine influences and providential care. 
As he made a guardian angel attend on each individual soul, he would, 
perhaps, following the analogy of this theory, have angels placed as 
rulers over the several nations. In this doctrine the Basilideans of the 
West, with whom Irenzeus became acquainted, may have rightly appre- 
hended the opimions of their master ; though they superadded some- 
thing else, which did not come from him. ‘These angels, the Elohim of 
other nations, he considered, probably, as national gods, just as he sup- 
posed the Archon, who stood at their head, to be the particular god of 
the Jewish people. It is evident that in entertaining such a theory of 
the Elohim, he might lean for support on several passages in the Alex- 
andrian version of the Bible, — that he appropriated to himself an idea 
that had long been extant.? 

Thus there ruled over mankind those subordinate powers, to whom 
men’s consciousness was subjected ; no one could release himself whol- 
ly from their spell, from the spell of the cosmic principle. There ex- 
isted, for the most part, only an unconscious union with the Supreme 
God and the order of world which stood in relationship with him. The 
natures which bore within them the germ of a life akin to him, remained 
fettered and confined within the province of the Archon. 

Without question, Basilides possessed a profound knowledge of the 
spiritual condition of mankind in the ante-Christian period, and especial- 
ly the time immediately preceding the appearance of Christ; without 
question, he had a profound sense of that oppressive weight lying on the 
consciousness of mankind, and especially on the noblest natures, of that 
unconscious craving after a release of the spirit; and from this vantage 
ground, he might come to know the nature of the redemption and to 
perceive its necessity. If he apprehended it only on a single side, yet 
it had a necessary place in his system. Without it, the separation be- 
twixt the world of the Archon and the proper divine order of the world 
must ever continue to exist. The spirits destined for the highest stage 


ist with them,” i. e. their pretended wisdom. 
The verb προστιϑέναι seems to me best 
suited to this rendering of σοφῷ. 

1 Τοὺς προσποιουμένους φιλοσοφεῖν. --- 
Strom. |. VI. f. 641. 

2 Besides the passage already cited on p. 
380,— in the same song of Moses, Deut. 
32: 43, are the words, not found in the He- 
brew, which the translator has added on the 
ground of some such theory: καὶ προσκυ- 
νησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι ϑεοῦ, com- 


ToL. I. 35 


pared with v. 8. All the Elohim that pre- 
sided over the other nations, are called upon 
to do homage to God’s people. What the 
nations were to do, and what the powers 
ruling over them do, is, according to this 
scheme, one and the same thing. The for- 
mer is derived from the latter. Comp. Ps. 
97: 7, where the Alexandrians translate 
ὈΥΤΊ γιὲ by ἄγγελοι, and beyond question 
had in mind such powers as the national 
gods were supposed to be. 


410 BASILIDES. 


of being must ever remain confined in their depressing thraldom. They 
might, indeed, through the progressive movement of the metempsycho- 
sis, rise from one higher step to another in the kingdom of the Archon; 
but they could not, in conformity with the longmg implanted within 
them, attain, over and beyond this kingdom and the Archon himself, to 
fellowship with the highest order of the world, and to the clear con- 
sciousness as well as to the full and free exercise of their higher nature, 
unless the Supreme God himself brought his divine life near to their 
kindred germ of life, and thereby first set the latter into activity. And 
whilst, by the act of redemption, the spiritual natures were exalted to the 
highest position, its influence is made to extend also to the subordinate 
stages of existence; harmony is everywhere restored, each order of 
being attains to its natural destination. 

But if, on the one hand, Basilides, in his mode of apprehending the 
doctrine of redemption, departed essentially from the Jewish position, 
yet on the other, like Cerinthus, he agreed entirely with the Ebionites, 
in supposing a sudden entrance of the Divine nature into the life of 
Jesus, and admitting of no such thing as a God-man, in whom from the 
first the divine and the human elements were inseparably united. He 
supposed at bottom, it is true, a redeeming God, but no redeeming 
God-man. ‘The man Jesus was not in his view the Redeemer ; he dif- 
fered from other men only in degree. Basilides does not seem to have 
allowed even that he possessed. absolute impeccability. Jesus, in his 
view, was merely the instrument, whom the redeeming God selected, 
for the purpose of revealing himself in humanity and of entering into it 
with an influential agency. The Redeemer, in the proper and highest 
sense of the term, was, as he supposed, the highest Avon,! sent down 
by the Supreme God to execute the work of redemption. This bemg 
united himself with the man Jesus at his baptism im the Jordan. 

Now, although Basilides did not acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth to be 
the Redeemer, but held that Jesus himself stood in the need of redemp- 
tion, yet he cannot be accused of holding that the redemption was sim- 
ply an ideal thing, and of denying it as a great historical fact. Far in- 
deed was it from him, as may be gathered from what has been said, to 
suppose that any being enthralled within the kingdom of the Archon, 
could release himself. There was required for this an objective fact, 
the actual entrance of that might from a higher world, the νοῦς, into 
the world of earthly manifestation, which was accomplished through 
the medium of the man Jesus. This, according to Basilides, was the 
greatest fact in the history of the created universe, from which every- 
thing that succeeded, to the final end of the perfectly restored harmony 
of the universe, must proceed. The manner in which he speaks of the 
baptism of Jesus, testifies of the impression which this fact, and the 
public ministry of Christ following thereupon, had left by tradition on 
the minds of Christians. Clement cites on this point the following words 
coming from the Basilidean school.? ‘‘ When the Archon himself heard 


1 Or νοῦς, who, inasmuch as he ministers for the salvation of mankind, is called διάκονος. 
2 Clemens Stromat. lib. II. f. 375. 


BASILIDES. 411 
the word of the communicated Spirit,! (the Spirit sent from above,) he 
was amazed at what he heard and at what he beheld,? the joyful an- 
nunciation® being wholly unexpected to him; and his amazement was 
called fear,‘ the beginning of wisdom,—of a wisdom which discrimi- 
nated the different classes of men, perfected all, and restored the origi- 
nal harmony ; for he distinguished and separated from one another not 
only the natures belonging to the world, (to his own kingdom, ) but also 
the elect (the pneumatic natures superior to the Archon’s kingdom) 
from them, and released them from his bann (or conducted them) to 
the God who is over all.” ὃ 

Thus a new light dawns on the Archon himself. He comes to the 
knowledge of a higher God and a higher world, above himself. He 
is redeemed from his confinement. He attains to the consciousness 
of a superior power, which rules over all, and which he himself, with- 
out being aware of it, has always been serving. He sees himself 
released from the mighty task of governing the world, which until now 
he supposed that he supported alone, and for which his powers had not 
proved adequate. If it had thus far cost him so much pains, and he 
still could not succeed in reducing the conflicting elements in the 
course of the world to order, he now beholds a power adequate to over- 
come every obstacle, and reduce all opposites to unity. Basilides, part- 
ly from a more profound insight into the essential character of Christi- 
anity and of history, partly from those effects of Christianity which 
were before his own eyes and which contained the germ of the future, 
foresees what stuff to excite fermentation, and what separation of ele- 
ments, would be introduced by it into humanity. He perceives how 
the recipient minds among every people, freed from the might which 
held their consciousness in fetters, redeemed from all creaturely depen- 
dence, and raised to communion with their original source, would be- 
come united with one another in a higher unity. All these effects pre- 


1 We may presume the word is meant 
which, according to the Nazarene gospel, 
(see above, p. 350,) the Holy Ghost is said 
to have spoken to Christ at the moment of 
his descent upon him. 

2 The glorified appearance in which 
Christ, when united with this exalted being, 
presented himself to the Archon: or the 
sight of the miraculous dove, which was a 
symbol of the Spirit, which had come down 
from on high; or the miraculous appear- 
ances accompanying the baptism of Christ, 
according to the gospel of the Ebionites. 

8 The annunciation of the Spirit being 
called a εὐαγγέλιον for the ἄρχων, it is evi- 
dent that he did not yield to the higher 
power merely from constraint; but his first 
amazement was converted into reverential 
joy. The prospect of being one day re- 

eased from the embarrasing government 
of the world, when the elect natures should 
have attained to their destined glory, and 
of entering into rest with his own, —to 


which expectation of the Demiurge the 
Gnostics referred such passages as Rom. 8: 
20, 21 — Vid. Orig. T. I. in Joann. § 24, — 
could be no otherwise than joyful to him. 
Comp. Didascal. Anatol. opp. Clem. f. 796, 
D., where the blessing which the Demiurge 
pronounces on the Sabbath is adduced, to 
show how difficult the work was for him. 

4 Thus Ps. 111: 10, “ The fear of the Lord 
is the beginning of wisdom,” was interpreted. 

5 Αὐτὸν τὸν ἄρχοντα ἐπακούσαντα τὴν 
φάσιν τοῦ διακονουμένου πνεύματος, ἐκπλα- 
γῆναι τῷ ϑεάματι παρ᾽ ἐλπίδας εὐαγγελι- 
σμένον, καὶ τὴν ἐκπλῆξιν αὐτοῦ φόβον KAn- 
ϑῆναι, ἀρχὴν γενόμενον σοφίας φυλοκρινη- 
τικῆς τε καὶ διακριτικῆς καὶ τελεωτικῆς καὶ 
ἀποκαταστατικῆς, οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὸν κόσμον, 
ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἐκλογὴν διακρίνας, ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι 
προπέμπει, (this then would be the ἄρχων") 
Assuming τῷ to be the correct reading, I 
have rendered as in the text: in this case, 
the Supreme God must be understood to be 
denoted. 


412 BASILIDES. 


sented themselves to his imagination as an impression made on the Ar- 
chon at the baptism of Christ. 

The whole work of redemption, then, Basilides, like Cerinth, attrib- 
uted to the redeeming heavenly Genius. Most probably he agreed also 
with the latter, in supposing that this Genius, at the time of the passion, 
left the man to himself, whom he before used as his instrument. The 
suffermgs of Christ could not, according to the system-of Basilides, 
have the least connection with the work of redemption; for according 
to his narrow conception of justice, the divine justice does not allow 
that one being should innocently suffer for another; it requires that the 
sin of each individual should be expiated by suffering. He regarded 
not only: suffering in general, but also the particular sufferings of each 
individual, in the light of a punishment for sm. He embraced the the- 
ory which Christ (John 9: ὃ; Luke 13: 2) condemned. ‘ Kach in- 
dividual suffers, either for actual sins, or for that evil in his nature, 
which he brought with him from an earlier state of existence, and which 
may not as yet have come into actual manifestation.” 1 Thus it was 
by pointing to this latter, that he vindicated Providence in respect to 
the suffering of children. When pressed with an objection drawn from 
the suffering of men of acknowledged goodness, he might undoubtedly 
appeal, and with good reason, to the general fact of the sinfulness of 
human nature, and reply: ““ Whatever man you can name to me, he is 
still a man. God alone is holy. Who can bring a clean thing out of an 
unclean? Not one.” Job 14: 4. 

But the case was different when this proposition came to be applied 
to the Redeemer, who, as certainly as he zs the Redeemer, must be 
pure from sin. Clement of Alexandria directly accuses Basilides of 
carrying the proposition even to this extent. In those words, which 
Clement cites, this surely is not necessarily implied. He merely says, 
“Τῇ, however, you let this whole investigation go, and endeavor to bring 
me into difficulty by adducing the case of certain persons ; if you say, 
Then he has sinned, for he has suffered, &c.” It might be held, that 
Basilides is simply speaking here of certain men who were regarded 
with peculiar veneration, who stood in high repute for holiness; and 
Clement took the liberty to draw his own conclusion. But in the first 
place, the objection which Basilides supposes to be made against his 
position, would lose all its force and meaning, if it were not designed 
to be understood precisely in the sense above given; and neat, this 
wide extension of the proposition stands intimately connected with his 
theory concerning the relation of suffering to sin, and with his theory 
of the divine justice and of the process of purification to which every 
nature belonging to the kingdom of the Archon is subjected. The 
Jesus who belonged to this kingdom certainly needed redemption him- 
self, and could only be made partaker of it by his union with that heavy- 
enly redeeming spirit. ΤῸ render him worthy of bemg redeemed be- 
fore all others that needed redemption, and of being employed as .the 


1 Sufferings, — expiatory and purgative of sin, (ἁμαρτία or the ἁμαρτητικόν.) Strom. 
1. IV. f. 506. 


BASILIDES. 413 


instrument for diffusing abroad the influences of the redeeming Genius 
to others, it was sufficient, if, as the most excellent and the purest of 
men, who had advanced the furthest in the work of purification, he 
possessed the minimum of sinfulness. Here indeed the objection might 
be urged against the Basilidean system, which certainly must have 
supposed that some proportion existed betwixt the degree of sin and 
the degree of punishment — how then reconcile so great suffering with 
the smallest degree of sinfulness? But here, probably, as we may in- 
fer from his remarks on martyrdom, he could be at no loss for an 
answer: ‘‘ The consciousness of serving as an instrument for the high- 
est and holiest cause of humanity, and of suffering in this mission, 
(perhaps, too, the prospect of the glory into which he was to enter 
through suffering,) so sweetened the pain, as entirely to remove the 
sense of suffering.” | 

In accordance with the same principle, he denied the doctrine of jus- 
tification in the sense of Paul. He admitted no such thing as objec- 
tive justification in the sight of God, as forgiveness of sin, in the sense 
of deliverance from the guilt and punishment of sin. Every sin, 
whether committed before or after faith in the Redeemer, or baptism, 
must, according to his scheme, be in like manner expiated by suffering. 
This was a necessary law of the government of the universe, which 
could in no wise be dispensed with. The only exception he makes is in 
the case of sins of ignorance, or unintentional sins ;} but unfortunately 
his explanation of expressions so vague and undefined, has not come down 
tous. Perhaps he intended only sins of ignorance not involving guilt, 
which had been committed in a state of consciousness obstructed by 
some involuntary confinement — analogous to the state of the rational 
principle held restrained in the bodies of brutes. But if, on the other 
hand, by justification (δικαίωσις, δικαιοσύνη, is meant an inward, sub- 
jective condition of being made just, sanctification by the communi- 
cating of a divine life ; such a doctrine had a very important and neces- 
sary place in the system of Basilides. 

Among the religious and moral ideas of the Basilidean school, there 
are several other remarkable points which deserve to be particularly 
noticed. 

What distinguishes Basilides from other Gnostics is this, — that he 
did not oppose the Gnosis as the highest stage in religion, to the πίστις, 
— to faith; but valued faith itself as the highest quality. Yet he dis- 
tinguished in the latter a series of higher and lower degrees, corres- 
ponding to the different grades of perfection which different souls are 
destined to occupy in that higher spiritual world from whence they 
sprang. He supposed, in fact, as we have remarked, a series of grades 
in the higher world of spirits, of which one continually symbolized the 
other. Divine germs of life from all these grades had become mixed 
with the kingdom of darkness. Christianity is the sifting principle, 
whereby the spiritual natures belonging to the different grades of the 
spiritual world are separated, are brought to the consciousness of their 


1 Μόνας τὰς ἀκουσίους Kai Kar’ ἀγνοίαν ἀφίεσϑαι. Strom. 1. IV. f. 536. 
. 


414 BASILIDES. 


own proper essence, and acquire the power of bringing it into action, 
and of rising to that region of the spiritual world, to which they belong 
by virtue of this their proper and essential being, which before had re- 
mained undeveloped. By means of Christianity, men arrive, in this man- 
ner, at the different positions for which they are fitted by their peculiar 
natures, each reaching the stage of perfection of which he is capable. 
At the entrance of the redeeming spirit into the world, the Archon, 
in a word, received the σοφία φυλοκρινητιη. Now that by which this 
process of separation actually takes place in the different natures, 
and by which each individual is enabled to reach that grade of the 
higher world which corresponds to his spiritual essence, is faith. In 
this way we must understand the Basilidean school, when they taught 
that ‘ faith and election, both taken together, constitute one thing, an- 
swering to each of the several grades of the spiritual world; and the 
faith of each individual nature in this world exactly corresponds to 
its supramundane election.” } 

Such being the scheme of Basilides, we may perhaps conclude, that 
the ordinary standard of Christian truth, as he found it existing with ° 
the majority in the church, met with more favor and experienced 
greater justice from him, than it usually did from other Gnostics. These 
ordinary believers he recognized as Christians, members of one Chris- 
tian community; and he distinguished in this regard only different 
stages of Christian knowledge. Faith he considered the common foun- 
dation of Christian fellowship, and supposed only that besides this, 
which was common to all, there were different degrees of Christian con- 
sciousness. It is evident then, that he was far from ascribing the 
πίστις, considered as faith grounded on outward authority and cleay- 
ing altogether to things sensible, exclusively to the psychical class. He 
understood faith to be in its essence an inward principle. Faith, 
according to his apprehension, is a conviction that springs from the 
contact of the spirit with the godlike, from the attractive power exer- 
cised by the higher world over its kindred spirit. The spirit has re- 
vealed to it that higher region of existence, whence it came and to which 
it belongs; and it feels itself drawn towards its kindred element. 
Faith is an immediate fact, which renders all evidence superfluous. 
The spirit, in this case, grasps the truths corresponding to its own 
essence by an immediate intuition.? The soul assents to that which 
does not come to it through the senses, which is not presented to it 
under any form of sense.? Although the elect live on, as strangers in 
the world, yet, through the buoyancy of faith, they perceive the reality 
of the things of that higher world which beam on them from afar. But 
to the peculiar standing ground of each individual’s faith must corres- 

nd also the peculiar standing ground of his hope — the conviction 
that he shall actually enter into that higher world to which he had been 


1 Πίστιν ἅμα καὶ ἐκλογὴν οἰκείαν εἶναι 3 Τὰ μαϑήματα ἀναποδείκτως εὑρίσκουσα 
καϑ' ἕκαστον διάστημα, kar’ ἐπακολούϑημα καταλήψει νοητικῇ. Strom. |. II. f. 363. 
δ᾽ αὖ τῆς ἐκλογῆς τῆς ὑπερκοσμίου τὴν κοσ- 8 Faith is a ψυχῆς συγκατάϑεσις πρός τι 


μικὴν ἁπάσης φύσεως συνέπεσϑαι πίστιν. τῶν μὴ κινούντων αἴσϑησιν διὰ τὸ μὴ πα- 
Strom. |. II. f. 363. ρεῖναι. Lc. f. 871. 


BASILIDES. 415 


already united by faith; shall attain to the full possession of those bless- 
ings which faith has laid hold on.! 

‘Now if we perceive something of the Pauline spirit in the peculiar 

prominence which Basilides gives to the idea of faith, yet presently we 
see him again departing widely from the Apostle Paul, inasmuch as he 
places the essence of faith rather in an intuitive than in a practical and 
ethical element; making it proceed rather from an intuition of the 
spirit, than from a determination of the will conditioning the direction 
of the heart; and it is easy to see how this difference is grounded in 
the very nature of his fundamental principle. 
- The objection which Plotinus brought against the Gnostics generally, 
that they neglecled ethics, cannot be justly applied to the school of Ba- 
silides ; for Zsidorus composed a system of ethics, from which unfortu- 
nately but a very few words have been preserved to us by Clement of 
Alexandria. 

The moral system of Basilides is to be gathered from his Cosmog- 
ony. Assuming a mixture of opposite principles, and considering the 
development of the human race as a process of purification, which was 
to be carried onward to its end by Christianity, he must necessarily 
have made the fundamental principle of his moral system to be this— 
namely, that the godlike nature of man should be purified from the 
foreign elements adhering to it, and approach continually nearer to its 
free development and activity. Man, according to this system, is a 
microcosm, — carrying within himself opposite elements from two oppo- 
site kingdoms. In the elements foreign to his higher nature,? are 
reflected the different properties of the animal, vegetable and mineral 
kingdoms ; — hence the temperaments, desires and passions which cor- 
respond to these different properties, (for example, the mimic, sportive 
nature of the ape, the murderous disposition of the wolf, the hardness 
of the diamond, &c. ;) —the collective sum of all these effluxes from 
the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds forms the blind, irrational 
soul,® which constantly threatens to check and disturbs the activity of 
man’s godlike nature. The Isidorus above mentioned thought ‘it of 
great importance to secure this doctrine against the objection or the 
misapprehension, that its tendency was to destroy moral freedom, and 
to furnish an excuse for all wickedness, as if it resulted from the irre- 
sistible influence of these foreign mixtures. He appeals, on the other 
hand, to the superior power of the godlike element. ‘“ Having, by the 
rational principle within us, so much the advantage, we ought to appear 
as conquerors over the lower creation within us.” * ‘Let one but have 
the will,” says he, ‘‘ to do nothing but what is right, and one will ac- 
quire the power.” ὅ But this earnest will, this true love for goodness, 
is for the most part the only thing wanting. ‘We say indeed with 


1 Κατώλληλον εἶναι τῇ ἑκάστου ἐλπίδι 3 The ψυχὴ προσφυὴς ἄλογος. 
καὶ τῆς πίστεως τὴν δωρεάν. Lc. f. 363. 4 Δεῖ δὲ τῷ λογιστικῷ κρείττονας γενο- 
There is a remarkable coincidence between μένους, τῆς ἐλάττονος ἐν ἡμῖν κτίσεως φανῆ- 
the definitions of faith by Basilides and vac κρατοῦντας. 
Hugo a St. Victore. 5 Strom. |. III. f. 427: Θελησάτω μόνον 
2 Appendages of matter, προσαρτήματα. ἀπαρτῆσαι τὸ καλὸν καὶ ἐπιτεύξεται. 


416 BASILIDES. 


the mouth, we will not sin. But our soul has the inclination tosm. A 
person in this condition is restrained only by the fear of punishment; he 
is destitute of love.”’ 

It might easily be inferred from the whole connection of the Basili- 
dean system, that, in giving so high a place to the faculty of will, Isido- 
rus would by no means ascribe to it an independent self-sufficiency, nor 
deny the necessity of a higher assistance of grace. By his theory of 
redemption, he acknowledged it, in effect, to be necessary, that the 
godlike in human nature should receive its true freedom and power of 
right action by means of its union with the higher source of divine life. 
How earnestly bent he was on reminding men of their need of help, is 
shown by the advice which he gives to a person suffermg under severe 
trials, — words which prove at the same time how far he was from 
cherishing a speculative pride, that despised the ordinary means of 
grace enjoyed by the Christian communities. He exhorts the individ- 
ual not to retire into solitude, but to ask the Christian brethren for 
their intercessions, to seek in their society the strengthening of his di- 
vine life, in order that, so strengthened, he might find confidence in fel- 
lowship with the invisible saints. He says of one in this condition, 
“Let him not separate himself from his brother. Let him say, I have 
entered into the sanctuary; I can suffer no evil.””1 Ifa person thus 
afflicted felt himself too much oppressed by the power of temptation, he 
should say to his Christian brother, “‘ Lay thy hand on my head, (give 
me thy blessing) and he would receive spiritual and sensible assistance ”” 
(feel himself relieved in spirit and body.)? What importance he as- 
cribed to prayer, is shown by the fact that he distinguishes the different 
moral states of the soul by the different character which prayer must 
assume according to those states — that 1s, according as one feels con- 
strained to thank God for the victory achieved, or to pray for new assist- 
ance for the irapending conflict.’ 

The Basilideans were far from being given to extravagant ascetic no- 
tions. We have already observed how this mode of apprehending the 
dualistic element, which came so very near to the pure doctrine of Zoro- 
aster, would by no means lead necessarily to a decided and morose 
asceticism. They allowed a value, it is true, to the unmarried life, as 
a means which would enable one to occupy himself undisturbed by 
earthly cares, solely with the affairs of the kingdom of God. But they 
regarded this as a thing of which all were not capable, and which was 
not advisable for all. They recommended marriage, as a means of 
subduing the sensuous impulses, to those who would otherwise have to 
‘suffer many temptations. At the ground of this view of marriage, there 
lies, it is true, a very low, a mere negative and sensuous notion of the 
institution ; and hence indeed the exaggerated worth ascribed to celib- 
acy. We do not perceive here the more profound and positive view of 


1 Οὗτος τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ μὴ χωριζέσϑω, Acyé- 2 Καὶ λήψεται βοήϑειαν καὶ νοητὴν καὶ 
τω, ὅτι εἰσελήλυϑα ἐγὼ εἰς τὰ ἅγια: οὐδὲν αἰσϑητῆν. 
δύναμαι παϑεῖν. Strom. 1. III. ἢ, 427. 5'This is clear from Isidore’s words: 
Ὅταν δὲ ἡ εὐχαριστία σου εἰς αἴτησιν ὑπο- 
πέζη. 


VALENTINE. 417 


the marriage estate, as a realization of the moral idea, or of the king- 
dom of God in a good of humanity: a loftier conception, which, as we 
have already observed, becomes faintly visible in the Valentinian 
Gnosis. 

We must notice finally, one other remarkable phenomenon. In the 
Basilidean doctrine, there are, as we have seen, marks of a relationship 
with certain Ebionite elements: accordingly it agreed, in prefer- 
ence forthe Apostle Peter, with the Christians of that party. And yet,} 
inconsistent as it may seem, Basilides acknowledges the authority also 
of the Apostle Paul, as is evident from the fact of his attributing so 
much authority to the words of this Apostle, recorded im his epistle to 
the Romans ;? as well as from the influence of the Pauline ideas, so ap- 
parent in his doctrine concerning the essence of faith and concerning 
marriage. We hence perceive then, that these opposite elements stood 
by no means in such a relation to each other, as never to admit of being 
united in the phenomena of these times. 

VALENTINE AND HIS ScHoo..— Next after Basilides we place Val- 
entine, who appeared nearly at the same period; though somewhat 
later. To judge from his Hellenistic style of expression and the 
Aramzan words that occur in his system, he was of Jewish descent. 
It is said, he was by birth an Egyptian;* and it may be safely pre- 
sumed that he received his education likewise at Alexandria. Thence 
he travelled to Rome, where he seems to have spent the last years of 
his life; which gave him opportunity to expound and promulgate his 
doctrmes in that part of the world. In his fundamental ideas he 
agrees with Basilides; but differs from him in his mode of carrying 
them out, and in the imaginative dress in which he clothes them. 
But as the doctrines of the founders of Gnostic schools, and of their 
later followers, from whom these doctrines received some peculiar mod- 
ification, were never carefully distinguished; and as moreover many 
cognate doctrines, which sprang from a common source, became inter- 
mixed with the Valentinian system ; it is scarcely possible to separate 
with certainty, from the accounts which have come down to us, those 
Pty which belong properly to Valentine himself, the author of the 
school. 

Like Basilides, Valentine placed at the summit of the chain of being 
the primal Essence, which he denominated the Bythos (the abyss, where 
the spirit is lost in contemplation.) This term, by itself, makes it evident, 
that he conceived under it something different from the Absolute of the 
Neo-Platonic philosophy, the absolutely simple. The word leads, with- 
out doubt, to the pre-supposition of an infinite fulness of life; and this 
same infinite, transcendent exuberance of being necessitates, in the first 
place, a self-conception (a καταλαμβάνειν ἑαυτόν,) a self-limitation, in 
case anything was to come into existence. The Neo-Platonic ὄν 
withdraws itself from all possibility of comprehension, on account of its 
absolutely simple unity ; but the primal Essence of Valentine, on account 


_} The Basilideans traced back their Gno- 2 See above, p. 404. 
sis to Glaucias, a pretended interpreter in 8 According to the report of Epiphanius. 
the service of Peter. Strom. 1. VII. f. 764. 


418 


of its transcendent fulness. of life. 


VALENTINE. 


The Bythos is, in a certain sense, 


something directly opposed to the Absolute of the Neo-Platonic philoso- 


phy. 


It may doubtless have happened, that with many, the former 


idea passed over into the latter; and indeed Valentinians are cited, 
who made out of the Bythos something exalted above all opposition, of 
which even existence could not be predicated ; the Absolute, identical 


with Nothing.! 


What Basilides denominates the δυνάμεις, (powers,) are in the 


system of Valentine the Adons.? 


The idea is peculiar to him, that as 


in the primal source of all existence, (the Bythos,) the fulness of all life 
is still undeveloped, so with the development of life from him, members 
were formed, standing as complements one to the other, predominantly 
creative and predominantly receptive AXons,? masculine and feminine, 
by whose mutual inworking the chain of unfolding life progressively ad- 


vances. 


The feminine goes to integrate the masculine, and both con- 


stitute the Pleroma, (τὸ rAjpwua);* and so also the complete se- 
ries of AZons, as one whole, as the fulness of the divine life flowing 
out from the Bythos, — which whole again constantly requires fructifica- 
tion, so to express it, from the same source, stands to it in the feminine 


‘relation, — was called the Pleroma. 
being can comprehend; it is the absolute ἀγνωστόν, 


The hidden essence of God, no 
He can be known 


only so far as he has revealed himself in the unfolding of his powers or 


AWons. 


The several Alons are various forms of manifestation, phases, 


names of him who in his hidden being is incomprehensible, ineffable, ex- 
alted above all possibility of conception or representation,° even as that 
first self-manifestation of the Hidden, the Monogenes, 1s called distinc- 
tively the invisible name of the Bythos (that wherein the Bythos has 
conceived himself, the πρῶτον κατάληπτον, the κατάληψις τοῦ ἀγενήτου.) It 
is a profound idea of the Valentinian system, that as all existence 
has its ground in the self-limitation of the Bythos, so the existence of 


all created beings depends on lzmetatzon. 


While each remains within 


the limits of its own individuality, and is that which it should be at its 
own proper place in the evolution of life, all things can be fitly adjusted 
to one another, and the true harmony be preserved in the chain of un- 


folding life. 


But as soon as any being would overstep these limits, as 


soon as any being, instead of striving to know God in that manifesta- 


1 Trenzeus, who states the different opin- 
ions of the Valentinians respecting the 
Bythos, observes: Οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀζυγον 
λέγουσιν, μῆτε ἄῤῥενα, μήτε ϑῆλειαν, μῆτε 
ὅλως ὄντα τι. Tren. 1. 1, at the end. The 
disciples of such Gnostics would soar, in 
their speculations, above their master, — 
would ascend to a primal ground still more 
simple. Irenseus cites one of this descrip- 
tion, whom he not unaptly describes as 
ὑψηλότερον καὶ γνωστικώτερον ἐπεκτεινό- 
μενος, who knew how to distinguish between 
the μονότης, the ἑνότης and the ἕν, and was 
in the habit of saying of every principle, so 
I name it. In this Irenzeus finds good mat- 
ter of ridicule: ὡμολόγηκε ὅτι αὐτὸς ὀνόμα- 


τα τέϑεικε τῷ πλάσματι, ὑπὸ μηδενὸς πρό- 
τερον ἄλλου τεϑειμένα. 

2 For the explanation of this word, see 
above. 

8 As in all the rest of creation, which pre- 
sents a symbol of that highest order of the 
universe, this two-fold series of factors may 
be traced. 

4 Which word these Theosophers, who 
assuredly never thought of adhering strict- 
ly to the grammatical signification of their 
terms, understood perhaps at one and the 
same time, in an active and passive sense: 
τὸ πληροῦν and Td πληρούμενον. 

ὅ The AXons are μορφαὶ τοῦ ϑεοῦ, ὀνό- 
ματα τοῦ ἀνωνομάστου. 


VALENTINE. 419 


tion of himself which God makes to him at his own proper position, 
boldly attempts to penetrate into his hidden essence, such a being runs 
the hazard of plunging into nothing. Instead of apprehending the 
Real, he loses himself in the Unsubstantial. Horus, (époc,) the genius 
of limitation, of the finite, the power that fixes and guards the bounds 
of individual existence, restorimg them wherever they have been dis- 
turbed, occupies therefore an important place in the system of Valen- 
tine; and the Gnosis here, so to speak, bears witness against itself. 
The ideas of Horus and of the Redeemer must of necessity be closely 
related in the Valentinian system; as the forming and redeeming of 
existence are kindred conceptions, and the principle of limitation in 
respect to both occupies an important place in this system. In fact, 
Horus was also called by many λυτρώτης and σωτήρ, Redeemer and 
Saviour. There are occasional imtimations of a scheme, according to 
which the Horus was regarded as.only a particular mode of the opera- 
tion of one redeeming spirit; just as the Valentinian system gave differ- 
ent names to this power, according to the different points of his activ- 
ity and his different modes of operation, extending through all the 
grades of existence. Others, indeed, transformed these different modes 
of operation into so many different hypostases. 

In the Valentinian doctrines concerning this Horus, there are, lying 
at bottom, profound ideas on the process of development of the divine life 
in general and in detail ; important in their bearing on Christian ethics, 
and the mode of contemplating the great facts of history. Valentine’s 
school perceived that, in the process of development of the divine life, two 
moments must concur, a negative and a positive, both standing necessarily 
connected with each other, —the purification of the spiritual individuality 
from the foreign elements by which it had become vitiated, into which it 
threatened to become dissolved — and the eMeabiishmnent of the purified 
individuality in itself, its firm and steadfast shaping, its assumption of 
its own nature. ‘Two operations were ascribed to the Horus; the nega- 
tive, by virtue of which he defines every existence within itself, sepa- 
rates and keeps away from it every foreign element ;1 and the positive, 
by virtue of which he fixes, moulds, and establishes in their own peculiar 
essence, those that have been purified from the foreign elements by 
which that essence was disturbed.?_ The first operation was to be desig- 
nated preéminently by the name ὅρος, the second by the term σταυρός, 
Tn this latter appellation there is evidently an allusion to the significa- 
tions cross, stake, palisade. Those two appellations; however, may 
perhaps not always have been so sharply discriminated; since σταυρός 
with the signification cross might in fact also be a symbol of the sepa- 
rating, destroying energy of the Horus.*? Where Christ says, “I am 
not come to bring peace on the earth, but the sword,” they found the 
description of that negative energy of the Horus, which séparates from 


1 The évepyeia μεριστικὴ καὶ διοριστικῆ. ments of the world, from sensuous lusts. 

2 The évepyeia ἑδραστικὴ καὶ στηριστικῆ. ᾿Απολῦσαι καὶ ἀποστῆσαι καὶ ἀφορίσαι ὁ 

8 Clement of Alexandria also employs σταυρὸς σημαίνει, and on this is founded 
the cross as a symbol of the divine power, the ἀνάπαυσις. Strom. lib. 11. f. 407. 
whereby the soul is made free from the ele- 


420 VALENTINE. 


one another the godlike and the ungodlike. And where John the Bap- 
tist announces the appearance of Christ, with the fan, and with the fire 
by which the chaff should be consumed, it was considered by the Val- 
entinians as a description of this activity of the Horus as connected 
with the history of the world, representing how he would destroy all the 
ὕλη, and purify the redeemed. In the passage where Christ says, ‘ No 
man can be my disciple, unless he takes up his cross and follows me,” 
they saw a description of that divme power, symbolized by the cross, 
whereby each individual, becoming purified from what is foreign to him, 
and attaining to a self-subsistent shaping of the higher life in his own 
individuality and to a well-defined impression of this individuality re- 
fined by a godlike life, first becomes a true disciple of Christ.! 

While Basilides ascribed the mixture of the divine element with mat- 
ter to an encroachment of the kingdom of Darkness on the kingdom of 
Light, Valentine, on the other hand, attributed it to a disturbance 
originating in the Pleroma, and a consequent sinking down of the di- 
vine germ of life from the Pleroma into matter. Like Basilides, he ac- 
knowledged the manifestation of a divine wisdom in the world; but here 
also the lower is only a symbol of the higher. It is not the divine wis- 
dom itself which is the soul of this world; not the Aion σοφία, but its 
immature birth, which, before it can reach its maturity, needs to pass 
through a gradual development. The idea which hes at bottom here is, 
that in the world we are presented with a revelation of divme wisdom 
going on to unfold itself; that through the appearance of Christ and 
through the redemption, this manifestation first attains to its end ; that, 
contemplated in this connection, the world presents the image of the 
divine wisdom in its process of development. Accordingly that Aton, 
the Heavenly Wisdom, yejoices, — when everything has been made 
clear by the appearance of Christ, — to find that it has recovered its 
lost idea (é¥iunoe) —since now the manifestation corresponds to 
the idea, and the latter presents itself in the former to immediate 
vision. A symbol of this was, in his opinion, the woman who lighted 
a candle to seek after the lost piece of silver, and finally after the house 
had been swept, rejoices to find it. Luke 15: 8. 

Accordingly he distinguishes an ἄνω and a κάτω σοφία, ---- the Acha- 
moth.? This latter is the mundane soul, from whose mixture with the 
ὕλη springs all living existence, in numberless gradations; higher in 
proportion to its freedom from contact with the ὕλη, lower in proportion 
as it is drawn downward and affected by matter. Hence arise the three 
ranks or orders of existence. 1. The divine germs of life, superior by 
their nature to matter, and akin to the σοφία, to the mundane soul, and 
to the Pleroma,— the spiritual natures, φύσεις πνευματικαί, 2. The 
natures originating in the life that has been divided by the mixture of 
the ὕλη, the psychical natures, φύσεις ψυχικαί ; with which begins an 
altogether new order of existence, an image of that higher mundane 
system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, ὃ. The ungodlike nature, 
which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy — 


1 Tren. lib. I. ο. 3, § 5. 2 FIN. 


VALENTINE. 421 


the nature of blind appetency and passion. Betwixt all those natures 
sprung from the evolution of the divine life, (which flows out from the 
Bythos through the mediation of the Alons,)—from the Pleroma 
down to the germs of life which have fallen into humanity, the scat- 
tered seed that is to attain to its maturity in this earthly world — there 
are only differences of degree ; but betwixt those three orders of exis- 
tence, there is an essential difference of kind. Hence each of these 
orders must have its own independent, governing principle; though 
every process of culture and development ultimately leads back to the 
Bythos, who, through the mediation of these manifold organs, corres- 
ponding to the numberless gradations of existence, influences all, and 
whose law alone is supreme. He can never himself, however, come 
into immediate contact with what is alien from his essence. Ac- 
cordingly there must appear at that subordmate stage of existence 
which intervenes between the perfect, the godlike, and the ungodlike, 
the material, a being! — as the type of the highest — who, while beliey- 
ing that he acts independently, must yet subserve those general laws, 
from which nothing can be exempted, in realizing the highest ideas to 
the bounds of matter. This being is to the physical world what the 
Bythos is to the higher ; — with this difference only, that he involunta- 
rily acts as the instrument only of the latter. This is the Demiurge 
of Valentine. Moreover, the Hyle has its representative principle, 
through which its activity is exerted; but a principle which, by its 
nature, is not formative and creative, but only destructive ; namely, 
Satan.2, 1. The nature of the πνευματικόν, the spiritual order, is to be 
essentially in relationship with God (the ὁμοούσιον τῷ ϑεῷ :) hence the 
life of unity, the undivided, absolutely simple (οὐσία ἑνική, μονοειδής.) 
2. The essence of the ψυχικοί is separation, division into multiplicity, 
manifoldness ; but which subordinates itself to a higher unity, whence 
it admits of being derived, first unconsciously, then consciously. 3. 
The essence of Satan and of his whole kingdom is the direct opposite 
to all unity ; separation and disunion in itself, without the least recipi- 
ency, without any point of coalescence whatever, for a unity; with the 
striving to dissipate all unity, to extend its own inherent disunion to 
everything, and to rend everything asunder.’ This principle has no 
power to fix, to assert anything, but only the power to deny; it is un- 
able to create, to produce, to form, but only to destroy, to decompose.* 
The first of these grades constitutes, by its nature, imperishable life, 
the essential ἀφϑαρσία ; the ψυχικόν, on the other hand, stands mid- 
way betwixt the imperishable and the perishable, — the soul of nature 
being mortal, and capable of being made immortal only through a 
higher informing power. The ψυχικοί attain to immortality, or they 
fall a natural prey to death, according as they yield themselves by the 


1 The μεσότης. 4 Thus defined by Heracleon, who says: 
2 As Heracleon defines him: μέρος fv Οὐ γεννᾷ τοιαῦτά τινα τῇ ἑαυτῶν φύσει, 
ὅλης τῆς ὕλης. Vid. Orig. in Joann. T. φϑοροποιὰ γὰρ καὶ ἀναλίσκοντα τοὺς ἐμβλη- 
XIII. § 16. ϑέντας εἰς αὐτά. Orig. in Joann. T. XX. 
8 The οὐσία πολυσχιδῆς, that seeks to as- ὁ 20. 
similate every thing to itself. 
VOL. I. 36 


422 VALENTINE. 


bent of their will to the godlike or to the ungodlike. The essential 
being of Satan, as of the ὕλη, is death itself, annihilation, the negation 
of all existence, — which in the end, when every existence that has 
been rent by it shall have developed itself to a mature individuality and 
become sufficiently established in itself, will be vanquished by the 
force of the Positive, and having attracted within its sphere all kin- 
dred ungodlike natures, resolve itself into its own nothingness. 1. The 
essential being of the first is the evolution of pure life from within out- 
ward; an activity, not of one thmg outwardly on another, but one 
which has no obstacles to overcome; a life and agency exalted above the 
antithesis of rest and motion. 2. The essential being of the ὕλη 15, in 
itself considered, the rest of death; but a spark of life having fallen 
into it, and communicated to it a certain analogon of life, it became a 
wild, selfcontradictory impulse, as it is exhibited in Satan, its represen- 
tative, to whom was attributed, and as well to all men akin to him by 
their nature, no rational consciousness, no self-determining will, but 
only a blind, wild impulsive nature, only desire and passion. When 
he looked at the crimes committed among men, which filled him with 
abhorrence, this was the only explanation which could present itself to 
aman like Valentine.2 3. Peculiar to the Demiurge and his subjects 
the Psychici, is the propensity to create, to produce without them- 
selves — a busy activity. They would always be doimg, without really 
understanding, as is common with such busy natures, what they are 
about,? without being really conscious to themselves of the ideas that 
govern them. 

The doctrine of redemption occupied a place no less important in the 
Valentinian than in the Basilidean system, forming properly its central 
point; as might be gathered from what has already been said concern- 
ing the relation of the notions of creation and of redemption in this 
scheme. It was yet more the aim and effort of this system to com- 
prehend the doctrine of redemption in the connection of the universal 
process of development ;— as to go back to the first germ of dishar- 
mony in the universe, so also to point out the necessity of a redemp- 
tion in its primal ground. It must be allowed, this was so done, that 
the speculative interest was continually flying more and more beyond 
the practical. As a process of unfolding life pervades every region of 
existence, and as the disharmony, which, in its germ, began in the Ple- 
roma itself, extended itself from thence still more widely ; ; so the whole 
mundane course can only then attain to its end, when harmony has been 
restored, as in the Pleroma, so through all the grades of existence. 
What takes place in the Pleroma, must be imaged forth in all the other 
gradations of being. Inasmuch, then, as the work of redemption 
takes place in different gradations of existence, and the same law is 


1 Heracleon says: Τὸν διάβολον μὴ ἔχειν f. 762. Consult, however, on this tract, the 
ϑέλημα, re ἐπιϑυμίαν. Orig. in Joann. investigations in my “ Genetic development 

. XX. of the Gnostic systems,” p. 205. 

2 Wien Se remarkable manner in which 8 Φύσις πολύεργος, πολυπράγμων. 

a Valentinian expresses himself on this 4 For evidence, see Heracleon, Orig. in 
bee in the dialogue on Free Will, ascribed Joann. T. XIII. c. 16, 25, 30, 51, 59; T. 
to Methodius. Galland. Bibl. patr. T. UI. XX. ο. 20, 


VALENTINE. 428 
here carried out in different forms at different positions, so accordingly 
it is the same agent of the manifestation of the hidden God, the same 
agent through whom the life that flowed out from God is again reunited 
with him, who, working progressively onward to the consummation of 
all things, presents himself under different hypostases, according as he 
accomplishes his work at different stages of existence. Thus it is the 
same idea, which is represented in a Monogenes, a Logos, a Christ, a 
Soter. The Soter is the Redeemer of the entire world without the 
Pleroma; and hence also its former; where we must take into view 
what has been said already respecting the two-fold activity of the 
Horus. By the process of forming, the higher element is, in the first 
‘place, freed from its adherent matter, evolved from an unorganized, 
formless existence to a determinate one, with its proper organic form. 
By the redemption, the higher individuality first attains to mature, full 
development, and to clear self-consciousness. Redemption completes 
the process of formation. All the divine life of the Pleroma concen- 
trates and reflects itself in the Soter, and through him works farther 
onward to individual shaping, to the sowing of the spiritual natures, 
affining to the Pleroma, in the world, and their maturation to perfected 
existence. The Christ of the Pleroma!? is the working, the Soter with- 
out the Pleroma, the recipient, forming, perfecting principle.” 

The Soter first proves his redeeming, formative power on that yet 
immature mundane soul, originating in the Pleroma ; — the same power 
which was afterwards to be extended to the kindred, spiritual natures 
that sprang out from her, the common mother of the spiritual life in 
the lower world, (see above.) The Soter is properly the former and 
ruler of the world, as he is its redeemer; for the formation of the 
world is in truth the first beginning of the process of development, 
which can be brought to its full completion only through the redemp- 
tion. The Soter, as the inward, actuating principle, inspires in the 
mundane soul, destined to reunion (syzygia) with him,’ the plastic 
ideas ; and she communicates them to the Demiurge, who conceives 
that he acts independently. The latter is, without knowing it, actuated 
and impelled by the might of these ideas in forming the world. Thus 
the world is a picture of the divine glory, designed by the Sophia or 
the Soter, as the artists, but in the execution of which the Demiurge 
is employed only as an instrument. Since every picture, however, is, 
from its nature, but an imperfect representation of the prototype, and 
can be really understood only by him who has the intuition of the lat- 
ter, so the Demiurge with his creation is but an imperfect representa- 


1 Τὴ the τόπος μεσότητος. 

3 50 says Heracleon of the Soter in his 
relation to Christ. The former, he observes, 
receives the divine seed, yet undeveloped, 
out of the Pleroma from the latter; and 
gives it the first shaping towards determin- 
ate, individual existence, τὴν πρώτην pop- 
φωσιν, τὴν κατὰ γένεσιν, εὶς μορφὴν καὶ 
φωτισμὸν καὶ περιγραφὴν ἀγαγὼν καὶ ἀνα- 
δείξας. Orig. in Joann. T. Π. ς. 15. To 
bring to light, to shape, to individualize, 


are, with the Gnostics, equivalent notions. 
The undetermined, unorganized, answers 
in the spiritual province to the ὕλη. Ac- 
cordingly, in the Valentinian fragments, in 
Ireneus, lib. I. c. 8, ὁ 4,—to the προβάλ- 
Aew σπερματικῶς τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν» is Op- 
posed the μορφοῦν, φωτίζειν, φανεροῦν. 
Christ scatters the seed, the Soter gathers 
the harvest. Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. p. 48. 
8 Κάτω σοφία, Achamoth. 


424 VALENTINE. 


tion of the divine glory; and he only, who has caught a glimpse of the 
revelation of the invisible divine essence within himself, can rightly 
understand the world as a symbol or picture, and the Demiurge as a 
prophet of the Supreme God. ‘The inner revelation of God, which is 
the portion of the πνευματικοί, is a confirmation of the outward, a cre- 
dential for the Demiurge, as God’s representative. Valentine himself 
expresses the matter thus:! ‘As the picture falls below the living coun- 
tenance, so does the world fall below the livmg God. Now what is the 
cause of the picture? The majesty of the countenance, which fur- 
nished the painter with his type, in order that it might be glorified by 
the revelation of its name; for no picture has been invented as a self- 
subsistent thing, (every picture necessarily refers back» to an original 
type.) But as the name of that which is represented supplies the defi- 
ciencies of the picture, so the invzsible idea of God (his invisible 
essence as it reveals itself in the spirit which 15 related to God) con- 
tributes to the verification of the copy.” 

Man is the being through whom the name of God was to be revealed 
in this world; the being who, through the invisible revelation of God in 
himself, was to mediate the connection betwixt the copy and the proto- 
type; accordingly, to supply what was lacking to the world in itself | 
towards a complete revelation of the Divine Bemg. That man occu- 
pies this important position in creation, belongs among the fundamental 
ideas of the Valentinian system. Humanity and the revelation of God 
are conceptions which here stand in intimate connection with each 
other. Hence the primal man makes his appearance as one of the 
Afons; and in another Valentinian representation it is expressed 
thus: ‘‘ When God willed to reveal himself, this was called man.” 3 
But in respect to this point also, we must distinguish what the Demi- 
urge intended, and what he was necessitated to do, in an unconscious 
manner, as the instrument of the higher order of the world. He com- 
bined with his angels in a higher ethereal region, paradise, the third or 
fourth heaven,’ to create man as their common image. ‘This being, as 
lord of the world, was to represent the Demiurge in it. But here also 
the latter acted as the instrument of a higher order of the world, 
according to the ideas inspired in him by the Soter and the Sophia. 


neuter = πλάσμα). It may be, that Valen- 
tine here conceived the Demiurge and the 


1 Strom. 1. IV. f. 509: Ὁπόσον ἐλάττων 7 
εἰκὼν τοῦ ζῶντος προσώπου, τοσοῦτον ἥσσων 


ὁ κόσμος τοῦ ζῶντος αἰῶνος, (which name, 
according to what we have already observed, 
is a distinctive appellation of the Supreme 
God himself.) Τίς οὖν αἰτία τῆς εἰκόνος ; 
Μεγαλωσύνη τοῦ προσώπου, παρεσχημένου 
τῷ ζωγράφῳ τὸν τῦπον, ἵνα τιμηϑῇ di ὀνό- 
ματος αὐτοῦ, (I understand this as referring 
to his own name, which was to be revealed 
by the creation,) οὐ γὰρ αὐϑεντικῶς εὐρέϑη 
μορφή: ἀλλὰ τὸ ὄνομα, (the name as it re- 
veals itself immediately in the higher self- 
consciousness, or in the spiritual natures) 
ἐπλήρωσε τὸ ὑστέρημα ἐν πλάσει" συνέργει 
δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ ϑεοῦ ἀόρατον εἰς πίστιν τοῦ 
πεπλασμένου. (This is without doubt the 


world formed by him, as constituting one 
image of the Supreme God, analogous to 
the ϑεὸς γενητός of Plato, in the same way 
as Philo, in many places, unites together 
the Logos and the world animated by him. 
Yet this does not necessarily appear from 
his language in this instance. 

2 Ὅτε ἠϑέλησεν ἐπιδεῖξαι αὑτὸν, τοῦτο 
ἄνϑρωπος ἐλέχϑε. Tren. lib. I. ο. 12, § 8, 

8 See those Gnostic excerpta of the Di- 
dascal. Anatol. or Θεοδότου ἐπιτομαΐ, opp. 
Clement. f. 797, B.: "νϑρωπος ἐν τῷ πα- 
padeiow τῷ τετάρτῳ οὐρανῳ δημιουργεῖται, 
and Iren. lib. 1. c. 5, § 2. 


VALENTINE. 425 
Unknown to himself, some of the seed of the divine life was communi- 
cated to him from the Pleroma, and this passed over from him into 
man.! Thus was revealed in the appearance of man, that prototype of 
the heavenly man from the Pleroma; and the being who was to repre- 
sent only the crowning point of the cosmical principle, exhibited in his 
appearance tokens of something far higher. The Demiurge and his 
angels were seized with amazement, when they beheld a strange and 
higher power enter their kingdom ; for they had not as yet attained to 
the conscious recognition of that higher order of the world, and to a 
free obedience of it. This could be brought about only by the redemp- 
tion. Thus they were astounded at their own work, which threatened 
to exalt itself above themselves. As Valentine beheld the same law 
pervading every grade of existence, so he supposed he found this fact 
recurring in every case, where men, animated by the inspiration of 
lofty ideas, while endeavoring to represent them in their works, pro- 
duce effects not anticipated by themselves and are astonished at their 
own productions; like the artist, who, having formed the image of a 
god, afterwards falls down and worships it. Valentine thus expresses 
himself on this point: ‘“ Just as fear seized the angels in the presence 
of that form, when it expressed something greater than was to be ex- 
pected from such a creation, because a seed of the higher essence had 
been invisibly imparted to it, so also among the generations of men in 
this world, their works became objects of fear to their very authors ; as 
statues, pictures and everything wrought by human hands with any sort 
of reference to the name of God; for Adam, who had been formed to 
represent the name of man, excited the fear of the primal man, as if 
the latter existed in him.”’? 

The cosmical principle must, then, endeavor to assert itself, in its 
selfsubsistence and dominion, against the danger with which man, 
bearing witness of the supramundane essence, threatened it. The Demi- 
urge and his powers combine to hold man in subjection, to suppress in 
him the consciousness of his higher nature. They plunge him from the 
psychical region of the third heaven into the world won from the Hyle 
and built on its verge, and they environ his psychical nature with a 
body formed out of matter. But that this should so happen, did not 
proceed from the arbitrary will of the Demiurge. In this also he must 
act as the instrument of that higher wisdom; in carrying out his own 


1Ἔσχεν ὁ ᾿Αδὰμ, ἀδήλως αὐτῷ, ὑπὸ τῆς 
σοφίας ἐνσπαρὲν, τὸ σπέρμα τὸ πνευματικόν. 
Didascal. Anatol. f. 797. 

2 Καὶ ὥσπερ φόβος ἐπὶ ἐκείνου τοῦ πλάσ- 
ματος ὑπῆρξε τοῖς ἀγγέλοις, ὅτε μείζονα 
ἐφϑέγξατο τῆς πλάσεως, διὰ τὸν ἀόρατον ἐν 
αὐτῷ σπέρμα δεδωκότα, τὴν ἄνωϑεν οὐσίαν 
καὶ παῤῥησιαζόμενον, οὕτω, (here the apo- 
dosis begins,) καὶ ἐν ταῖς γενεαῖς τῶν κοσ- 
μικῶν ἀνϑρώπων φόβοι τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἀνϑρώ- 
Tov τοῖς ποιοῦσιν ἐγένετο, οἷον ἀνδριάντες 
καὶ εἰκόνες καὶ πάντων, (here an ἅ has 
doubtless slipped out, or tav¥ ἅ may be 
the reading.) αἱ χεῖρες ἀνύουσιν εἰς ὄνομα 
ϑεοῦ- εἰς γὰρ ὄνομα ἀνϑρώπου πλασϑεὶς 


90" 


᾿Αδὰμ φόβον παρέσχεν προόντος ἀνϑρώπου, 
ὡς δὴ αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ καϑεστῶτος. Strom. 
lib. II. f. 375. 

8 The coats of skin, the χιτῶνες δερμά- 
tivat of Genesis, which were commonly so 
understood by the Theosophists of this pe- 
riod. ‘Thus we must supply the hiatus 
which has come down to us in Valentine’s 
system, when it is said at the conclusion of 
the above-cited passage, “ The angels would 
have speedily destroyed their work ;” —or 
we must suppose that sentence was hypo- 
thetical, i. e. they would have destroyed, 
unless they had been prevented in an invis- 
ible manner by a higher power. 


426 VALENTINE. 


will, he must subserve the end of a higher will; the principle of divine 
life was to penetrate through all the grades of existence, extend itself 
even to the bounds of the Hyle, enter into the realms of death itself, in 
order to bring about its destruction. But this was the only way in 
which it could be done. 

That which is to represent humanity at large, becomes actually real- 
ized, then, by those only who bear within them that higher germ of 
divine life springing from what had been invisibly communicated to 
the Demiurge (the higher spiritual natures.) They are the salt and 
light of the earth, the leaven for entire humanity. The soul (ψυχῆ) 
is but the vehicle of the πνευματικόν, to enable the latter to enter 
into the temporal world, in which it must unfold itself to maturity. 
When this end is attained, the spirit, which is destined only for the hfe 
of intuition, will leave behind this vehicle in the lower sphere; and 
every spiritual nature, as the recipient, feminme element in relation to 
the higher spiritual world, will be exalted to intimate union (Syzygia) 
with its correlative angelic nature in the Pleroma. Only the higher 
faculty of immediate intuition —this is Valentine’s meaning — will then 
be active ; all those powers and modes of operation of the soul which 
had been directed to the temporal and the finite, as the faculty of re- 
flection, of which the ψυχή is according to Valentine’s notions the com- 
prehending sum, will then, in the Pleroma, entirely fall away.! 

The attractive power exerted by the godlike on everything, even 
while those that are affected by it are unable to understand it or explain 
it to themselves —is a favorite idea of Valentine’s. The Demiurge 
is attracted by the spiritual natures scattered among the Jewish people, 
without knowing the reason of it. Hence he made of such, prophets, 
priests and kings. Hence it was, that the prophets particularly were 
able to point forward to that higher order of things, which was first to 
enter into humanity through the Soter. According to the Valentinian 
theory, there was a four-fold principle at. work in the prophets: 1. 
The psychical principle, the humanly limited, the soul left to itself; 2. 
The inspiration of this ψυχῆ, which proceeded from the Demiurge’s 
influence upon it; 3. The πνευματικόν, or spiritual element, left to it- 
self; 4. The pneumatic inspiration, which proceeded from the informing 
Sophia.2_ By this theory, and the application of these four principles, 
Valentine could distinguish in the writings of the prophets different ut- 
terances of higher and lower kind and import, and a different higher 
and lower sense of the same passages. 1. The purely human. 2. The 
tsolated prophecies of events, which the Demiurge, who, though not omnis- 
cient, yet glanced through an enlarged circle of the future, could com- 
municate, — the prediction of a Messiah, likewise proceeding from him, 
but still enveloped in the temporal, Jewish form ; the prediction of the 
Messiah, as the Demiurge meant to send him,—a psychical Messiah 
for the psychical natures, the ruler over a kingdom of this world. 8. 
The ideas touching on the Christian economy, and pointing to that, — 
the transfigured Messianic element, set forth with more or less of purity, 


1 Comp. Aristot. de anima, lib. ITI. ¢. 5. 2 Vid. Iren. lib. I. 6. 7, § 3 et 4. 


VALENTINE. 497 


according as it had proceeded barely from the higher spiritual nature, 
or from the immediate influence of the Sophia. This view might lead 
to remarkable investigations respecting the mixture of the Divine and 
the Human in the prophets, and to fruitful results connected with the 
exposition of their writings. We here observe, emerging for the first 
time, a more profound apprehension of the idea of inspiration — a striv- 
ing to bring the religious and scientific interests to harmonize with each 
other in the exposition of the Old Testament. 

The question now arises, whether Valentine acknowledged the rays 
of higher truth to exist barely among the Jews, whether he confined 
the spiritual natures to the Jews alone, or whether he admitted that 
they were diffused also among the heathens. ‘True, he held, according 
to Heracleon,! the Jews to belong to the kingdom of the Demiurge, the 
pagans, to the kingdom of matter, or of Satan, and the Christians, to 
the people of the Supreme God; but this does not prove, that he 
meant to exclude everything of a higher nature from the pagans; for 
he supposed there existed in Judaism — although he assigned it preémi- 
nently to the Demiurge — scattered examples of the higher pneumatic 
element; and although he assigned Christendom to the Supreme God, 
yet he saw even among Christians a large class of psychical natures. 
He is speaking, then, of the predominant and prevailing character 
only; and so might recognize even among the pagans, notwithstanding 
the predominantly Hylic element in paganism, a sprinkling of the Pneu- 
matic. He was indeed compelled to do so by his own principles ; since 
the higher, spiritual life (the πνευματικόν,) was to pass through eve- 
ry grade of existence to the bounds of matter, in order to prepare the 
way for the total destruction of the kingdom of the ὕλη. What Valen- 
tine says, in the passage above cited, respecting the power of art em- 
ployed in representing the images of the gods, allows us to infer, that 
he judged the polytheistic system with more lenity than the ordinary 
Jews, who looked upon the Gentile gods only as evil spirits; that, rest- 
ing on Acts 13 : 23, he believed it. possible to trace even in this system 
indications, — corrupted though they might be through the predomi- 
nance of the material principle, — of an unknown God, extending his 
uncomprehended influence over all. Accordingly, Valentine actually 
alludes, in the preserved fragment of a Homily,” to the vestiges of truth 
dispersed also in the writings of the pagans, wherein the inward nature 
of God’s spiritual people, of the πνευματικοί, scattered through the 
human race, reveals itself: “Much of that which is written in the 
books of pagans, is found written in the church of God; this common 
truth is the word out of the heart, the law written in the heart ; — it is 
the people of the beloved (i. e. this common higher consciousness is the 
sign of the Soter’s scattered community, of the πνευματικοί) who are 
loved by him and love him in return.” 

The Soter, who from the beginning has directed the whole process of 
development of the spiritual life-germs that fell from the Pleroma to 
form a new world, the invisible former and ruler of this new world, — 


1 Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. c. 16. 2 Clem. Strom. 1. VI. f. 641. 


Ὁ 


428 VALENTINE. 


he must now enter at last himself immediately into the mundane sphere, 
for the purpose of extending the act of redemption, — which he had 
originally accomplished on the mother of all spiritual life, the world-soul, 
the Sophia, — to all the spiritual life that has flowed from her, and thus 
carry the entire work to its completion. Everything, down to the Hylic 
element, struggling against all existence, was, each after its own degree, 
capable of beg ennobled. The Soter must, therefore, in order to 
place everything — as well the psychical as the spiritual natures — in 
training for that stage of the higher life of which each is capable, enter 
into union with all these gradations of existence. Besides, in following 
the course which is in harmony with nature, he could only enter into 
union with the spiritual nature, and into that only in connection with a 
soul (pvxf,) in this world of time. 

The doctrine concerning Christ must always be conditioned by the 
peculiar mode of apprehending the relation of the world to God, and 
the doctrine concerning man. In both these respects, this system sets 
clearly forth the necessity of a redemption, and that too in its true im- 
port, as a grand historical fact, the purpose of which is to restore har- 
mony between the different gradations of existence, to fill up the chasm 
which separated the world and heaven from each other, and to raise 
the Pneumatic natures, who never could have attained by themselves 
alone to the full consciousness and the full exercise of their higher na- 
ture, to fellowship with the higher world intimately related to their own 
essence. But still it was a consequence grounded in the separation 
here supposed between the kingdom of the Demiurge and that of the 
Supreme God, that all in this world could not be equally adapted for the 
benefits of redemption and equally penetrated by its principle. Certain 
antitheses were here assumed to exist in human nature itself, which ex- 
cluded the possibility of a uniform appropriation of this nature in its com- 
pleteness by the Redeemer and the redemption. In this system, the 
purely Human (the psychical nature) was too far separated from the 
properly Divine (the pneumatic nature,) the oneness of God’s image 
in man too feebly recognized, to allow of the full and adequate appre- 
hension of the historical Christ finding admission into the realization 
of the original type of Humanity. The antitheses which made their 
appearance in the cosmology and the anthropology, as originally given 
in the constitution of the world and of man, must also betray their Ὁ 
presence once more in the Christology. We cannot allow, that the 
tendency of the Valentinian system bore towards the hypothesis of a 
merely proto-typic or ideal Christ, and towards making the Christ of 
history a barely accidental point of attachment for this idea; but in 
this respect we can say nothing more, than that his principles admitted 
only of a one-sided, mutilated apprehension, as well of the proto-typic, 
as of the historical Christ. The fundamental defect is to be traced, in 
one word, to the reaction of the great principle of the ancient world in 
conceiving of the godlike, as being the super-human. Though Valentine 
could attribute to the human element in Christ a greater significancy 
than Basilides, still he could never, according to those principles, recog- 
nize in him the full significancy of the human element in connection 


+ 


VALENTINE. 429 


with the divine, never understand their true union in him, nor even al- 
low the Human itself to be altogether human, for there was still some- 
what in the human that belonged only to the kingdom of the ὕλη. 

The Demiurge had promised his people a Redeemer, a Messiah, who 

should release them from the dominion of the Hylic power, bring about 
the destruction of all that opposed itself to his own kingdom, rule in his 
name over all, and bless those that were obedient with all manner of 
earthly felicity. He sent this Messiah, who was the express image of 
the Demiurge, down from his heaven; but this exalted being could 
enter into no union with matter. Destined to bring about the annihila- 
tion of the material element, how could he indeed assume any part of 
it to himself? With the material body, he had been under the neces- 
sity of assuming also its kindred material spirit of life,|— that fountain 
of all corrupt appetites and desires; and how could he be the Re- 
deemer, if the principle of evil were present in his own nature? The 
Demiurge formed, then, for the psychical Messiah, a body composed of 
the finest ethereal elements of the heaven from which he was sent down 
into this world. This body was so wonderfully constituted,? that it 
could be visible to outward sense, and submit to all sensible actions and 
affections, and yet in a way altogether different from that of ordinary, 
earthly bodies. But the miraculous birth of Jesus consisted in this — 
that the psychical nature, descended from the heaven of the Demiurge, 
together with the ethereal body which it brought with it from the same 
region, was ushered into the light of this world through Mary, only as a 
channel of conveyance.* Yet this psychical Messiah would have been 
madequate to the task of accomplishing even the work assigned him by 
the Demiurge. It required a higher power to vanquish the kingdom of 
the ὕλη. The Demiurge acted here, as in everything else, simply in 
unconscious subordination to the Soter. The latter had decreed on the 
time when he would unite himself with this psychical Messiah as his 
instrument, with a view to accomplish the work ordained and promised 
by the Demiurge, in a far higher sense than the Demiurge himself had 
divined ; to found a kingdom of the Messiah, of a far loftier description, 
the true character of which had been only intimated in the sublimest 
descriptions of the prophets, which the Demiurge himself had been un- 
able to understand. 
The psychical Messiah, who had no presentiment of the destination 
that awaited him when united with the Soter, meanwhile displayed 
from the beginning the ideal of ascetic holiness. By virtue of the 
peculiar constitution of his body, he could exercise an extraordinary 
control over matter. He ate and drank, it is true, like others; letting 
himself down, in this respect, to human infirmity. But yet he did so 
without being subject to like affections as other men. He did every- 
thing after a godlike manner.® 

At his baptism in the Jordan, where he was to receive from John the 
Baptist, the Demiurge’s representative, his solemn consecration to the 


1 The ψυχὴ ἄλογος. 2 Ἐξ οἰκονομίας. 4 Ὡς διὰ σωλῆνος. 
ὃ Σῶμα ἐκ τῆς ἀφανοῦς ψυχικῆς οὐσίας. 5 Clem. Strom. lib. III. f. 451. 
* Theodot. Didascal. Anatol. 


430 VALENTINE. 
office of Messiah, the Soter, under whose invisible guidance everything 
had been so directed, entered into union with him, descending in the 
form of a dove. As to the question, whether the psychical Messiah 
possessed with his soul also a pneumatic element, so that the πνεῦμα 
descended at the same time with the soul as its vehicle, for the purpose 
of unfolding itself in this world, and then serving as an instrument of 
the descended Soter, or whether the Soter, on his first-entrance into 
this world, took from the Sophia a spiritual nature as his vehicle, so that 
he might be capable of uniting himself with a human nature, and thus 
the higher pneumatic principle was first communicated to the Messiah 
of the Demiurge at his baptism ; — as to this point— there might be a 
difference of opinion among the Valentinian schools themselves.! 
According to Valentine’s doctrine, as well as that of Basilides, the 
appearance of the redeeming spirit in humanity and his union with the 
psychical Messiah must constitute the principal thing in the work of 
redemption. He agreed with Basilides also in supposing that the Soter, 
at the passion, left the psychical Messiah to himself; and this passion, 
as it did not light on a material body, capable of suffering, but on a 
psychical one, could not possibly be regarded by him according to its 
full import. Yet it is certain, that, so far as it respects the mode of 
contemplating Christ’s passion, the Jewish element, in the case of the 
Valentinian Gnosis, exercised no such important influence as in the 
case of the Gnosis of Basilides; and that the Valentinians were far 
better prepared to understand the significancy of this passion for the 
Christian consciousness. A power for the overcoming of evil and for 
the purification of the nature beset with it, was ascribed to the sufferings 
of the psychical Christ. We have, in fact, already become acquainted 
with the idea of the Valentinian system, that the same law must be 


subject of discourse here is undoubtedly 
the Soter, who revealed himself to John at 
the baptism ; and this Soter, at all events, 


1 The latter seems to be the view ex- 
pressed in a passage of Heracleon, Orig. 
T. VI. § 23. Grabe Spiceleg. T. II. p. 89, 


in which passage I once supposed, (see my 
Genetische Entwickelung, p. 149,) though 
erroneously, I had found the doctrine of a 
proper incarnation of the Soter, and of his 
union with the human nature from its first 
development. Heracleon —on John 1: 27 
— correctly explains the sense of the pas- 
sage in the first place, after his usual man- 
ner; namely, that “John acknowledged 
himself unworthy to perform even the 
meanest service for the Redeemer,” — and 
then proceeds arbitrarily to imply, in these 
simple words, a higher sense, in accordance 
with his own theosophic ideas: Οὐκ ἐγώ 
εἶμι ἱκανὸς, ἵνα δὶ ἐμὲ κατέλϑῃ ἀπὸ μεγέ- 
ϑους καὶ σάρκα λάβῃ, ὡς ὑπόδημα, περὶ ἧς 
ἐγὼ λόγον ἀποδοῦναι οὐ δύναμαι, οὐδὲ διη- 
γήσασϑαι ἢ ἐπιλῦσαι τὴν περὶ αὐτῆς οἰκο- 
νομίαν. We can hardly understand by “ the 
flesh” here, which the Soter took on him 
when he descended from the higher region 
bordering on the πλήρωμα and the τόπος 
μεσότητος, the body of the psychical Mes- 
siah, formed by a special οἰκονομία ; for the 


united himself, according to the Valentinian 
theory, not with the body, but with the psy- 
chical Messiah, who was clothed with this 
body. Consequently John, here represent- 
ing the person of the Demiurge, could not 
have thus expressed his wonder at this 
wonderful body, which had been formed by 
the Demiurge himself. But the Valentini- 
ans were used to denominate every outward 
envelop, every vehicle of a superior being that 
descended to a lower region of existence, 
a oapf. The Sophia gave the Soter a 
σπέρμα πνευματικόν, that so with this ve- 
hicle he might descend to the earth, and, 
through its medium, enter into union with 
the ψυχῆ. We have the evidence of this 
in the commencing words of the Didascal. 
Anatol., which are as follows: Ὃ προέβα- 
λὲν σαρκίον τῷ λόγῳ, (equivalent to the 
Soter,) 7 σοφία τὸ πνευματικὸν σπέρμα, 
τοῦτο στολισάμενος κατῆλϑεν ὁ σωτήρ. It 
was of this wonderful economy, then, that 
Heracleon was speaking. 


VALENTINE. 431 
carried into effect at the different stages of existence, in order to the 
restoration of the harmony of the universe. ‘The cross, as we have 
already observed, was considered in this system a symbol of the might 
that purifies a nature from foreign elements, and leads it as well to self 
confinement within the limits of its own proper nature, as to fixedness 
and constancy there. Now the crucifixion of Christ represented the 
activity of this power in this lower world. The manner in which the 
psychical Messiah was stretched on the cross, and with this, over the 
lower creation — exhibited himself sharing in the sufferings of humanity 
— is asymbol of that first redeeming act, where the Soter received the 
suffering Sophia, stretched over her the Stauros, purified her from 
every foreign element, and conducted back her dissipating existence 
within its proper confines. A similar operation is now imaged forth by 
this act of the psychical Christ, where that which had been already ac- 
complished in the highest region, is brought about in the psychical 
world. Even considered by itself alone, this representation cannot be 
an idle, fruitless, barely symbolical thing, but there must be connected 
with it the like influence, only after a manner corresponding to this 
particular stage of existence. Hence Heracleon could say, that by the 
cross of Christ all evil was consumed,! and that his passion was neces- 
sary in order that the church, cleansed from the influence of the mate- 
rial spirits, may be converted into a house of God.? Accordingly he 
spoke of a spiritual appropriation of Christ’s sufferings, through which 
the participation in the kingdom of the Divine life, in the marriage sup- 
per of the church, is mediated.2 By the words, “Father, into thy 
hands I commit my spirit,’”’ the psychical Christ commended to the care 
of the Heavenly Father the πνευματικὸν σπέρμα, which was now for- 
saking him, that it might not be kept back in the kingdom of the Dem+ 
urge, but rise free to the upper region; commending to him also by 
the same act all spiritual natures, who were represented by the one 
united with himself. The psychical Messiah rises to the Demiurge, 
who transfers to him the sovereign power and government, to be admin- 
istered in his name; and the pneumatic Messiah to the Soter, whither 
all the redeemed spiritual natures will follow him. 

The point of chief importance, the main thing in the redemptive 
work, so far as it concerns spiritual natures, is the redemption of which 
man’s nature was made to participate by its union with the Soter at 
the baptism in Jordan. This must be repeated in the case of each in- 
dividual. Of the sanctifying effects flowing from inward communion 
with the Redeemer, Valentine speaks as follows: ‘‘ There is one good 
Being, whose free manifestation is his revelation by the Son; and 
through him alone could the heart be made pure, after every malign 


1᾽Ανηλῶσϑαι καὶ ἠφανίσϑαι τοὺς κυβευ- 
τὰς, ἐμπόρους, (allusion to the narrative of 
Christ’s expelling the changers from the 
temple, and without doubt meaning here the 
demons, or effluxes from matter, whereby 
’s temple in humanity became defiled, ) 
kal πᾶσαν τὴν κακίαν. Orig. in Joann. T. 
X. ς. 19. 


2 “Ἵνα τὴν ἐκκλησίαν κατασκευάσῃ, οὐκέτι 
ληστῶν καὶ ἐμπόρων σπήλαιον, ἀλλὰ οἶκον 
τοῦ πατρὸς αὑτοῦ. L.c. 

8 From the typical meaning of the pas- 
chal supper. Avoyevov μὲν τὸ πάϑος τοῦ 
Σωτῆρος τὸ ἐν κόσμῳ ἐσήμαινεν, ἐσϑιόμε- 
νον δὲ τὴν ἀνάπαυσιν τὴν ἐν γάμῳ. 1, 6. 
§ 14. 


432 VALENTINE. 


spirit had been ejected; for many are the spirits that take up their 
abode in the heart, and allow it not to be pure. Hach of these is busily 
employed in his own work, while they, all in various ways, shamefully 
defile it. And it seems to me to fare with such a heart much as with 
an inn; for the inn is worn and trodden to pieces, often filled with dirt, 
being the haunt of riotous, licentious men, who have no interest in the 
place, since itis none of their own. So is it with the heart ; — until it 
receives the heavenly grace, it remains unclean, being the abode of 
many evil spirits. But when he who only is good, when the Father 
adopts it as his, it becomes holy and resplendent with light; and ac- 
cordingly he who possesses such a heart is pronounced blessed, for he 
shall see God.” } 

The Valentinians were penetrated with the consciousness that Chris- 
tianity even here on the earth imparts a divine life, and in this life, the 
fellowship with heaven. This consciousness is thus expressed in the 
Valentinian form of intuition: ‘ Every pneumatic soul having its other 
half in the upper world of spirits (namely, its attendant angel,) with 
which it is destined to be united, it receives power through the Soter 
to enter into this union (Syzygy) spiritually even in the present life.”’ 2 

But it is quite evident of itself, that the Valentinians must have dis- 
tinguished the effects of baptism and of the redemption, in their rela- 
tion to the two positions of the Pneumatici and the Psychici. The 
psychical man obtains forgiveness of his sins, is released from the do- 
minion of the hylic principle, and receives power to withstand it. The 
pneumatical man is, through communion with the Soter, incorporated 
into the Pleroma, attains to a full consciousness of his nature affining to 
the latter and exalted above the kingdom of the Demiurge, and is em- 
powered to develope it free from the restraints by which it was before 
shackled. He is released from the cramping power of the Demiurge. 

The two classes differ from one another, in their way not only of ar- 
riving at Christianity, but also of appropriating and apprehending it. 
The psychical men must be led to the faith by causes out of themselves, 
by facts of the sensible world, by miracles : ---- 80 the stage of progress 
which they never go beyond, is that of faith on grounds of historical 
authority. They are not capable of the intuition of the truth itself. 
It is to such Christ speaks in John 4: 48. In the case of spiritual 
men, on the other hand, faith does not arise out of the things of sense ; 
they are seized immediately, in virtue of their godlike nature, by the 
intrinsic might of the truth itself, feel themselves immediately drawn 
away to that which is in affinity with their essential being;* and in 
virtue of this spiritual contact with the truth, their faith is superior to 
all doubt. Their worship, grounded in the knowledge of the truth, is 
the true, ‘‘ reasonable service of God.” 


1 Strom. lib. IT. f. 409. σεως πείϑεσϑαι, καὶ οὐχὶ λόγῳ πιστεύειν. 
2 Heracleon, in Origin, T. XIII. § 11: Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. § 59. 

Κομίζεσϑαι rap’ αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν 4 Heracleon, in Orig. 1. ¢. ο. 20, the δεκτι- 

ἕνωσιν καὶ τὴν ἀνάκρασιν πρὸς TO TAH- κῆῦἢ ζωῆς διάϑεσις. 

ρωμα αὐτῆς. 5H ἀδιάκριτος καὶ κατάλληλος τῇ φύσει 
ὃ Ai ἔργων φύσιν ἔχοντες καὶ δὶ αἰσϑῆ- αὐτῆς πίστις. 1). ο. § 10. 


VALENTINE. 433 

The origin of the Christian life being thus different, the position in 
that life is different also. Here arises the distinction of a psychical and 
a pneumatical Christianity. By those of the one class, only the psychi- 
cal Christ is recognized ; those of the other rise to the divine Soter in 
him. In the one position, men rest satisfied with historical Christian- 
ity; in the other, they grasp it in its connection and coherence with 
the whole theogonic and cosmogonic process. While Christ is acknowl- 
edged by those that belong to the first class, only in consideration of 
the extraordinary works by which he was accredited as a divine 
teacher, and what he revealed is received on his authority; by those 
of the second, on the other hand, the necessity of the facts of Chris- 
tianity, —the necessity grounded in that process, —is understood ; 
and on that very basis reposes a conviction raised above all doubt. To 
the psychical class, Paul says that for them he knew nothing, and could 
preach nothing, save Christ crucified ;1 that he could not announce 
to them that wisdom of the perfect, which is hidden even from the De 
miurge and his angels. In accordance with these different positions, 
Christ is presented in different ways to the Christian consciousness ; — 
as indeed the angels themselves, on account of their different natures, 
do not all behold alike the countenance of the Father. The recogni- 
tion of a necessary difference in the mode of contemplating Christ’s 
person and work, grounded in these different stages of religious devel- 
opment, is a truth lying at the root of these Valentinian doctrines. 

Those spiritual men are the salt, the soul of the outward church — 
those by whom Christianity is propagated as the forming principle of 
humanity. By them is the way prepared for the transfiguration of 
the entire earthly world, and for the final destruction of everything 
material and evil ;— an event that shall ensue, when matter shall have 
been deprived of all those germs of life it had seized on, and these, 
purified of their dross, shall have attained to the development corres- 
ponding to their essential being. So was it necessary that the divine 
life should be merged in the world of death, in order that that world 
might be overcome. Valentine addresses these spiritual men as fol- 
lows: ‘‘ Ye are, from the beginning, immortal and children of eternal 
hfe ; and ye were willing to apportion death among you, that you might 
swallow up and destroy it, and that in you and through you death might 
die. For if ye dissolve the world (prepare the way for the dissolution 
of the material world,) but are not yourselves dissolved, ye are masters 
and lords over the creation, and over all that is perishable.”’ 4 

Though the Christian principle appears, in this Valentinian tendency, 
vitiated by a certain theosophic pride, and an element of Oriental 


1 Didascal. Anatol. concerning a two-fold 
mode of preaching by the apostle Paul. In 
reference to the psychical men: ’Exjpvée 
τὸν σωτῆρα γενητὸν καὶ παϑητόν. 

21,. ο.: Ἰδίως ἕκαστος γνωρίζει τὸν κύρι- 
ον, καὶ οὐχ’ ὁμοίως πάντες τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ 
πατρὸς ὁρῶσιν οἱ ἄγγελοι. 

8 See the proof directly, where we speak 
of Heracleon. 

37 


VOL. 1. 


4°An’ ἀρχῆς ἀϑάνατοί tore καὶ τέκνα 
ζωῆς αἰωνίας: καὶ τὸν ϑάνατον ἠϑέλετε 
μερίσασϑαι εἰς ἑαυτοὺς, ἵνα δαπανήσητε 
αὐτὸν καὶ ἀναλώσητε, καὶ ἀποϑανῇ ὁ ϑάνα- 
τος ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ δὶ ὑμῶν. “Ὅταν γὰρ τὸν 
μὲν κόσμον λύητε, ὑμεῖς δὲ μὴ καταλύησϑε, 
κυριεύετε τῆς κτίσεως καὶ τῆς φϑορᾶς ἅπά- 


ong. Strom. 1. 1V. f. 509, B. 


434 THE VALENTINIAN SCHOOL. 


austerity, yet there gleams through these words a consciousness of 
what Christ intended, when he called the bearers of his word and spirit 
the salt of the earth, — of the high calling and place in the world of 
those who truly displayed the image of Christ, and in whom the idea 
of Christianity was realized ; who were to be scattered abroad in the 
midst of an impure world, and connected with it by numberless grada- 
tions, in order to prepare the way for its gradual purification. 

When now the end for which these spiritual men prepared the way 
should be attamed, the Soter, after the dissolution of the whole material 
world, should be united in one “ syzygia” with the Sophia, the ma- 
tured spiritual natures, paired with their respective angels, should un- 
der himh enter into the Pleroma, and the psychical minds oceupy under 
the Demiurge the last grade of the spiritual world ;!—for they too 
should receive the measure of felicity answering to their peculiar na- 
ture. The Demiurge rejoices at the appearance of the Soter, through 
whom a higher world, to which he was before a stranger, has been re- 
vealed to him; and through whom also, relieved from his toilsome 
labors, he is enabled to enter into rest and enjoy an echo of the glory 
of the Pleroma. He is the friend of the bridegroom (the Soter,) who 
standeth and heareth him, and rejoiceth greatly because of the bride- 
groom’s voice —rejoiceth at the consummation of the espousals.? 
John the Baptist spake these words (John 3: 29,) as a representative 
of the Demiurge. 

DISTINGUISHED MEN BELONGING TO THE SCHOOL OF VALENTINE. — 
Among the men of Valentine’s school, Heracleon was distinguished 
for his cool, scientific, reflective bent of mind. He wrote a commen- 
tary on the Gospel of St. John, considerable fragments of which have 
been preserved by Origen ;? perhaps also, a commentary on the Gospel 
according to Luke. Of the latter, a smgle fragment only, the exposi- 
tion of Luke 12: 8, has been preserved by Clement of Alexandria.* 
It may easily be conceived, that the spiritual depth and fulness of John 
must have been preéminently attractive to the Gnostics. ΤῸ the expo- 
sition of this gospel Heracleon brought a profound, religious: sense, 
which penetrated to the inward meaning, together with an understand- 
ing invariably clear when not led astray by theosophic speculation. 
But what he chiefly lacked was a faculty to appreciate the simphcity 
of John, and earnest application to those necessary means for evolving 
the spirit out of the letter, the deficiency in which among the Gnostics 
generally has been already made a subject of remark. Heracleon hon- 
estly intended, indeed, so far as we can see, to derive his theology from 
John. But he was entirely warped by his system; and with all his 
habits of thought and contemplation, so entangled in its mesh-work, 
that he could not move out of it with freedom, but spite of himself, 
implied its views and its ideas in the Scriptures, which he regarded as 
the fountain of divine wisdom. 


1 The τόπος μεσότητος. 3 In his Tomis on John, in which he fre- 
2'The union of the Soter with the So- quently has reference to the expositions of 
phia, of the angels with the spiritual na- Heracleon. 
tures in the Pleroma. 4 Strom. 1. IV. f. 503. 


HERACLEON. 435 


In proof of what has been said, we will consider Heracleon’s inter- 
pretation of that noble passage containing our Saviour’s conversation 
with the woman of Samaria. With the simple facts of the history, 
Heracleon could not rest content ; nor was he satisfied with a calm psy- 
chological contemplation of the Samaritan woman in her relation to the 
Saviour. His imagination immediately traced in the woman who was 
so attracted by the words and appearance of Christ, the type of all 
spiritual natures, that are attracted by the godlike; and hence this 
history must represent the entire relation of the πνευματικοί to the 
Soter, and to the higher, spiritual world. Hence the words of the 
Samaritan woman must have a double sense, —that of which she 
was herself conscious, and that which she expressed unconsciously, 
as representing the whole class of the πνευματικοί ; and hence also the 
words of the Saviour must be taken in a two-fold sense, a higher and a 
lower. True, he did not fail to understand the fundamental idea con- 
tained in the Saviour’s language ; but he allowed himself to be drawn 
away from the principal point, by looking after too much in the several 
accompanying circumstances. ‘‘ The water which our Saviour gives,” 
says he, “is from his Spirit and his power. His grace and his gifts 
are something that never can be taken away, never can be exhausted, 
never can pass from those who have any portion in them. They that 
have received what is richly bestowed on them from above, communicate 
of the overflowing fulness which they enjoy, to the everlasting life of 
others also.”” But then he wrongly concludes, that because Christ in- 
tended the water which he would give to be understood in a symboli- 
cal sense, so too the water of Jacob’s well must be understood in the 
same symbolical sense. It was a symbol of Judaism, inadequate to the 
wants of the spiritual nature—an image of its perishable, earthly 
glory. The words of the woman, — “ Give me this water, that I thirst 
not, neither come hither to draw,’’ — express the burthensome charac- 
ter of Judaism, the difficulty of finding in it anything wherewith to 
nourish the spiritual life, and the inadequacy of that nourishment 
when found.t When our Lord afterwards bade the woman call her 
husband, he meant by this her other half in the spiritual world, the 
angel belonging to her ; 3 — that with him coming to the Saviour, she 
might from the latter receive power to become united and blended with 
this her destined companion. And the reason for this arbitrary inter- 
pretation is, that ‘‘ Christ could not have spoken of her earthly husband, 
since he was aware, that she had no lawful one. In the spiritual sense,? 
the woman knew not her husband *—she knew nothing of the angel 
belonging to her; in the literal sense, she was ashamed to confess that 
she was living in an unlawful connection.”” The water being the sym- 
bol of the divine life communicated by the Saviour, Heracleon went on 
to infer that the water-pot was the symbol of a recipient spirit for this 
divine life on the part of the woman. She left her water-pot behind 
with him ; that is, haying now a vessel of this kind with the Saviour, 


1 Τὸ ἐπίμοχϑον καὶ δυσπόριστον καὶ ἄτρο- ὃ Κατὰ τὸ νοούμενον. 
φον ἐκείνου τοῦ ὕδατος. 4 Κατὰ τὸ ἁπλοῦν. 


2 Τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτῆς. See above. 


436 HERACLEON. 
in which to receive the living water she came for, she returned into 
the world to announce that Christ was come to the psychical natures.1 
In many of his interpretations, in which he distinguishes himself by 
his healthy feeling for the simple and for the depth in the simplicity, 
he is too simple for the artificial taste of Origen, who finds fault with 
him for adhering to the letter, and not penetrating more deeply into the 
spiritual sense.* Explaining the words of Christ in John 4: 84, he 
says: ‘The Lord here calls it his meat to do the will of his Father; for 
this was to him his nourishment, his rest and his power. But by his 
Father’s will he meant, that men should come to the knowledge of his 
Father and be blessed. And accordingly, this discourse with the Samar- 
itan woman belonged to the meat of the Son.”? On John 4: 86, he 
says: ““ Christ speaks here of the sensible harvest, which was yet four 
months distant; while on the other hand, the harvest of which he dis- 
courses was already present in reference to the souls of the faithful.’ 4 
As the Gnostics took ground against the Jewish element in the doc- 
trines of faith and morals, they uniformly set up the principle that 
everything spiritual must proceed from the inner life and temper, in 
opposition to the tendency which severed good works from this connec- 
tion, and attributed value to them separately. It was such a reaction 
of the Christian spirit among the Gnostics that declared itself against 
the exaggerated estimate placed on the opus operatum of martyrdom, 
whereby, as we have seen, the deifying of man was promoted among 
the multitude, and spiritual pride and false security among the wit- 
nesses of the faith themselves. We have earlier remarked, that Basi- 
lides resisted this excessive veneration of the martyrs; and on the other 
hand endeavored to depreciate martyrdom, though in connection, 
indeed, with false premises from his system. But the way in which 
Heracleon attacked the wrong notions of martyrdom had no connection 
whatever with such errors. His only concern was to show that the wit- 
ness of Christ should not be isolated, as a mere outward thing, but be 
found in connection and in unity with the entire whole of the Christian 
life. ‘The multitude,” says he,° ‘regard confession before the civil 
authority as the only one; but without reason. This confession, hypo- 
crites also may lay down. ‘This is one particular form of confession ; 
— it is not that universal confession, to be laid down by all Christians, 
and of which Christ is here (Luke 12: 8) speaking ;—— the confession 
by works and actions that correspond to the faith in him. This univer- 
sal confession will be followed also by that particular one, in the hour 


1 We must allow Heracleon the justice 
to acknowledge, that Origen wrongly ac- 
cuses him here, as in many places, of con- 
tradicting himself,— for how, says Origen, 
could the Samaritan woman announce 
Christ to others, when she had left behind, 
with him from whom she had parted, the 
recipient organ of divine life? But He- 
racleon was perfectly consistent here :— in 
applying the allegory, the notion of “leav- 
ing behind,” so far as space Was concerned, 
did not, in fact, enter his mind. 


2 Ἐπὶ τῆς λέξεως ἔμεινε, μὴ οἰόμενος 
αὐτὴν ἀνάγεσϑαι. Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. 
§ 41. 

8. Τὸ is deserving of notice, how Origen 
censures Heracleon on account of this 
sound exposition: Ὅπερ νομίζω σαφῶς παν- 
τὶ ὁρᾶσϑαι καὶ ταπεινῶς ἐξειλῆφϑαι καὶ 
βεβιασμένως. Lc. § 88, 

ἘΠῚ ὁ § 41. 

5In the fragment above cited, of his 
commentary on Luke. 


PTOLEMAUS. 437 


of trial and when reason requires it. It is possible for those who so 
confess him in words, to deny him by their works. They only confess 
him in truth, who live in his confession; in whom he himself also con- 
fesses, — having received them to himself as they have received him 
to themselves.! For this reason, he can never deny himself.” ? 

We may mention further, Ptolemeus, who, if we may judge from the 
work of Irenzeus, (which was aimed chiefly against δ party,) contrib- 
uted much to the spread of Valentine’s principles. It may be questioned 
whether Tertullian is correct in saying that Ptolemzeus differed from 
Valentine principally in representing the Atons, whom the latter 
regarded as powers residing in the divine essence,? more under the 
form of hypostases ; — at least it may be doubted whether this was a 
distinction of so much importance, — since, in every case, the represen- 
tations which the Gnostics framed to themselves of the Alons were ata 
far remove from abstract, notional attributes, and must have bordered 
closely on hypostases. 

A very important production of Ptolemzeus, which has come down 
to our times, — his letter to Flora, a lady whom he endeavored to win 
over to the Valentinian principles, — shows that he was well qualified 
to present his views to others in the least exceptionable form. As the 
individual to whom he wrote belonged in all probability to the catholic 
church, it was particularly necessary for him to remove the offence she 
could not fail to take at the opposition between his views and the doe- 
trine of the church, and at the position, that neither the Old Testament 
nor the creation of the world proceeded from the Supreme God. To 
meet the first difficulty, he appeals to an apostolic tradition, which 
through a succession of witnesses had come down to himself, and to 
the words of the Saviour, by which all doctrine should be settled. By 
the tradition he meant probably an esoteric one, which, being himself 
deceived, he traced to some reputed disciple of the apostles; and as it 
regards the words of Christ, he could easily adapt them to his system 
by the Gnostic mode of interpretation. As to the second point, we 
may well suppose he would exhibit his principles in their mildest possi- 
ble form, to gain admittance for them with one who was not yet among 
the initiated. But still we find nothing in what he advances, which is 
at variance with the Valentinian principles. He combats two opposite 
errors —the error of those who held the creation of the world and 
the Old Testament to be the works of an evil being, — and the error 
of those who held them to be the works of the Supreme God. One 
of these parties erred, in his opinion, because they knew the Demiurge 
alone, and not the Father of All, whom Christ, who alone knew him, 
first revealed ; — the other, because they knew nothing of such an in- 
termediate being as the Demiurge. Ptolemzus probably would say, 


1 Ἐνειλημμένος αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐχόμενος ὑπό tis in personales substantias, quas Valenti- 
τούτων. nus in ipsa summa divinitatis, ut sensus et 

2 Which must take place, if such as stand adfectus et motus incluserat. Ady. Valen- 
in this connection with him, could be _ tinian, c. 4. 
brought to deny him. 4 Epiphan. heres. 33, § 3. 

8 Nominibus et numeris zonum distinc- 


χω 


438 PTOLEMAUS. 

then, that the first error was entertained by those who in Christianity 
continued still to be Jews; the second, by those who had passed at 
once, without any medium of transition, from the service of matter and 
Satan in paganism, to the knowledge of the Supreme God in the gospel ; 
and from having made this immense leap in their knowledge and reli- 
gion at once, supposed there was also a like chasm in the nature of 
things. ‘How can a law that forbids sin, proceed from the evil 
being who is at war with all moral good?” he asks;— and says he, 
‘the man must be blind, not in the mental eye alone, but also in that 
of the body, who cannot discern in the world the providence of its 
maker.”’ 

Immovably persuaded that the world could not have sprung from 
an evil being, he was also firmly convinced that its author could not be 
the perfect God, whom the Saviour was first enabled to reveal. His 
essence is only goodness ; — Christ, indeed, called him the being who 
alone is good. As it seems, Ptolemzeus considered punitive justice to 
_ be something irreconcileable with this perfect goodness. On the other 
hand, he represented justice, in the more limited sense, to be the pecu- 
liar attribute of the Demiurge, as marking a stage, lying in the middle 
between evil and perfect goodness. He distinguished justice in thes 
sense from justice in the highest sense, which coincides with perfect 
goodness. That which is intermediate,” he considered as belonging to 
the essence of the Demiurge and his kingdom. He professes adhe- 
rence to the doctrine of one primal Essence, the One Father who is with- 
out beginning, from whom all existence springs, and on whom it depends 
—a being who would show himself to be greater and mightier than 
the evil principle. He writes Flora, to give herself no uneasiness, if it 
should appear strange to her, that from a perfect primal essence should 
proceed two alien natures, that of the perishable essence,? and that of 
the Demiurge, occupying the intermediate position, inasmuch as the 
good, from its very essence, must produce only what is like itself; 
*‘ for,”’ he adds, ‘* you shall come to know the beginning and origin of 
this also in its proper time.’ If Ptolemzeus was not here accommo- 
dating himself, for the occasion, to the principles of the church, or rep- 
resenting his own in a milder form, with a view gradually to lead on his 
pupil still farther, we should have to reckon him also among the Gnos- 
tics before described, who reduced Dualism back to an original’ Mono- 
ism; for according to this view, he must have been anxious to point 
out, how not only the kingdom of the Demiurge, as a subordinate stage 
of existence in the general process of unfolding life, but also how at 
length the ὕλη must exist as the extreme limit of all, or as an antithesis 
necessary to appear once and to be overcome.! 


1The proof is in what Ptolemeeus says 
concerning the Demiurge: ᾿Ιδίως λεχϑείη 
ἂν δίκαιος, τῆς κατ᾽ αὐτὸν δικαιοσύνης Ov 
βραβευτὴς, καὶ ἔσται μὲν καταδεέστερος τοῦ 
τελείου ϑεοῦ καὶ τῆς ἐκείνου δικαιοσύνης 
ἐλάττων οὗτος 6 Sede. 

2 The μέσον, answering to the τόπος με- 
σότητος in Valentine’s system. 


8 The φϑορά. the ὕλη. 

* Perhaps Secundus also belonged to the 
party who supposed evil to be a necessary 
momentum in the process of development, 
if he distinguished in the first Ogdoad a 
τέτρας δεξιά and a τέτρας aptorepa, calling 
the first light, and the second darkness. 
Vid. Iren. lib. I. ¢. 11, § 2. 


PTOLEM AUS. 439 


Agreeing entirely with the Valentinian notion of inspiration, accord- 
ing to which all was not regarded as alike divine, but a co6peration of 
different factors was supposed in the origination of the Old Testament, 
Ptolemzeus distinguished several elements in the writings of the Old 
Testament. He divided the religious polity of Moses into three parts. 
1. That which proceeded from the Demiurge. 2. That which Moses 
ordained under the impulse of his own reason left to itself. 38. The 
additions made to the Mosaic law by the elders.1. The Saviour, as he 
maintained, plainly distinguished the law of Moses from the law of God 
(of the Demiurge,) Matth. 19: 6, ὅθ. Yet again he excuses Moses, 
and endeavors to show that the contradiction between him and the De- 
miurge is only in appearance ;—he merely yielded through constraint 
to the weakness of the people, in order to avoid a still greater evil. 
What came from the Demiurge, he divides again into three parts. 1. 
The purely moral portion of the law, unmixt with anything evil, which 
was called distinctively the law, in reference to which our Saviour says 
he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil; for as it contained nothing 
foreign from Christ’s nature, it only required completion. For exam- 
ple, the precepts Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, 
were completed in the precepts which forbid anger, and impure desires. 
2. The law, corrupted by the intermixture of evil, as for example, that 
which permitted retaliation; Levit. 24: 20; 20: 9. ‘Even he who 
retaliates wrong for wrong, is none the less guilty of injustice, since he 
repeats the same action, the order only being reversed.” Yet he recog- 
nized here, as in the case of Moses just stated, a peedagogical element. 
** This command,” says he, ‘‘ was and perhaps still continues to be a 
just one, given in consideration of the weakness of those, who received 
the law, not without overstepping the pure law. It is alien, however, 
from the essence and from the goodness of the Universal Father ; — 
perhaps agreeable to the nature of the Demiurge ;? but more probably 
extorted from him. For he who forbids to kill in one place, and com- 
mands it in another, has allowed himself unawares to be surprized by a 
sort of necessity.” The Demiurge, he would say, was not wanting in 
the will, but in the power to vanquish evil. This part of the law, as 
contradicting the essential character of the Supreme God, is now 
wholly abolished by the Saviour. It is plain, that Ptolemzeus “must 
have looked upon the capital punishment of the murderer as only a 
second murder. The state generally, according to his doctrine, which 
represents retributive justice as altogether foreign from the Supreme 
God, can belong only to the kingdom of the Demiurge. And it fol- 
lows, that those who had separated from the kingdom of the Demiurge, 
the genuine, Gnostic Christians, must decline all offices of civil trust. 
We here see betrayed again, a defect in the ethical system of these 
Gnostics, which defect had its ground in their speculative theology ; 


Ἂς Ptolemeus assumes that the Pentateuch 2 T have translated according to a correc- 
did not come from Moses. He supposed, tion of the text, (1. c.c.3,) which seemed 
robably, with the Clementines, that when to me necessary: lowe τούτῳ κατάλληλον. 
he law was written down from oral tradi- The o need only be altered to 9. 
tion, many foreign additions of the elders 
came to be mixed in with it. 


440 MARCUS. 


since the former could never, according to the latter, become the ani- 
mating principle of a state —the possibility was never given to it of 
becoming a form of manifestation for the kingdom of God. We grant 
there was this of truth also lying at the bottom, that no civil laws and 
civil constitutions can be derived immediately out of the essence of 
Christianity. 3. The typical, ceremonial law, which (see above) con- 
tained the figure of higher, spiritual things, —the laws concerning 
sacrifices, concerning circumcision, concerning the sabbath, the pass- 
over, and fasts. ‘All that was merely type and symbol, became 
altered after the truth appeared. The visible and outward observance 
was abolished. It passed, however, into a spiritual service, in which 
the names are the same, but the things are altered. For it is the 
Saviour’s command, that we also should present our offerings ; not offer- 
ings, however, of beasts or burning incense, but the spiritual sacrifice 
of praise to God, and giving thanks to his name—of doing good and 
communicating to our neighbors. It is his will also, that we be circum- 
cised ;—— not however with the outward, bodily rite, but with the spir- 
itual circumcision of the heart. He wills, moreover, that we should 
keep the sabbath, for he would have us rest from doing evil; also 
that we should fast,—not however with bodily abstinence, but with 
spiritual, which consists in abstaining from all sin. Yet the practice 
of outward fasting also is observed by our people; for it may be some- 
what profitable to the soul, when performed rationally, — not from imi- 
tation of any one, not from custom, not from regard to the day, as if 
one day were specially designed for it—but to remind us of the true 
fast, that those who are as yet unable to keep the latter, may still 
be led to keep it in view by the outward fasting.’’ Ptolemzeus was 
thoroughly penetrated with a sense of the elevation of the Christian posi- 
tion, superior to all constraints of time and place. In the order of set 
fasts, and doubtless also feast days, he saw something Jewish. 

Among the so called disciples of Valentine, Marcus and Bardesanes 
held distinguished rank. We say so called; for it would be more cor- 
rect perhaps to express it thus, that these two drew from the same 
common fountain with Valentine, in Syria, the native country of the 
Gnosis. Marcus came from Palestine, probably in the latter half of 
the second century. That Palestine was his native land, we may gather 
from his frequent use of the Arameean liturgical formula. If in the 
theosophy of Heracleon and Ptolemzeus the scientific tendency of the 
Alexandrian school predominated ; in that of Marcus, on the other 
hand, the tendency was to the poetic and symbolical. He set forth 
his system in a poem, in which he introduced the divine Ations discours- 
ing, in liturgical forms, and with gorgeous symbols of worship, of which 
we shall cite some examples hereafter. In the manner of the Jewish 
Cabbala, he hunted after special mysteries in the numbers and position 
of letters. The idea of a λόγος τοῦ ὄντος, of a word manifesting the hid- 
den divine essence in the creation, was spun out by him into the most 
subtle details ;—-the entire creation being, in his view, a continuous 
utterance, or becoming expressed, of the ineffable.! The manner in which 


1 Τὸ ἀῤῥητὸν ῥητὸν γενηϑῆναι. 


BARDESANES. 441 
the germs of divine life,! lying shut up in the Adons, go on progressively 
to unfold and individualize themselves, is represented by supposing that 
these names of the Ineffable became analyzed into their separate sounds. 
An echo of the Pleroma falls down into the ὕλη, and becomes the form- 
ing principle of a new, lower creation.? 

The second of these two, Bardesanes, who can with still less propriety 
be considered a disciple of Valentine, lived in Edessa of Mesopotamia. 
This is indicated by his name Bar Desanes, son of Daisan, from a river 
so called near the city of Edessa. He made himself known by his ex- 
tensive learning. Many of the older writers speak of alterations in the 
systems of Bardesanes. According to Eusebius’s account, he was at 
first a follower of Valentine’s doctrines ; but having convinced himself 
by more careful examination that many of them were untenable, he 
came over to the orthodox church. Yet he retained many of his ear- 
lier doctrines: and hence became the founder of a particular sect. Ac- 
cording to Epiphanius, he passed over from the orthodox church to the 
Valentinians. But of all these changes, the learned Syrian author in 
the fourth century, Ephraim the Syrian,—who lived in the country of 
Bardesanes, wrote in his language and had read his works,—says not 
a word ; and it admits of being easily explained, how these false reports 
arose. Bardesanes, like other Gnostics, was in the habit of accommo- 
dating himself, when he spoke publicly in the church, to the prevailing 
opinions ; he let himself down, in this way, to the level of the psychical 
natures. He did, in many points, really agree, more than other Gnos- 
tics, with that system of doctrine. He could even write, from honest 
conviction, against many other Gnostic sects then spreading themselves 
in Syria; as for instance, against those that denied any connection be- 
tween the Old and New Testaments; that derived the visible world 
from an evil being; that taught a doctrine of fatality destructive of 
moral freedom. In truth, the Gnostic Ptolemzeus had also written 
against such sectarians, without prejudice to his Gnosticism. 

In perfect conformity with the Valentinian system, Bardesanes recog- 
nized, in man’s nature, something altogether superior to the whole world 
in which man’s temporal consciousness is unfolded — something above 
its own comprehension — the human soul—a germinal principle sown 





1 The σπέρματα πνευματικά. 

2 In general it is an idea peculiar to the 
Gnostics, that the hidden godlike expresses 
itself to an echo, and finally a cessation of 
all sound ; and that again the echo increas- 
es to a clear tone, to a distinct word, for the 
revelation of the divine, &c.— ideas which 
they could turn into a great variety of 
shapes. Thus Heracleon says: The Sav- 
iour is the word, as the revealer of the god- 
like; all prophecy, which foretold his com- 
ing, without being distinctly conscious of 
the idea of the Messiah in its spiritual 
sense, was only an isolated tone that pre- 
ceded the revealing word; John the Bap- 
tist, standing mid-way between the Old and 
New Testament economy, is the voice, which 

“is already closely related to the word that 


expresses the thought with consciousness. 
The voice becomes word, by John’s becom- 
ing a disciple of Christ ;— the tone becomes 
voice when the prophets of the Demiurge, 
together with himself, attain to the con- 
scious recognition of the higher order of 
the world which the Messiah revealed, and 
thenceforth serve this higher system with 
self-conscious freedom. Orig. T. VI. in 
Joann. § 12. ὋὉ λόγος μὲν ὁ σωτῆρ ἐστιν, 
φωνὴ δὲ ἡ ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ πᾶσα προφητικὴ 
τάξις, τὴν φωνὴν οἰκειοτέραν οὖσαν τῷ λόγῳ 
λόγον γενέσϑαι. Τῷ ἤχῳ φησὶν ἔσεσϑαι 
τὴν εἰς φωνὴν μεταβολὴν, μαϑητοῦ μὲν. 
χώραν διδοὺς τῇ μεταβαλλούσῃ εἰς λόγον 
φωνῇ ἢ, (it should perhaps read 77v,) δού- 
Aov δὲ TH ἀπὸ ἤχου εἰς φωνήν. 


442 BARDESANES. THE OPHITES. 


forth from the Pleroma— whose essence and powers, having sprung 
from this loftier region, hence remain hidden to itself, until it shall at- 
tain to the full consciousness and to the full exercise of them in the 
Pleroma.! According to the Gnostic system, this could properly be 
true, however, only in respect to the speritual natures; but he must 
attribute also, according to that system, to the psychical natures a 
moral freedom, superior to the constraint of natural influences, or to 
the constraint of the Hyle. Hence, though, like many of this Gnostic 
tendency, he busied himself with astrology, he yet combated the theory 
which held to any such influence of the stars (εἱμαρμένη,) as deter- 
mined with necessity the life and actions of men. Husebius has pre- 
served ih that great store-house of literature, the προπαρασκευὴ εὐαγγελικῆ, 
a considerable fragment of this remarkable production. Bardesanes 
here adduces, among other proofs that the stars had no such irresistible 
influence on the character of nations, the multitude of Christians scat- 
tered through so many different countries.2 ‘‘ Wherever they are,” says 
he of the Christians, ‘‘ they are neither conquered by bad laws and 
customs, nor constrained by the dominant constellations that presided 
over their birth, to practise the sin which their master has forbidden. 
To sickness, however, to poverty, to suffermg, to that which is ac- 
counted shameful among men, they are subjected. For as our free 
man does not allow himself to be forced into servitude, but if forced, 
resists; so on the other hand our phenomenal man, as a man for ser- 
vice, cannot easily escape subjection. For if we had all power, we 
should be the All, — and so if we had no power, we should be the tools 
of others and not our own. But if God helps, all things are possible, 
and nothing can be a hindrance, for nothing can resist his will. And 
though it may seem to be resisted, yet this 1s so, because God is good, 
and lets every nature retain its own individuality and its own free will.” 
In conformity with his system, he sought to trace the vestiges of truth 
among people of every nation. In India he noticed a class of sages 
who lived in habits of rigid asceticism, (the Brahmins, Saniahs,) and al- 
though in the midst of idolaters, kept themselves pure from idolatry and 
worshipped only one God. | 

We now pass over to the Gnostics who manifested opposition to Juda- 
ism; and in the first place, to those who, in aiming to sever Christian- 
ity from its connection with Judaism, were still more inclined to bring 
Christianity into union with paganism. 


The Gnostic Sects in conflict with Judaism. 
The Sects which, in opposing Judaism, inclined to the side of the Pagan Element. 


ΤῊΝ Opurtes. — The Ophites will form the most natural transition 
to this class of the Gnostics ; for we are here shown how the same ideas, 
by receiving a somewhat different turn, were capable of leading to en- 
tirely different results. 


1 Vid. Ephrem. Syr. opp. Syr. lat. 'T. I. 2See Vol. I. p. 80.—Prepar. evangel. 
f. 553 et 555. 1, VI. ο. 10, near the end. ᾿ 





THE OPHITES. 443 


In the system of these sects, as in that of the Valentinians, the pre 
dominant idea was that of a mundane soul, sprung from a feeble ray of 
light out of the Pleroma, which, plunged into matter, communicated life 
to the inert mass, being itself, however, affected by it. This mundane 
soul, the source of all spiritual life, which re-absorbs fo itself whatever 
has flowed out from it— the pantheistic principle, whose germ existed 
already in the Valentinian system, becomes only more salient in the 
system of the Ophites, just as the properly Christian element retreats 
into the back-ground. Different modifications in this respect seem to 
have existed also in different branches of the Ophitic sect. The same 
Fundamental principles might be seized and applied in different ways 
in the same period, — according as the Christian, the purely Oriental 
and theosophic, or the Jewish element, happened most to predominate. 
The Ophitic system represented the origin of the Demiurge, who is here 
named Jaldabaoth, in altogether the same way as the Valentinian ; 
moreover, in the doctrine of his relation to the higher system of the 
world, it is easy to mark the transition-point between the two systems. 
The Valentinian Demiurge is a limited being, who in his limitation imag- 
ines he acts with independence. ‘The higher system of the world is at 
first unknown to him; he serves as its unconscious instrument. In the 
phenomena, or appearances coming from that higher world, he is at first 
bewildered and thrown into amazement ; — not, however, on account of 
his malignity, but his ignorance. Finally he is attracted, however, by 
the godlike, rises from his unconsciousness and ignorance to conscious- 
ness, and thereafter serves the higher order of the world with joy. Ac- 
cording to the Ophitie system, on the other hand, he is not only a lim- 
ited being, but altogether hostile to the higher order of world, and so 
remains. ‘The higher light he is possessed of in virtue of his derivation 
from the Sophia, he only turns to the bad purpose of strengthening his 
position against the higher order of the universe, and rendering himself 
an independent sovereign. Hence the purpose of ‘ Wisdom” is to 
deprive him of the spiritual natures that have flowed over into his king- 
dom, and to draw them back into itself, that so Ialdabaoth with his en- 
tire creation, stripped of every rational nature, may be given up to de- 
struction. According to the Valentinian system, on the contrary, the 
Demiurge constitutes through eternity a grade of rational, moral exist- 
ence, of subordinate rank indeed, but still belonging to the harmonious 
evolution of the great whole. Yet here again we can trace a relation- 
ship of ideas in the two systems; inasmuch as the Ophites represent 
the Demiurge as unconsciously and involuntarily subservient to Wis- 
dom, working towards the accomplishment of its plans, and ultimately 
bringing about his own downfall and annihilation. But if Ialdabaoth is, 
without willing or knowing it, an instrument to the purposes of divine 
wisdom, yet this gives him no distinction, as in the Valentinian system, 
but in this he is even put on a level with absolute evil: —it does not 
proceed from the excellence of his nature, but from the almighty power 
of the higher order of world. Even the evil spirit— the serpent form 
( ὀφιόμορφος,) that sprang into existence when Ialdabaoth, full of hatred 
‘and jealousy towards man, looked down into the ὕλη and imaged himself 


444 THE OPHITES. 


on its surface, must against his will serve only as an instrument to bring 
about the purposes of wisdom. Moreover, the doctrine concerning the 
origin and Cestination of man in this system has a great deal which is 
closely allied to the Valentinian theory; but a great deal also which 
belongs to another branch of the Gnostic system. 

The empire of Ialdabaoth is the starry world. The stars are the 
representatives and organs of the cosmical principle, which seeks to 
hold man’s spirit in bondage and servitude, and to environ it with all 
manner of delusions. Jaldabaoth and the six angels begotten by him 
are the spirits of the seven planets, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Venus, 
Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn.’ It is the endeayor of Jaldabaoth to 
assert himself as self-subsistent Lord and Creator, to keep his six angels 
from deserting their subjection, and, lest they should look up and 
observe the higher world of light, to fix their attention upon some ob- 
ject in another quarter. To this end, he calls upon the six angels to 
create man, after their own common image, as the crowning seal of 
their independent, creative power.2 Man is created; and being in 
their own image, is a huge corporeal mass, but without a soul. He 
creeps on the earth, and has not power to lift himself erect. They 
therefore bring the helpless creature to their Father, that he may ani- 
mate it with a soul. laldabaoth breathed into it a living spirit,? and 
thus, unperceived by himself, the spiritual seed passed from his own 
being into the nature of man, whereby he was deprived himself of this 
higher principle of life. Thus had the Sophia ordained it. In man 
(. e. those men who had received some portion of this spiritual seed) 
was concentrated the light, the soul, the reason of the whole creation. 
Jaldabaoth is now seized with amazement and wrath, when he beholds 
a being created by himself, and within the bounds of his own kingdom, 
rising both above himself and his kingdom. He strives therefore to 
prevent man from becoming conscious of his higher nature, and of that 
higher order of world to which he is now become related —to keep 
him in a state of blind unconsciousness, and thus of slavish submission. 
It was the jealousy of the contracted laldabaoth which issued that com- 
mand to the first man; but the mundane soul employed the serpent 
(the ὀφιόμορφος,) as an instrument to defeat the purpose of Laldabaoth, 
by tempting the first man to disobedience. According to another 
view, the serpent was itself a symbol or disguised appearance of the 
mundane soul;+—-and in the strict sense, it is that part of the sect 
only that adopted this view, which rightly received the name of Ophites, 
for they actually worshipped the serpent as a holy symbol ;— to which 
they may have been led by an analogous idea in the Egyptian religion, 
the serpent in the latter being looked upon as a symbol of Kneph or 


1 The religious books of the Sabians also presents the form of a serpent, —a symbol 
have much to say about the manner in of that wisdom of nature, that soul of the 


which these star-spirits deceive men. world, which winds in concealment through 
2 Thus they explained Gen. 1: 26. all the different grades and orders of natu- 
8 They supposed they found this in Gen- ral life. Theodoret. haret. fab. vol. I. 14. 
esis 2:*7. We perceive how the Pantheistic principle 


4 The serpent, a type of the ζωόγονος σο- shines here more clearly through the sur- 
gia:—the winding shape of the entrails face. 


THE OPHITES. | 445 


the ἀγαϑοδαίμων, who resembled the σοφία of the Ophites.! At all 
events, it was through the mundane soul, directly or indirectly, that the 
eyes of the first man were opened. The fall of man,— and this pre- 
sents a characteristic feature of the Ophitic system, though even in 
this respect it was perhaps not altogether independent of the prior 
Valentinian theory, — the fall of man was the transition point from a 
state of unconscious limitation to one of conscious freedom. Man now 
became wise, and renounced his allegiance to Ialdabaoth. The latter, 
angry at this disobedience, thrusts him from the upper region of the 
air, where until now he had dwelt in an ethereal body, down to the 
dark earth, and banished him into a dark body. Man finds himself 
now placed in a situation, where, on the one hand, the seven planetary 
spirits seek to hold him under their thrall, and to suppress the higher 
consciousness in his soul; while on the other hand, the wieked and 
purely material spirits try to tempt him into sin and idolatry, which 
would expose him to the vengeance of the severe [aldabaoth. Yet 
“ὁ Wisdom” never ceases to impart new strength to man’s kindred na- 
ture, by fresh supplies of the higher spiritual influence ; and from Seth, 
whom the Gnostics generally regarded as a representative of the 
mvevuatixot, —the contemplative natures, —she is able to preserve, 
through every age, a race peculiarly her own, in which the seeds of the 
spiritual nature are saved from destruction. 

In respect to the relation of the psychical Christ, or Jesus, to the 
Christ of the Aon world, which latter united himself to the former at 
the baptism, the doctrine of the Ophites was like that of Basilides and 
the Valentinians. The only thing peculiar to them was, that the higher 
Christ, in descending through the seven heavens of the seven angels, 
or in wandering through the seven stars on his way to the earth, 
appeared in each of these heavens under a kindred form, as an angel 
of the same kind, thus concealing his own higher nature from those 
angels, while he absorbed whatever of the spiritual seed they still pos- 
sessed, and crippled their power. The way in which these Gnostics 
endeavored to prove that the heavenly Christ first became united with 
Jesus at the baptism, and forsook him again at the passion, makes it 
clear how this entire theory may have arisen. They appealed, for 
instance, to the circumstance that Jesus wrought no miracle, either be- 
fore his baptism or after his resurrection. ‘This fact they imagined 
could be no otherwise explained than by supposing that higher being 
was only united with him from the time of his baptism to his death. A 
remarkable fact, beyond all doubt, and worthy of special notice, that 
Christ wrought miracles only from a certain point of time to another 
certain point of time ; — only they gave it a false explanation. 

Taldabaoth, the God of the Jews, must see himself deceived in 
respect to that which he had expected from his Messiah —since the 
latter did not advance his kingdom, but as an instrument of the higher 
Christ, proclaimed the unknown Father, and threatened rather to sub- 
vert the law of Ialdabaoth, that is, Judaism. Hence he determined to 


1 Comp. Creutzer’s Symbolik. Th. I. 5. 312, u. 504. 2te Aufl. 
VOL, I. 38 


446 THE OPHITES. 


get rid of him, and brought about his crucifixion. After his resurrec- 
tion, Jesus remained eighteen months on the earth. He received by 
inspiration of the Sophia a clearer knowledge of the higher truth, which 
he communicated only to a few of his chosen disciples, whom he knew 
to be recipient of such high mysteries. Upon this he is raised by the 
celestial Christ to heaven, and sits at the right hand of Jaldabaoth, 
unobserved by him, for the purpose of drawing and receiving to him- 
self every spiritual being that has been emancipated and purified by 
the redemption, when released from its sensible veil. In proportion as 
Jesus becomes enriched in his own spirit by this attraction to himself 
of his kindred natures, Ialdabaoth is deprived of all his higher virtues. 
The end 4s, to procure the enlargement of the spiritual life confined in 
nature, and bring it back to its original fountain, the mundane soul, 
from which all has flowed. Jesus is the channel through which this is ~ 
accomplished. Thus the planets are at length to be deprived of all 
the rational existence which is to be found in them. There were some 
among this kind of Gnostics who carried the Pantheism through with 
still more consistency ;— who held that the same soul is diffused 
through all living and inanimate nature; and that consequently all 
life, wherever it is dispersed and confined by the bonds of matter with- 
in the limits of individual existence, should be at length retracted 
through that channel and re-absorbed by the mundane soul, or the So- 

hia — the original source from whence it had flowed. Such Gnostics 
said, ‘‘ When we take things of nature for food, we absorb the souls 
scattered and dispersed in them into our own being, and with ourselves 
carry them upward to the original fountain.””! Thus eating and drink- 
ing was for them a sort of worship. In an apoeryphal gospel of this 
sect, the mundane soul or Supreme Being says therefore to the initi- 
ated: “‘ Thou art myself, and I am thou; where thou art, Iam; and 
I am diffused through all. Where thou pleasest thou canst gather me, 
but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself.” ? 

Pantheism, and the confounding of the natural and the divine which 
results from it, can never by their very nature have any favorable influ- 
ence on morals ; — and where the reaction of a moral element does not 
oppose itself to that of the subjective temper, immorality will ever be 
naturally promoted by it. Pantheism, and the wildly fanatic spirit of 
defiance against Ialdabaoth, and his pretended, cramping ordinances, 
seem in truth to have led these Ophites into the most unnatural extrav- 
agances. 

A statement of Origen deserves special notice, who reports that the 
Ophites were not Christians; and that they admitted none to their 
assemblies who did not curse Christ. The important inference might 
be drawn, that this sect sprang from a religious party which existed 
before the appearance of Christianity ; and of which one portion after- 
wards appropriated to themselves some of the elements of Christianity, 
while another, holding fast to the traditional principles of their sect, 
opposed Christianity altogether. We should thus be led to the hypoth- 


1 Epiphan. heres. 26, c. 9. 2 Chap. 8. 


THE PSEUDO-BASILIDEANS. 447 
esis of an ante-Christian Gnosis, which afterwards in part received 
Christian elements into itself, and partly appeared in bitter hostility to 
them. In fact, Origen names, as the founder of this sect, a certain 
Hucrates, who may have lived before the birth of Christ.1_ Moreover, 
the striking relationship between the Ophitic system and the systems 
of the Sabzeans and Manichzans, might be considered as pointing to 
some older common fountain of an ante-Christian Gnosis. But on the 
other side it cannot be denied that the Ophitic formulas of exorcism, 
which Origen cites immediately after he has made this statement, 
plainly contain allusions to Christian ideas. And it might be, that the 
opposition of the Ophites to the Christ of the church, the psychical 
Messiah, was to be traced to a certain peculiar turn that had been 
given to their principles ; — that the distinction they made between the 
pneumatic and the psychical Christ— the light estimation in which 
they held the latter, may have become converted, among a portion of 
their sect, into a position of downright hostility to the latter, and hence 
to the Christ whom the majority of believers acknowledged,? — so that, 
to curse the limited Messiah of the psychical natures, was finally made 
a mark of true discipleship to the higher Christ. We meet with some- 
thing like this in the sect of the Sabzeans, who transferred many things 
from the history of Christ to a heavenly Genius, the messenger of life, 
Mando αἱ Chaia, whom they worshipped as the proper Christ, from 
whom the true baptism proceeded —and the rest to Jesus the anti- 
Christ, sent by the star-spirits to betray mankind. This Jesus cor- 
rupted the baptism of John. And we shall discover something simi- 
lar to this in one variety of the Basilidean sect soon to be mentioned. 
PsEupo-BASILIDEANS.— These stand related to the original Basili- 
deans in the same way as the Ophites to the genuine school of Valentine. 
The prudent and moderate spirit of the Basilidean system,? was here 
quite extinguished; the distinction between the Supreme God and the 
Demiurge pushed onward to an absolute Dualism, out of which had de- 
veloped itself a wild defiance against the God of the world and his laws, 
—a bold antinomianism. According to their theory, the redeeming 
spirit * could enter into no union with the detested kingdom of the De- 
miurge ; he only assumed an apparently sensible form. When the Jews 
were for crucifying him, having the power, as an exalted spirit, of cloth- 
ing himself in every species of sensible form, and of presenting whatever 
shape he chose before the eyes of the sensuous multitude, he caused Si- 
mon of Cyrene (Mark 15) to appear to the Jews under his own shape ; — 
while he himself took the form of Simon, and rose without hindrance 


1 Orig. ο. Cels. lib. VI. c. 28, ff. The ob- 
secure and inaccurate Philaster, who places 
the Ophites at the head of the ante-Chris- 
tian sects, cannot be considered any good 
authority. 

2Tam indebted for this last remark to 
the profound critique of my work on the 
Gnostics, by Dr. Gieseler. 

8 Unless Clement of Alexandria had 


spoken of precisely similar practical errors 


in false followers of Basilides, to those we 


meet with in this sect, we might be led to 
suspect that the so called Basilideans of 
Irenzus had no connection whatever with 
Basilides. 

* The νοῦς. 
Basilides. 


See above, the system of 


448 THE CAINITES. 


to his invisible kingdom, mocking the expectations of the deluded Jews. 
To these people the doctrine of Christ crucified was foolishness. They 
ridiculed all who confessed him, as confessors of a phantom, dupes to 
an illusion of the senses. Such men, they allowed, were no longer 
Jews, but neither were they Christians. They ridiculed the martyrs, 
as men who sacrificed their lives in the confession of a phantom. Those 
who were initiated into the true mysteries were well aware, that none 
but a few, only one in a thousand could comprehend them. Their Vus 
(voice) possessed the faculty of making himself invisible to all; and 
they also possessed the same.! There was no form of sense they could 
not assume, no visible appearance to which they could not accommodate 
themselves in such a manner as to deceive the gross multitude, and 
escape persecution.” , 
CAINITES.— Closely related on the side of their practical bent to 
these Pseudo-Basilideans, were the Cainites; though, in respect to the 
fundamental principles of their system, they belonged to the great stock 
of the Ophites. Among them as well as among the Sethians, who were 
of the same stock, we meet with this fundamental idea— that the 
Sophia found means to preserve, through every age, in the midst of the 
Demiurge’s world, a race bearing within them the spiritual seed which 
was related to her own nature. But while the Sethians, whom we must 
reckon with the first class of Gnostics, regarded Cain as a representa- 
tive of the Hylic; Abel, of the Psychical: and Seth, who was finally 
to reappear in the person of the Messiah,’ of the Pneumatic principle ; 
the Cainites, on the other hand, singularly distinguished themselves by 
assigning the highest place to Cain. To such an extreme did these ex- 
travagant Antinomians carry their fanatical hatred of the Demiurge 
and of the Old Testament, that they made the worst characters of the 
Old Testament, as rebels against the laws of the Demiurge, their own 
Coryphzuses. They regarded them as the sons of the Sophia, and the 
instruments she employed in combating the Demiurge’s kingdom. To 
these people, the apostles, without exception, appeared too narrow and 
restricted in their views. Judas Iscariot alone possessed, in their opin- 
ion, the true Gnosis. They held, that he procured the death of Christ 
from good motives; for he knew that this was the only possible way of 
bringing about the destruction of the Demiurge’s kingdom. Their 
principle, destruction to the works and ordinances of the Demiurge, 
served as a pretext to cover every species of immorality. We ought 
not to wonder if such a sect, so audaciously perverse, so partial to the 
traitor Judas, should finally become hostile to Christ himself. But the 
language of Epiphanius, which might lead us to conjecture that such 


1 This faculty of becoming invisible, was described in his instructive History of Sec 
claimed also in the Cabalistic school. We among the Jews, (Briinn, 1822.) Ὶ 
have a remarkable example of this folly in 2 Tren. lib. I. 6. 24. ; 
S. Maimon’s life of himself, published by 8 An idea nearly related to the doctrine 
Moritz ;— and it may be observed in gene- of the Clementines. ‘ 
ral, that a great many interesting points of 4 Vid. Iren. lib. I. 6. 31. Epiphan. heres. 
resemblance to Gnosticism may be traced 38, 
in the later Jewish sects, which Beer has 


CARPOCRATES AND EPIPHANES. 449 


was actually the case with regard to a portion of the sect, is too vague 
and indefinite to deserve being relied upon as a safe authority on this 
int. 
Boe iris AND EprpHANES; Propictans, ANTITACTES, Nicona- 
ITANS, Stmonrans.—To the class of Gnostics we have just described, 
whose licentious tendencies, so opposite to Christianity, could only find 
an accidental point of union in the ferment which it excited, belonged 
Carpocrates. He resided probably, during the reign of Hadrian, in 
Alexandria, — where a certain religious eclecticism or syncretism was 
then prevailing, which attracted the notice of that emperor himself. 
He drew up a system of doctrines, which passed over into the hands 
of his son, Epiphanes. The latter, who died at the early age of seven- 
teen, abused and expended great natural talents in the defence of a 
perverse tendency, most pernicious in its influence on the moral feel- 
ings. According to Clement of Alexandria, Carpocrates had busied 
himself with the Platonic philosophy, and taught it to his son. The 
Platonic ideas of the soul’s preéxistence, and of that higher species 
of knowledge, which under the form of a reminiscence came from 
some earlier, heavenly state of being, gleam through the surface of 
this system, whose authors seem to have borrowed a great deal from 
Plato, particularly from the Phedrus. Their G'nosts consisted in 
the knowledge of one supreme original Being,” the highest unity, 
from whom all existence has flowed, and back to whom it strives to 
return. The finite spirits, ruling over the several portions of the 
earth, seek to counteract this universal striving after unity; and 
from their influence, their laws and arrangements, proceeds all that 
checks, disturbs, or limits the original communion lying at the root of 
nature, which is the outward manifestation of that highest unity. These 
spirits seek to retain under their dominion the souls which, emanating 
from the highest unity, and still partaking of its nature, have sunk 
down into the corporeal world, and there became imprisoned in bodies ; 
so that after death they must migrate into other bodies, unless they are 
capable of rising with freedom to their original source. From these 
finite spirits the different popular religions had derived their origin. 
But the souls which, led on by the reminiscences of their former condi- 
tion, soar upward to the contemplation of that higher unity, reach a state 
of perfect freedom and repose, which nothing afterwards is able to dis- 
turb. As examples of this sort, they named Pythagoras, Plato, Aris- 
totle among the heathens, and Jesus among the Jews. To the latter 
they attributed only great strength and purity of soul, which enabled 
him, through the reminiscences of his earlier existence, to attain the 
highest flight of contemplation, break free from the narrow laws of the 
God of the Jews, and overturn the religion which had proceeded from 
him, although educated in it himself. By virtue of his union with the 
Monad, (uévac,) he was armed with a divine power, which enabled him 


1 See his letter, cited p. 102, 2 Hence called, in Clement of Alexan- 
dria, γνῶσις μοναδικῆ. 
98" 


450 CARPOCRATES AND EPIPHANES. 


to overcome the spirits of this world, and the laws by which they govern 
the operations of nature, to work miracles, and to preserve the utmost 
composure under sufferings. By the same divine power, he was after- 
wards enabled to ascend in freedom, above all the powers of these 
spirits of the world, to the highest unity — the ascension from the world 
of appearance to Nirwana, according to the system of Buddha. This 
sect accordingly made no distinction between Christ and the wise and 
good men among every people. They taught that any other soul which 
could soar to the same height of contemplation, might be regarded as 
standing on an equality with Christ. In the controversy against con- 
verting the religious life into a mere outward matter, they took sides 
with St.*Paul, but on a directly opposite principle ; not on the principle of 
faith, in the apostle’s sense, but on that of an antinomian Pantheism, 
which looked down upon morality of life with a sort of contempt. Hence 
they foisted a meaning wholly alien from their true import, upon those 
fundamental positions of St. Paul respecting the vanity of the merit of 
good works, and respecting justification, not by works, but by faith 
alone. What they understood by faith was a mystical brooding of the 
mind absorbed in the original Unity. ‘Faith and love,” said they, 
“constitute the essential thing; externals are of no importance. He 
who ascribes moral worth to these, makes himself their slave ; subjects 
himself to those spirits of the world, from whom all religious and politi- 
cal ordinances have proceeded. He cannot advance, after death, be- 
yond the circle of the Metempsychosis. But he who can abandon him- 
self to every lust, without being affected by any, who can thus bid defi- 
ance to the laws of those mundane spirits, will after death rise to the 
unity of that original Monad, by union with which he was enabled, here 
in the present life, to break loose from every fetter that had cramped 
his bemg.”? Epiphanes wrote a work on justification, in which he en- 
deavored to carry out the position, that all nature manifests a striving 
after unity and fellowship, and that human laws which contradicted 
these laws of nature, and yet could not subdue the appetites implanted 
in human nature by the Creator himself, had first introduced sin. Ac- 
cordingly he so wrested the language of the Apostle Paul respecting 
the inadequacy of the law to make men holy, and its design to evoke 
the consciousness of guilt, as to treat the Decalogue with bold con- 
tempt. This sect busied itself a good deal with the art of magic. 
Whoever, by union with the original Monad, was enabled to rise above 
the subordinate gods, who, like all things else, were subject to change, 
—above the finite spirits of the world, could show this superiority by 
his works, by producing effects transcending the laws of nature, which 

roceeded from those inferior spirits. Thus they explained the miracles 
of Christ ; holding that any other person who rose to this union with the 
Monad, could perform similar wonders. These Carpocratian doctrines 
embody a great deal which bears a close relation to the Hindoo spirit? 


1 Tren. lib. I. ¢. 25. par G. Pauthier. Paris, 1833. Pag. 32. 
2 See Colebrooke’s Dissertation on the Although by this I do not mean to assert, 
school of Sankhya. Essais sur la philoso- that these doctrines — which, however, 
phie des Hindous par Colebrooke, traduits might well be possible in the state of inter- 


ANTITACTES AND PRODICIANS. 451 
and particularly to Buddhaism.!. The Carpocratians paid divine hon- 
ors to an image of Christ, which, as they maintained, came original- 
ly from Pilate. The same honors they paid also to the images of 
pagan philosophers, who had taken their stand, like Christ, above the 
popular religion. In so doing, they made use of heathen ceremonies — 
a practice not to be reconciled, we must allow, with the system of Car- 
pocrates and Epiphanes — and to be imputed rather to the superstition 
of their followers. At Same, the principal city of the island Cephalene 
in the Ionian Sea, whence sprung the family of Epiphanes on his 
mother’s side, so great is said to have been the impression made by 
this young man on the minds of the multitude, that a temple, a museum 
and altars were erected to him, and divine honors paid to his name. 
As we have this account from the learned Clement of Alexandria,” a 
man not given to credulity in such matters, we have no reason to ques- 
tion the fact, which indeed fully accords with the spirit and temper of 
those times. Perhaps, however, it was only from the members of his 
own sect, who would probably meet with a cordial reception on this 
island, that he enjoyed these honors, as the greatest of wise men.® 

To the same class of licentious Antinomians belonged the sect of 
Antitactes. Their-doctrine is denoted by their name. The good and 
gracious God, said they, created all things good. But one of his own 
offspring rebelled against him. This was the Demiurge, the God of 
the Jews. He it was that sowed the tares, engendered that principle 
of evil wherewith he has encompassed every one of us; by which, we 
must suppose, is meant the material body, constituting at once the 
prison-house and the fountain of all sin to the souls banished from above. 
Thus he has placed us at enmity with the Father, and we im turn set 
ourselves at enmity with him.* ‘To avenge the Father on him, we do 
directly the reverse of what he wills and commands. As a proof that 
the Old Testament bore witness against itself, they appealed to Mal. 8: 
15, quoting the language of the godless as words of truth.® 

To the same class belonged the Prodicians, who were followers of a 
certain Prodicus. They maintained they were sons of the Supreme 
God, a royal race; and therefore bound to no law, since kings were 
under none. ‘They were the lords of the sabbath, the lords over all 
ordinances. They made the whole worship of God to consist, probably, 
in the inner contemplation of divine things. They rejected prayer, and 
perhaps all external worship, as suited to those limited minds only 
which were still held in bondage under the Demiurge ; and they were 


course between the nations at that time — 8 We make no mention here of the Cy- 


were derived indirectly from such a source ; 
since the tendency of mystic Pantheism 
exhibits itself in similar phenomena, even 
independently of all such influences; and 
in cases of this sort, instead of communi- 
cation from without, it is sufficient to sup- 
pose an inner relationship of spirit; as in 
the instance of the Beghards of the middle 


1 See the remarks which follow, on Mani- 
cheism. 
2 Clement. Strom. 1. III. f. 428. 


renian inscriptions, of which so much has 
been said in modern times; for, although 
conceived exactly according to the spirit of 
this sect, they have been proved to be not 
genuine. 

4’Avritacoéueda τούτῳ. 

δ᾽Αντέστησαν τῷ ϑεῷ, καὶ ἐσώϑησαν ; 
where, moreover, they interpolated the word 
ἀναιδεῖ. By resisting the unabashed God, 
men are delivered from his bondage. Clem. 
Strom. 1. IIL. f. 440. 


452 NICOLAITANS. 


in the habit of appealing to the authority of certain apocryphal books, 
which were attributed to Zoroaster.! 

With this class of Antinomians belonged also the Nicolaitans — if, 
indeed, the actual existence of such a sect can be proved. TIrenzeus 
takes notice of a sect of this kind which existed in his time. He traced 
its origin back to that Nicolaus, a deacon, whom we find mentioned in 
the Acts of the Apostles; and he supposed the same sect was described 
in the second chapter of the Revelation.2 But it might be doubted, 
whether Irenzeus was right in the interpretation which he has here 
given of the passage in the Revelation— whether the word Nicolai- 
tans, which occurs in this place, is in truth the proper name of a sect, 
and more particularly of a Gnostic sect. The passage relates simply 
to a class of people who were in the practice of seducing Christians to 
participate in the sacrificial feasts of the heathens, and in the excesses 
which attended them, —just as the Jews of old were led astray by the 
Moabites, Numb. 25. It is quite possible, too, that the name Nicolai- 
tans is employed purely in a symbolical sense, according to the general 
style of the Apocalypse, and signifies corrupters, seducers of the people, 
like Balaam ; —in this sense, Balaamites.? It was a favorite idea with 
Irenzeus, that the Apostle John, even at this early period, had come 
into conflict with Gnostics of various descriptions ;—-and he was wont 
to search in the writings of John for allusions bearing directly upon the 
Gnostic heresy. Having found, then, many of the errors reproved in 
this passage of the Revelation to be the same that prevailed among the 
Gnostics of his time, he concluded that the practical errors denounced 
by the apostle might have sprung out of a theoretical Gnosticism ; and 
the name suggested to him the Nicolas, mentioned in the Acts, as its 
probable author. The remarks relating to this sect in Irenzus are, 
however, really so obscure, that we have no just reason for supposing 
that he knew anything about it from his own personal observation. 
Had we no other account, therefore, than that of Irenzeus, we should 
be obliged to allow it to be possible, at least, that the tradition about 
this sect had grown out of some misconstruction of the passage in the 
Revelation; though it might seem strange that Irenzeus, without any 
assignable motive, should represent a man who had been chosen by 
the apostles themselves to a public office, as the founder of a heretical 
sect. But no such mistake can be supposed to have existed in the case 
of the learned and unprejudiced Clement of Alexandria, who in the first 
place was better versed in historical criticism, and next appeals to facts 
which could not have been fabricated. There were those who main- 
tained the pernicious principle, already mentioned, that the lower pas- 
sions were to be subdued by indulgence, without allowing the spirit to 
be affected by them. So should men mortify the flesh, destroy it by 


1 Strom. 1. I. f. 304; 1. III. f. 438; 1. VI. he does not so distinguish them from other 


f. 722. Gnostics, as to make their peculiar charac- 
2 Tren. 1. I. c. 26. Speaking of their prac- _ teristics clearly prominent. ¢ 
tical errors, he says: qui indiscrete, (adva- 8 Balaam = vixdAaoc,—according to the 


φόρως,) vivunt. Lc. 1. III. ¢. 11, he speaks etymology from p> 3 and py. 
of their speculative errors; where, however, ᾿ 


NICOLAITANS. SIMONIANS. 458 


means of itself, show contempt for it. Their motto consisted of certain 
words to this purport which they ascribed to Nicolas the deacon.! In 
a passage which follows,” the same Clement speaks of another incident 
in the life of this Nicolas, often appealed to by the sect in justification 
of their extravagances. Accused by the apostles of jealousy towards his 
wife, to prove the groundlessness of the charge, he led her forth and 
said, Let him that chooses marry her. Yet Clement himself was very 
far from believing that the Nicolas of the Acts was the founder of this 
sect, although they claimed him as such. He defends the character 
of the man, as a member of the apostolic church; and refers to a tradi- 
tion which testified that this Nicolas lived in honorable wedlock to the 
last, and left behind him children who led decent and pious lives. We 
see, then, that Irenzeus was not mistaken in assuming the existence of 
such a sect, but only careless in examining into the truth of their pre- 
tended origin. It was the custom with such sects, as we have often 
observed, to attach themselves to some celebrated name or other of an- 
tiquity, in the choice of which they were not seldom influenced by cir- 
cumstances quite accidental. ‘Thus the Nicolaitans claimed Nicolas 
the deacon as their master, though he had done nothing to entitle him 
to that bad distinction. Clement supposes his words and actions had 
been misinterpreted, and endeavors to explain them in a milder sense ; 
but it may be doubted whether Clement, in this case, carried his criti- 
cism far enough. Everything imputed to Nicolas by the tradition 
wears an apocryphal aspect. Perhaps the sect possessed a life of him 
drawn up by themselves or others from fabulous accounts and unau- 
thentic traditions, in which the whole of this was embodied. If this 
sect was really derived from those Antinomians who were called Nico- 
laitans in the age of the Apostle John —a point which cannot be abso- 
lutely decided ®— then possibly this very name in the Apocalypse — 
the Nicolaitans — may have led the more recent sect to derive their 
appellation from Nicolas. Belonging, as they probably did, to the anti- 
Judaistic party, and consequently acknowledging no other apostle than 
Paul, they may have seized upon what they found asserted in the 
Apocalypse as affording evidence of the antiquity of their sect, since it 
had been attacked already by the Judaizing teacher John; and the re- 
semblance of names would naturally invite them to refer its origin back 
to the Nicolas mentioned in the Acts. We have noticed examples 
already of Gnostics choosing for their leaders persons whose characters 
appear in an unfavorable light in the Old or the New Testament. 

We have still to mention the Stmonians — an eclectic sect, who can 
scarcely be brought, however, under any one specific class; since they 
seem to have accommodated themselves, sometimes to paganism, at 


1 Τό δεῖν παραχρῆσϑαι τῇ σαρκί. Clem. only the name, which existed before, that 
Strom. ]. 11. f. 411. gave occasion to this allusion to Balaam, 
2L. c. 1. IIL. f. 436. yet it could not be inferred thence notwith- 
8 Even though the name Nicolaitans in standing, that the party then existing was 
the Revelation were really the proper name a Gnostic one. See respecting this sect, 
of a party which owed its rise to some per- my Apostol. History, vol. 11. p. 533. 
son by the name of Nicolas, and it was 


454 SIMONIANS. 

others to Judaism or to the religious opinions of the Samaritans, and 
at others again to Christianity — sometimes to have been rigid ascetics, 
at others wild scoffers at all moral law, (the Entychites.) Simon Ma- 
gus was their Christ, or at least a form of manifestation of the redeem- 
ing Christ, who had manifested himself also in Jesus ; — whether it was 
that they actually derived their origin from a party founded by the 
sorcerer of that name mentioned in the Acts, or whether, having sprung 
up at some later period, they chose, of their own fancy, Simon Magus, 
a name so odious to the Christians, for their Corypheeus, and forged 
writings in his name which made pretensions to a higher wisdom. The 
opinion of some learned writers, that another Simon, distinct from the 
older Simon Magus, was the founder of the sect, and afterwards be- 
came confounded with this latter, is an arbitrary conjecture, by no 
means called for to explain the historical fact.} 


Anti-Jewish Gnostics, who strove to apprehend Christianity, however, in its Purity and absolute 
Independence. 

Strongly contrasted with these Gnostics, whom we have just been con- 
sidering, and who were directed away from the ethical spirit of Christian- 
ity by their own prevailing bent, were another class, who were led to op- 
pose Judaism through the influence of a mistaken Christian interest, and 
were betrayed into Gnosticism by their one-sided mode of apprehending 


1 This Simon Magus, who cannot prop- 
erly claim a place even among the found- 
ers of Christian sects, acquired unmerited 
importance in the Christian church, by 
being held up as the great father of the 
Gnostic heresy. As the representative of the 
whole theosophico-goetic tendency, in oppo- 
sition to the simple faith in revelation, he 
became, so to speak, a mythical personage, 
and gave occasion for many fictitious le- 
gends, such, for example, as his dispute 
with the Apostle Peter, and his unsuccess- 
ful experiment in the art of flying. The 
most ingenious version of this story is to 
be found in the Clementines. It is a sin- 
gular fact, however, that Justin Martyr, in 
his second apology to the Roman Emperor, 
mentions a pillar erected at Rome to this 
Simon, on an island in the Tiber, (ἐν τῷ 
Τίβερι ποταμῷ, μεταξὺ τῶν δύο yepupor,) 
with the inscription, Simoni deo sancto. 
Although sorcerers of this stamp could 
often find their way even to persons of the 
highest rank, yet it is incredible, that the 
folly should ever be carried to such an ex- 
treme as to the erection of a statue and the 
passing of a decree of the senate, enrolling 
Simon Magus among the deos Romanos. 
The correctness of Justin’s statement might 
therefore be called in question, even though 
it were impossible to show the reason of 
his mistake. But the occasion of his mis- 
take may now, as it would seem, be ex- 
plained. In the year 1574, a stone was dug 
up at the spot described by Justin, which 
appears to have served as the pedestal of a 


statue, and on it was the inscription, Semo- 
ni Sango Deo Fidio sacrum. ‘True, this 
stone was not erected by the Roman sen- 
ate, nor by the emperor, but by a certain 
Sextus Pompeius. But Justin, with his 
head full of the legends about Simon Ma- 
gus, overlooked all this, and confounded 
the Semo Sancus, (a Sabino-Roman deity, 
probably unknown to Justin, who was bet- 
ter versed in the Greek than in the Roman 
mythology,) with the words Simo sanctus ; 
for it is to be observed that the cognomen 
of that deity was sometimes written sanc- 
tus instead of sancus. Tertullian, who had 
a more familiar knowledge of Roman an- 
tiquities, might be expected, it is true, to 
know better; but even he was too preju- 
diced in such cases, and too ignorant of 
criticism, to institute any further examina- 
tion with regard to the correctness of a 
statement which was in accordance with his 
taste, and which besides Game to him on so 
respectable authority. The more critical 
Alexandrians take no notice of the matter. 
Origen’s remark, (lib. I. ¢. Cels. ο. 57,) that 
this Simon was not known beyond Pales- 
tine by any but Christians, who became ac- 
quainted with him from the Acts of the 
Apostles, would seem to imply, that he 
looked upon the story of the pillar erected 
to him in Rome, as a fiction. The Sama- 
ritan Goetee and Heresiarchs, Dositheus and 
Menander, (the latter of whom is represent- 
ed to have been a disciple of Simon Magus,) 
deserve still less to be particularly noticed 
in the history of Christian sects. 


SATURNIN. 455 


the ethical element in Christianity. We have observed already, in that 
section of the present history which relates to the Christian life, how 
possible it was, that there should spring up in the course of its progres- 
sive movement, a one-sided ascetic tendency, leading to a wrongly con- 
ceived opposition to the world and to nature. Now a tendency of this 
sort might be united with the absolute Dualism of the Gnostics, and in 
the latter doctrine find a speculative ground of support. ‘Thus arose 
those peculiar phenomena of the Gnosis, in which the practical, ascetic 
element especially predominated, and which were distinguished for a 
certain earnestness of moral spirit, running however into the extreme 
of rigid asceticism. 

a. SatuRNtN.—The first whom we shall mention here is Saturnin, 
who lived at Antioch, in the time of the Emperor Hadrian. His doc- 
trines, so far as they can be ascertained from our imperfect sources of 
information,! were as follows: At the lowest stage of the emanation 
world, on the boundaries between the kingdom of light and the kmgdom 
of darkness, or of the ὕλη, stand the seven lowest angels, spirits of the 
stars. These combine together to win away from the kmgdom of dark- 
ness, a territory on which to erect an independent empire of their own. 
Thus sprang into being this earthly world, and through its different re- 
gions these spirits of the stars dispersed themselves. At their head stands 
the God of the Jews. They are engaged in an incessant war with the 
kingdom of darkness, and with Satan its prince, who will not suffer 
their kingdom to grow at the expense of his own, and constantly seeks 
to destroy what they strive to build up. A feeble ray only gleams down 
to them from the higher kingdom of light. The appearance of this 
light from above fills them with a longing for it. They would seize it 
for themselves, but cannot. Whenever they would grasp it, it retires 
from them. Hence they enter into a combination to charm this ray of 
the higher light, and to fix it in their own kingdom, by means of an 
image fashioned after the shape of light floating above them. But the 
form made by the angels cannot raise itself towards heaven, cannot 
stand erect.” It is a bodily mass without a soul. At length the Su- 
preme Father looks down with pity from the kingdom of light on the 
feeble being man, who has been created, however, in his own image. 
He infuses into him a spark of his own divine life. Man now, for the 
first time, becomes possessed of a soul, and can raise himself erect 
towards heaven. The godlike germ is destined to unfold itself, in those 
human natures where it has been implanted, to distinct personality, and 
to return after a determinate period to its original source. The men 
who, carrying within them these divine seeds, are appointed to reveal 
the Supreme God on earth, stand opposed to those who, possessing 
nothing but the hylic principle, are instruments of the kingdom of dark- 
ness. Now to destroy this empire of the planetary spirits, of the God 
of the Jews, which would set up itself as an independent kingdom, as 
well as to destroy the empire of darkness, and save those men who, 
through the divine seed of life, have become partakers of his own μᾶς 


1 Trenzus and Epiphanius. 2 See above, concerning the Ophites. 


456 TATIAN AND THE ENCRATITES. 


ture, the Supreme God sent down his Aon Nus, (νοῦς. But since 
the latter could not enter into any union with the planetary empire, or 
the material world, he appeared under the disguise and semblance 
merely of a sensible form. 

It is evident of itself, how spontaneously the ascetic bent. above men- 
tioned, the excessive valuation of celibacy, would spring up out of such 
a system. 

ὁ. TATIAN AND THE Encratires. —Tatian of Assyria lived at Rome 
as a rhetorician, where he was converted to Christianity by the 
instrumentality of Justin Martyr, who was on terms of greater 
intimacy, with him on account of their having received the same 
philosophical education in the Platonic school. During the life- 
time of Justin he adhered to the doctrine of the church. He com- 
posed, while still entertaining the same views, after Justin’s death, 
an apologetic discourse,! which contains a good deal, however, which 
might be accommodated to the doctrines of Gnosticism. In this 
discourse, Tatian, like his teacher Justin, followmg the example of 
Philo, received into his system the entire Platonic doctrine concerning 
matter, inconsistent as it was with a theory in which the doctrine of the 
creation from nothing was still maintamed. It was this Platonic doc- 
trine which led him to adopt also the hypothesis of an ungodlike spirit 
of life wedded to its kindred matter, whence he derived the evil spirits, 
whom he describes as πνεύματα ὑλικά, ---- inconsistent as this hypothesis 
also was with the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of evil 
spirits, and concerning the origin of sin. In this discourse already, he 
advanced a theory, which, we may remark, had found its way out of 
some Jewish system of theology into the speculations of several of the 
early church teachers,—that the human soul, like everything else 
formed and partaking of matter,? is by its own nature mortal; that the 
first man, livmg in communion with God, had within him a principle 
of divine life, exalted above the nature of this soul which had been 
derived from matter, and that this is properly the image of God,’ by 
virtue of which man became immortal. Having lost this image by sin, 
he fell a prey to matter and to mortality. 

It is easy to see how these opinions, loosely strung together as they 
were in Tatian’s system, would furnish a convenient foothold for the 
Gnostic idea of the ὕλη, and of the distinction between the ψυχικόν and 
the πνευματικόν, and how they would naturally result m an asceticism, 
striving after an absolute estrangement from the things of sense.* Ac- 
cording to the report of Irenzeus,> Tatian conceived a doctrine of Afons 
similar to that of the Valentinians; yet this would not suffice of itself. 
to warrant us in concluding that Ais system bore any affinity to the 
Valentinian. According to Clement of Alexandria,® he belonged to the 


1 His λόγος πρὸς “Ελληνας. with the above-mentioned distinction be- 
2A πνεῦμα ὑλικόν. tween the ψυχικόν and the πνευματικόν in 
8 Θεοῦ aren καὶ ὁμοίωσις. the nature of the first man, he haying lost 


4 According to Irenzeus, Tatian was the the latter by sin. Lib. I. ὁ. 28. 
Jirst to assert the condemnatory sentence ὅ Comp. Clem. Strom. lib. III. f. 465, C. 
of the first man; which indeed would agree °L. c.f. 460, D. 


TATIAN. 457 
class of anti-Jewish Gnostics, and transferred St. Paul’s statement of 
the contrariety between the old and the new man, to the relation of the 
Old and New Testament ;— yet he might perhaps have expressed him- 
self in this way, even according to the Valentinian Gnosis, which by 
no means supposed an absolute contrariety between the two economies. 
A remark of Tatian, which has come down to us, would seem to imply, 
that he was far from separating the Demiurge, the God of the Old 
Testament, so entirely from all connection with the higher world. He 
looked upon the expression in Genesis, ‘‘ Let there be light,’ —and this 
may serve to illustrate his arbitrary mode of interpreting scripture, — 
not as the commanding, creative word, but as the language of prayer. 
The Demiurge, seated on the dark chaos, prays that light may shine 
down from above.t Tatian’s strong leaning towards a fanatical asceti- 
cism might perhaps warrant the conclusion, however, that he drew a 
sharper line of distinction between the creation of the Demiurge and 
the higher world, and consequently between the Old Testament and the 
New, than could be admitted by the principles of the Valentinian 
school ; for this practical repugnance to the creation of the Demiurge 
was usually connected with an opposition to it in theory. 

Tatian was aware that the system of Christian morals must be de- 
rived from the contemplation of the life of Christ, and take its laws 
from thence. Assuming this, he wrote a work in which he endeavored 
to show how true perfection might be attained by the imitation of 
Christ.2_ He failed only in one respect; that he did not seize the life 
of Christ in its completeness, and in its relation to his mission as the 
redeemer of mankind, and the author of the new creation of divine 
life, which was designed to embrace and pervade all human relations 
only in the further course of its development from him. Paying no 
regard to this, he held the life of celibacy and the renunciation of all 
worldly possessions, after the pattern of Christ, to be the distinctive 
mark of Christian perfection. But to such as appealed to the life: of 
Christ considered in this light, Clement of Alexandria replied, ‘‘ The 
specific nature of Christ’s being, as distinguished from all other men, 
left no room for the marriage relation. That necessity of something to 
complete the human nature, which is grounded in the mutual relation 
of the sexes, found no place in him. The only analogon to the mar- 
riage estate was, in his case, the relation he bears to the church, which 
is bound to him, as his bride. Nothing could issue from him, as the 
Son of God, but a spiritual posterity.” The strong bias of Tatian in 
this particular direction led him to understand the Apostle Paul, in 1 
Corinth. 7: 5, as teaching that marriage and unchastity were one and 
the same thing — both equally the service of Satan.* It may be too, 


1 Theodot. Didascal. Anatol. f. 806.— 
Origenes de orat. c. 24. 

2 Περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτῆρα καταρτισμοῦ. 

8 Οὐκ ἴσασι τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ μὴ γῆμαι τὸν 
κύριον, πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ τὴν ἰδίαν νύμφην 
εἶχε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ἔπειτα δὲ οὐδὲ ἄνϑρω- 
πος ἣν κοινὸς, ἵνα καὶ βοηϑοῦ τινος κατὰ 
σάρκα δεηϑῇ, οὐδὲ τεκνοποιῆσασϑαι ἣν αὐτῶ 

VOL. I. 


dvaykaiov, aiding μένοντι kai μόνῳ υἱῷ ϑεοῦ 
γεγονότι. Clem. Strom. lib. II. f. 446. 

4 Paul, he affirms, gives permission in 
this place but ostensibly, — and immediate- 
ly shrinks back from what he permits, when 
he says that those who followed his permis- 
sion would serve two masters; by mutual 
continence and prayer they would serve 


458 MARCION. 
that besides the canonical gospels, he made use of apocryphal histories, 
in which the image of Christ had already become modified under the 
influence of theosophico-ascetic habits of contemplation.! As the ten- 
dency to a theosophical asceticism of this kind, which sprung up in the 
East, had now become widely spread, it can be no wonder that there 
were different kinds of these abstinents,? who had no special connection 
with T'atian, and who belonged in part to the Jewish and partly to the 
anti-Jewish party.® 

c. ΜΑΒΟΙΟΝ AND HIS ScHoot.—JIn the case of the Gnostics last 
considered, we observe already the dualistic element asserting it- 
self chiefly on the practical side, on the side of ethics, while the 
speculative retreats proportionally out of view. This is still more 
clearly apparent in the case of Marcion. He is the terminating 
point at which this whole development naturally ends; since he 
belongs -with the Gnostics only in a single respect. He stands on 
the dividmg line between Gnosticism, the prevailing tendency of 
which is to speculation, and a predominant practical direction of mind, 
diametrically opposed to speculative Gnosticism ; so that, considered in 
this point of view, the Alexandrian theology recognized by the great 


God, by incontinence they would serve un- 
chastity and Satan. Strom. 1. III. f. 460. 
According to Eusebius, —]. IV. c. 29, —he 
was accused of undertaking to garble and 
alter many expressions in the writings of 
St. Paul; but from the words of Eusebius, 
τινὰς αὐτὸν μεταφράώσαι φωνὰς, ὡς ἐπιδιορ- 
ϑούμενον αὐτῶν τὴν τῆς φράσεως σύνταξιν, 
it is impossible to determine, whether the 
alterations were made to favor his own dog- 
matic and ethical principles, or whether 
they were changes from the Hebraistic into 
a purer Greek ; and then the question arises, 
whether Tatian actually allowed himself in 
the practice of such an arbitrary sort of 
criticism, which certainly is quite possible ; 
or whether he only had in his possession 
certain readings varying from the received 
text, which it was assumed, as a matter of 
course, might be regarded .as intentional 
falsifications. 

1 We should know something more on 
this point, if Tatian’s “ εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τεσ- 
oapwv’’ were still extant. The old writers 
seem to have looked upon this work as a 
compendious harmony of the four gospels, 
Euseb. 1. IV. c. 29; but it may be doubted 
whether Tatian really confined himself to 
our four canonical gospels, — whether he 
did not at least make some use of several 
apocryphal gospels; since according to 
Epiphanius’ account, — which we must al- 
low is extremely vague,— this collection 
Pree some resemblance to the evayyé- 

tov ka ἑβραίους. 'Theodoretus found 
more than two hundred copies of this work 
in use within his Syrian diocese, and thought 
it his duty to withdraw them, probably be- 
cause he found them to contain a good deal 
of heretical matter. Theodoret. heeret. fab. 


I. 20. Tatian might find occasion also, on 
the ground of his peculiar Gnostic views 
concerning Christ, to leave out those parts 
of the gospels which contain the genealo- 
gies, and perhaps all that related to Christ’s 
nativity. 

2 Ἐγκρατῖται, ἀποτακτικοῖ, ὑδροπαραστά- 
ται, (because they made use of water only 
at the communion.) 

3 Among these belonged Julius Cassia- 
nus, in whose doctrines we may recognize, 
perhaps, the lingering influence of the 
Alexandrian-Jewish theology ; the εὐαγγέ- 
λιον Kar’ Αἰγυπτίους being the source, in- 
deed, whence he derived his knowledge of 
the gospel history. Regarding Adam as a 
symbol of the soul degraded from a heay- 
enly condition to the corporeal world, he 
made it the chief duty of man to gain the 
mastery over matter by means of ascetic 
austerities, and for this reason would not 
admit that Christ had appeared in the cor- 
poreal world. He was considered one of 
the leading men of the Docetx. In his 

ξηγητικά, he endeavored to introduce his 

doctrines into the Old Testament by means 
of the allegorical method of interpretation. 
See Clem. Strom. lib. I. f. 320; lib. III. f. 
465. Furthermore, the Severians belong to 
a class which passes generally under the 
name of Encratites. They are said to have 
sprung from a certain Severus, and to have 
rejected the epistles of Paul, and the Acts 
of the Apostles. Theodoret. haeret. fab. I. 
21. Their hostility to Paul might be con- 
sidered, perhaps, as an indication of their 
origin from the Jewish Christian party. 
The inference, however, is the less sure, be- 
cause the peculiar spirit of their doctrine 
may have led them to that hostility. 


MARCION. 459 


body of the church contains more that is in affinity with Gnosticism, 
than the theology of Marcion. The Christan interest is more directly 
addressed by him than it is by the other Gnostics, because his whole 
being is far more thoroughly penetrated by Christianity ; because the 
Christian element properly constituted the ground-tone of his whole 
inner life, his whole mode of thinking in religion and theology; while, 
in the case of the other Gnostics, this was only one spiritual tendency 
belonging to them along with several others of a foreign character, — 
although it was sometimes the predominant one. It is imstructive to 
observe, how a tendency proceeding from the very heart of Christianity 
may be impelled, by taking a settled direction on one particular side, 
to allow the admission of unchristian elements. It must leave us with 
a sad impression of human weakness, to see, in the example of this 
remarkable man, in what a strange relation or want of relation the 
speculative system may stand to that which moves and animates the 
inmost life of the man — to see how, by his own misunderstanding of 
himself, he could lead others, who ought to have been bound to him by 
the fellowship of the same higher life, to misunderstand, be deceived 
in, and condemn him; and those very persons too who came nearest to 
him in what constituted the fundamental and essential character of 
their spiritual bent. This world, in which we come to our knowledge 
neither of God, nor of ourselves, nor of each other, directly, but only 
through a glass in broken and refracted rays, is full of misunderstand- 
ings. What Marcion had in common with the Gnostics, and particu- 
larly with the Gnostics belonging to the last-mentioned class, consisted 
partly in his attempt to sunder the God of nature and of the Old Tes- 
tament from the God of the gospel, — to separate generally the purely 
human from the divine, and partly in various speculative elements 
which he wrought into his religious system. At the same time, it is quite 
evident that he had arrived at what he had in common with them, by 
a method wholly different from theirs. His God he had first found in 
Christ, and that glory of God which was revealed to him in Christ, he 
could nowhere find again in nature or in history. The speculative ele- 
ments which he borrowed from other Gnostics, were to him but expedi- 
ents which he resorted to for the purpose of filling up the chasm neces- 
sarily left in his system, which had been formed out of a bent of mind 
radically different and purely practical. It clearly was not his object, 
as it was the object of other Gnostics, to supply the imagined defects 
of Christianity by a speculative solution of difficulties taken from other 
systems of doctrine; but the design he started with was simply to re- 
store Christianity in its purity, which, in his opinion, had been corrupted 
by foreign additions. The one-sided position from which he started 
with this object in view was the occasion of most of his errors. 

He did not make a secret traditional doctrine the main source of this 
genuine Christianity. But neither was he willing to be confined to the 
general tradition of the church; for in this, according to his opinion, 
foreign elements had already become mingled with the pure apostolical 
Christianity. ‘Taking his stand, in the spirit of true protestantism, on 
the ground of positive Christianity, he would admit that nothing but 


460 MARCION. 


the words of Christ and of his genuine disciples ought to be considered 
as the fountain-head of the true gospel. We must confess, that instead 
of recognizing the many different phases of Christianity presented in 
the manifoldness of the organs chosen for its promulgation, he allowed 
himself to indulge an arbitrary partiality in distinguishing and separat- 
ing them one from the other. His efforts in looking up the earliest 
records of the pure, original Christianity, led him into historical and 
critical investigations, lying remote from the contemplative direction of 
mind peculiar to other Gnostics. But here also he presents to us a 
warning example — showing how such investigations, when guided and 
controlled by preconceived dogmatic opinions in which the understand- 
ing has entangled itself, must necessarily lead to disastrous results, — 
showing how easily an arbitrary hyper-criticism may slide into the oppo- 
site extreme, in opposing a careless facility of belief, and how readily, 
in combating one class of doctrinal prejudices, one may fall into others 
differing only in kind. 

The other Gnostics united with their theosophic idealism, a mystical, 
allegorizing interpretation of the scriptures. The simple-hearted Mar- 
cion was decidedly opposed to this artificial method of interpretation. 
He was a zealous advocate, on the other hand, of the literal interpre- 
tateon which prevailed among the antagonists of Gnosticism ; and it is 
evident from his example, how even this method of interpretation, when 
not united with other hermeneutical principles, and when pushed to an 
extreme, must lead to many arbitrary procedures. 

The opposition between πίστις and γνῶσις, between an exoteric and 
an esoteric Christianity, was among the marked peculiarities of the other 
Gnostic systems ; but in Marcion’s case, on the contrary, who adhered 
so closely to the practical Apostle Paul, no such opposition could possi- 
bly be allowed to exist. ΤῸ the merely outward, and more truly Jew- 
ish than Christian notion of πίστις, which had found admission into 
the Christian church, he opposed — not a self-conceited Gnosis, but the 
conception of πίστις itself, apprehended according to the genuine sense 
of St. Paul. In his view, πίστις was the common fountain of the 
divine life for all Christians. He knew of nothimg higher than the 
illumination which every Christian ought to possess. What he recog- 
nized as genuine Christianity, ought to be recognized as such by all 
capable of receiving Christianity in any sense. He could make no 
other distinction than that between the riper Christians and those 
that needed still to be instructed in Christian principles, (the cate- 
chumens. ) 

In a two-fold respect, Marcion’s appearance is a fact of great signi- 
ficance in the history of the world. In the first place, he stands a 
living witness of the impression which Christianity, as something wholly 
new and supernaturally divine, produced on men of strong and lively 
feelings. We see how Christianity appeared to such a person, looking 
at it from the point of view which had been reached by his age, and 
in its relation to all that had proceeded forth out of the previous devel- 
opment of mankind. It is a fact, which here speaks to us. Next the 
great significance of Marcion’s appearance consists in this: that we 


MARCION. 461 

perceive in him the first symptoms of a reaction necessary in the course 
of the historical evolution, —a reaction of the Pauline type of doctrine, 
reclaiming its rightful authority, against the strong leaning of the 
church to the side of James and Peter —a reaction of the Christian 
consciousness, re-asserting the independence acquired for it by the 
labors of Paul, against a new combination of Jewish and Christian ele- 
ments — a reaction of the protestant spirit against the catholic element 
now swelling in the bud. At its first appearance, this reaction might 
easily be led wrong, and tend too exclusively again, to the other side 
of the truth. It was needful that various momenta should be evolved, 
-before the reaction could be a pure one, clear in itself, and therefore 
certain of the victory. As Marcion gives us the picture of Paul, not 
in all the harmonious many-sidedness of his great spirit, but only in a 
single aspect of it, we consequently find in Marcion himself the impet- 
uous ardor, but not the calm reflective prudence, — the practical, but 
not the dialectic spirit of Paul— we find in him the acuteness and per- 
spicacity of the apostle in discerning and setting forth opposites, but 
not the conciliating wisdom for which the apostle was no less distin- 
guished. We shall now endeavor to seize the character of Marcion in 
its connection with that stage of development the church had arrived 
at in his time — though in doing this we must be made to feel the great 
want under which we labor, of satisfactory information with regard to 
his early habits of life and education. This deficiency we must endeavor 
to supply by the aid of historical combination. 

Marcion was born at Sinope, in Pontus, near the beginning of the 
second century. According to one report,! which is not placed, how- 
ever, beyond all doubt, his father was bishop of the church in Sinope. 
In this country, there were beyond question families, even thus early, in 
which Christianity had been handed down from parents to children; so 
that Marcion might have been led to the Christian faith through the 
influence of his early education ; — yet even supposing his father to 
have been a bishop, it would not be necessary to conclude that the fact 
was so. He speaks of the “ardor of his first faith,’? where he seems 
to refer to the glow of feeling experienced by a new convert.? Per- 
haps he belonged to the number of those who were first brought to the 
faith, not by the tradition of the church, but by their own study of the 
written word. And as he appropriated Christianity in a way somewhat 
independent of tradition, so in the after development of his Christian 
views he ever pursued this independent direction, and was unwilling to 


Τὴ Epiphanius, and in the later addi- 
tions to Tertullian’s Prescriptiones. It 
may excite some doubt to find that Tertul- 
lian has made no use of this fact against 
Marcion, that he had abandoned the Catho- 
lie church in which his father was a bishop. 
The silence of Tertullian, who had been at 
great pains to obtain information with re- 
gard to all the particulars of Marcion’s life, 
on a point which he had so much occasion 
to speak of, must lead us to suspect the 
foundation of Epiphanius’ report, who con- 


ΣΝ 


trasts the heresy of the son with the ortho- 
doxy and piety of his father. Yet it does 
not oblige us to reject the account. 

2 Primus calor fidei. 

8 Although we grant that this might also 
be said, in the first ardor of pious feeling, 
by a person who had been educated in 
Christianity, especially in this period, when 
the baptism of infants was not practised ; 
yet the other is the most obvious construc- 
tion. 


462 MARCION. 


subject himself to any human tradition. Perhaps it was the majesty of 
Christ beaming upon him from the survey of his life and the contem- 
plation of his words, whereby he was drawn to Christianity. And the 
Pauline type of doctrine, which most completely harmonized with his 
tone of mind, may have been the form in which he first learned to 
understand Christianity, and which chained his spirit once for all. In 
this manner, the peculiar shape which the Christian faith assumed in his 
case, may have been determined from the beginning. 

Like many others, he felt constrained by the ardor of his first Chris- 
tian love, to renounce every earthly possession. He presented to. the 
church considerable sum of money, and began, in a course of rigid. 
abstinence, the life of a “‘ continent person” or an ἀσκήτης2 His con- 
tempt of nature, which was at first simply practical and ascetic, pro- 
ceeding from a false notion of the contrariety between the natural and 
the divine, would lead a man of his ardent temperament, so eager to 
grasp what he approved, and so bold in rejecting what he disliked, to 
institute a theoretic distinction and separation between the God of na- 
ture and the God of the gospel. The contemplation of this period 
brings to our notice minds of the most opposite stamp — those that were 
for reconciling all antitheses, — for blending together elements the most 
heterogeneous, and those as well who would see everywhere nothing 
else but opposites, and know of no means to reconcile them. ‘To this 
latter class belonged Marcion. The consciousness of redemption 
formed the ground-tone of his religious life, —the fact of redemption 
he regarded as the central point of Christianity. But as it is only 
through numberless stages of transition and intermediate points that 
everything can ultimately be referred to this as the central point, — as 
the whole development of the world in history and nature were in this 
to be brought into a comprehending unity, — the impatient Marcion, 
who was averse to all gradual measures and intermediate steps, who 
was for having everything alike complete and at once, could not so un- 
derstand it. Tertullian has aptly characterized him, when he says, 
‘While in the Creator’s universe all thmgs occur in the order of a 
gradual development, each in its proper place, with Marcion, on the 
other hand, everything is sudden.”’? ΤῸ his heart, filled and glowing 
as it was with the image of the God of mercy and compassion, who ap- 
peared in Christ, Nature appeared as something entirely alien from 
the manner in which this God revealed himself to him in his soul. In 
history too, Marcion, who was so full of the glory of the gospel, 
believed he could find no trace of the God that had revealed himself 
to him there ; and into the demon world of paganism he looked back, 
like so many other zealous Christians, only with shuddering aversion — 


1See above. Pecuniam in primo calore μονάζων as equivalent to the ἀσκῆτης. 
fidei ecclesia contulit. Tertullian. adv. Ephraem Syrus accuses Marcion of acquir- 
Marcion, 1. 1V.c.c. It amounted to two ing by his asceticism a deceptive show of 
hundred sestertia. See Tertullian. preescript. sanctity. Opp. Eph. Syr. lat. Sermo I. f. 
c. 80. Epiphanius, in calling Marcion ἃ 438, seq. : 
μονάζων, (recluse,) only confounds the re- 2 Sic (subito) sunt omnia apud Marcio- 
lations of his own time with those of an nem, que suum et plenum habent ordinem 
earlier period. We must consider the apudcreatorem. Lib. IV. 6. 11. 


MARCION. 468 
he saw nothing there but Satan’s kingdom. The same tendency of 
spirit which made it impossible for him to find again in nature the God 
of the gospel, allowed him to see nothing but contrariety, no unity at 
bottom, in the relation of the Old Testament to the New. The jeal- 
ous God of the Old Testament, in his judgment so inexorably severe, 
and the God of the gospel, whose essential being is only love; the 
Messiah of the world with his worldly kingdom, and Christ who de- 
clined all earthly power and glory, and would not found a kingdom of 
this world, seemed to him utterly opposed to one another. We must 
here consider between what opposite tendencies, none of which could 
satisfy his mind, Marcion found himself placed. On the one side were 
those uneducated Christians who were led, by their grossly literal method 
of interpreting the Old Testament, to frame to themselves the most 
unworthy notions of God ;! on the other side were those who contrived, 
by artificial and allegorizing expositions, to lay into the Old Testament 
the whole system of Christian truth. But it belonged to the character 
of the simple Marcion, to be an enemy of that allegorical imterpreta- 
tion of the Bible, and to oppose to it a method which uniformly adhered 
to the literal sense. 

A man so constituted i mind and spirit as was Marcion would be 
easily impelled, wherever he had to combat an erroneous extreme, to 
go to the opposite one. Thus it fared with him in the contest with that 
Chiliastic, material tendency of mind, confounding the Jewish with the 
Christian element, which he found generally diffused m Asia Minor. 
Here he believed it impossible to recognize genuine Christianity, as it 
had been preached by the Apostle Paul in the churches of Asia 
Minor; and hence the striving might have arisen in him to purify 
Christianity from the foreign Jewish elements with which it had been 
mixed, and to restore it once more to its primitive form. It may have 
been from this opposition, as the occasional cause, that he conceived a 
prejudice against the conciliating direction which had originated in the 
labors of the Apostle John in Asia, Minor. Perhaps he found a foot- 
hold in some ultra-Pauline element which may already have made its 
appearance in opposition to the Apostle John himself.2 Accordingly, 
step by step, he was driven to place the Old and the New Testament 
in a continually sharper opposition to each other. 

This peculiar dogmatic tendency of Marcion was probably the occa- 
sion of his being excommunicated from the church at Smope.2 He 


1As Origen says: Οἱ ἀκεραιότεροι τῶν invention of anti-heretical hatred. Had 


ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας αὐχούντων τυγχάνειν, 
τοῦ μὲν δημιουργοῦ μείζονα οὐδένα ὑπειλῆ- 
φασι, τοιαῦτα δὲ ὑπολαμβάνουσι περὶ αὐτοῦ, 
ὁποῖα οὐδὲ περὶ τοῦ ὠμοτάτου καὶ ἀδικωτώ- 
του ἀνϑρώπου. De prine. 1. IV. § 8. 

2See my Age of the Apostles, vol. II. 
p- 558. 

ὃ The statement in the spurious additions 
to Tertullian’s Prescriptions, in Epiphanius 
and Esnig, that Marcion was excommuni- 
cated from the fellowship of the church on 
account of unchastity, is undoubtedly an 


anything of the kind got abroad, even in 
the form of a rumor, in Tertullian’s day, 
he certainly, according to his usual practice, 
would not have allowed it to pass without 
notice. But on the contrary,— what may 
be considered the most decided testimony 
against the truth of this statement, —he 
contrasts Marcion’s disciple, Apelles, on 
the score of his unchastity, with his rigid 
master. Tertull. Preescript. c. 30. Although 
the Armenian Bishop Esnig, of the fifth 
century, whose account of Marcion has 


464 MARCION, 


now hoped to find in the Roman church, to which he betook himself, a 
better reception, both on account of its origin, which it derived from 
Paul, and its original Pauline character, and on account of a prevail- 
ing anti-Judaizing tendency,! which still existed in it on many points. 
If the report of Epiphanius is well founded, he proposed the question to 
the Roman clergy, how they would explain the passage in Matthew 9: 
17, with a view to draw from their own lips the confession, that men 
could not pour the new wine of Christianity into the old bottle of Juda- 
ism, without spoiling it. But at Rome, too, his Dualism on the doc- 
trine of divine revelation could only meet with contradiction, since the 
acknowledgment of one God, and of one divine revelation in the Old 
and New Testaments, belonged to the doctrines universally received by 
the church. Repulsed here also by the church, he was driven to the 
measure of shaping his anti-church tendency into an established self 
consistent system, and of founding an independent church by itself. 
Until now, his system had only a practical basis ; — the conviction that 
Christianity had made its appearance among mankind as something 
entirely new, unexpected, and undreamt of; that it had imparted to 
humanity a divine life, to which nothing in human nature, up to that 
time, was in affinity; that the God who appeared in Christ had earlier 
revealed himself neither in nature, nor in reason, nor in the Old Testa- 
ment; that nothing witnessed of him; nothing was his work save Chris- 
tianity alone ; — this conviction was the groundwork on which Marcion 
proceeded to build. The God who had revealed himself in Christ was 
in his view one altogether diverse from the Spirit which had hitherto 
ruled in the world; and the latter was in all cases displaced from his 
throne, wherever Christianity found admittance, to make room for a 
higher Spirit. Accordingly Marcion was compelled to distinguish from 
that God hitherto unknown to the world, the God of the world and of 
the Old Testament, with his angels. In profoundly studying, with this 
direction of ideas, the epistles of his favorite Apostle, Paul, he might 
easily be led to believe that he found these ideas confirmed, when he read 
of a God of this world, of the princes of this world (ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου,) 
who would not have surrendered up the Lord of glory to the death of 
the cross, if they had known him;— of the ἀρχαῖς and ἐξουσίαις, whom 
Christ vanquished by his crucifixion. And it may be explained, how these 
ideas exercised a power over his mind, by reason of the truth lying at 
their root. In the Demiurge, the ruling spirit of the ante-Christian 
world, so far as that world was not wholly given to evil, became to Mar- 
cion’s imagination objectized and personified. This being could not un- 
derstand the new divine principle, which through Christ entered ito 
the world. The hidden glory in Christ’s appearance was something 
alien from him. He must bring death to the being who had come to 
destroy his kingdom; but through this very death must be brought 


been made known by Prof. Neumann, in a _ latter’s own writings, yet in the outline of 
German translation, in Ilgen’s Zeitschrift Marcion’s life, he follows the less authentic 
fiir historische Theologie, Bd. 1V. J. 1834, narratives of the writers belonging to his 
1 St., is a more credible authority, so far as own age. wv 

it relates to his account of Marcion’s doc- 1 See above, in the history of divine wor- 
trines, which he may have drawn from the _ ship. 


MARCION. 465 


about the dethronement of this spirit of the world himself. The idea 
of matter, as the spring of all desires and passions, belonged too to the 
current notions of the period. Thus it would in fact admit of being 
explained, how Marcion might have been led to form and gradually 
mature his system out of his own peculiar Christian consciousness, in 
the spiritual atmosphere of this period, without any connection whatever 
with the Gnostic sects. Yet although, for the reasons thus hinted at, 
we cannot consider the influence of those sects on his mode of thinking 
to have been so important as it has sometimes been represented, we are 
not disposed to deny, what the ancients are unanimous in stating, that 
at Rome he attached himself to a teacher from Antioch by the name of 
Cerdo, who held to the purely Dualistic Gnosis, and from him borrowed 
a good deal to fill up the chasms of his dogmatic system. 

It lay in the essential character of Marcion’s mode of thinking, that 
he must have labored more earnestly and assiduously than other Gnos- 
tics for the extension of his principles, — for while others believed it 
impossible to communicate their higher knowledge to any save a small 
number of Christians, the spiritwal men, Marcion, on the other hand, 
was convinced that his doctrine was no other than the primitive Chris- 
tian, which should come to all men. He must have felt constrained to 
communicate to all Christians, the light of truth which had fallen to his 
own share. Hence he made frequent journeys, and spent his life m an 
uninterrupted series of conflicts with pagans and with Christians. To 
be hated, and to suffer, he accounted the destination of every Chris- 
tian. ‘“ Fellow-hated, and fellow-sufferers’’ (συμμισούμενοι καὶ συνταλαί- 
rwpot,) Was his common form of salutation to his brethren in the faith.? 
He was, perhaps, residing in Rome, when the aged bishop Polycarp of 
Smyrna came on a visit to the Roman bishop Anicetus.2 Marcion, 
who probably in his youth had enjoyed the friendship of Polycarp, and 
now saw him again after many years, went to him and addressed him 
in these words: ‘‘ Dost thou remember me, Polycarp?”’ But the old 
man — otherwise so amiable—could embrace within his love all but 
the enemies of the gospel; among whom he reckoned Marcion, unable 
as he was to discern the Christian element lying at the root of his very 
errors.’ He is said to have replied to him: “ Yes, 1 remember the 
first-born of Satan.” ‘Tertullian relates, that Marcion testified at last 
his repentance for the schism which he had occasioned, and sought to 
be restored to the fellowship of the church; that this request was 
granted on the condition that he would bring back into the church those 
whom he had led astray; but that his premature death prevented the 
fulfilment of this condition. But the testimony of Tertullian, in mat- 
ters of this sort, is not of sufficient weight to establish the truth of this 
report. It might easily happen with him, that he took up the story on 
the credit of some rumor not sufficiently well founded. It was in fact 
a thing too obvious not to be suggested by somebody, that the heretic 
should repent in the end of his defection from the church, and yearn 


1 Tertull. c. Μ. 1. IV. c. 36; 1. IV.c¢. 9. 8 Tren. 1. ITT. ο. 3, § 4. 
2 See vol. I. p. 299. 4 Prescript. 6. 30. 


466 MARCION, 


after re-admission to its bosom. But if the continuance of the breach 
of which he was the author was a fact testifying against this supposition, 
it was necessary that some legend should arise, to reconcile the discrep- 
ancy. Marcion was too clearly conscious to himself of an opposition in 
principles between him and the then church, to leave it possible for any 
one to believe this story, without any better guaranty for its truth. 
Meanwhile, there must have been some good and sufficient reason, why 
such things were said of Marcion in particular, and not of the other 
Gnostics. If some conciliatory word or other of Marcion’s was not the 
occasion of it, the remote ground must at any rate be sought for in the 
consciousness penetrating through the blinding influence of polemical 
passions, that after all this man stood in quite a different relation to 
Christianity and to the Christian church, from that in which other 
Gnostics stood; that he was connected with both by a tie not to be 
sundered by the force of intellectual error. . 

It now remains, that we should enter into a detailed examination of 
Marcion’s system, in its later and complete development. This system 
coincided in its fundamental principles with other Gnostic systems of the 
last-mentioned class, with this single difference ; that in his theory it 1s 
ever gleaming through the surface, how everything had been seized by 
him on the practical rather than on the speculative side, and that the 
speculative element was to him a matter of inferior interest. He as- 
sumed three fundamental principles: 1. An ὕλη existing from eternity. 
2. The infinitely perfect, almighty and holy God,—the God who is 
eternal love ; the Good, ὁ ἀγαϑός, who alone is to be denominated God in 
the proper sense; who, by virtue of his holy nature, is incapable of enter- 
ing into any contact whatever with matter; creating, only by communi- 
cation of himself, a life in affinity with himself, but forming nothing 
from without. 3. The Demiurge, a subordinate being of limited power, 
holding a middle place between good and evil, who is named God only 
in an improper sense, (as the divine title is also transferred to other 
beings in Ps. 02,1) who is m a constant conflict with matter, seeking to 
subject and to fashion it according to his own ideas, but never able 
wholly to overcome its resistance.” Matter, with regard to which he 
appropriated to himself the common ideas, he regarded as the stuff fur- 
nished for the creative might of the Demiurge; the passive potence 
in relation to the latter. He described it also as the power or the 
essence of the earth. But out of that in it which resisted the formative 
might and the dominion of the Demiurge, proceeds evil, a wild, ungod- 
like impulse. All this became concentrated in Satan. The distinction 
between true moral perfection, which consists in love or goodness, 
whose essence it is only to communicate itself, only to bless, to make 
happy, to redeem — and mere justice, which metes out everything by 
desert, rewards and punishes, requites good with good and evil with 
evil, which gives birth to mere outward discipline, can communicate no 
power of moral enthusiasm, — this was the great practical and funda- 


1 Clem. Strom. lib. III. ἢ 481. Tertull. 2 Ephr. Syr. Orat. XTV. f. 468, Ὁ. 
6. M. lib. I. ο. 7-15. 3 See Esnig, ]. 6. p. 72. 


MARCION. — 467 


mental idea of Marcion, which formed the nucleus of all the rest. But 
between love and a justice which revealed itself m punishment, he 
could find no means of reconciliation. While he gave to the love of 
God, the revelation of which in the gospel had penetrated through his 
whole soul, a strong and exclusive prominence, he allowed all other no- 
tions of the divine attributes to retire out of view. Seeking to make 
that alone valid which belonged peculiarly to Christianity, but rending 
it from its connection with the Old Testament groundwork, determined 
to know nothing at all of a vindictive justice grounded in the holiness 
of God, of a holy anger of God against sin ; he evaded what essentially 
pertains to this, in order to distinguish the theistic position of Christian- 
ity from that of the old Nature-religion. And inasmuch as he com- 
prised in the notion of justice severed from its connection with the other 
divine attributes, all those marks which he believed might be derived 
from the Old Testament, as belonging to the character of the Demiurge, 
that notion itself became to him an inconsistent and self-contradictory 
one. ‘The inner coherence and consistency was ever in his case more 
in the heart than in the head. 

Vague and indefinite also, appears to us, in the accounts that are 
extant, the mode in which Marcion conceived the relation of the Demi- 
urge to the perfect God,! in respect to his origi. As we find else- 
where among the Gnostics Dualistie systems only,— none in which 
three principles, wholly independent in their origin, had been assumed, 
it seems most natural to conclude that Marcion also would be for deriv- 
ing the imperfect Demiurge through a series of evolutions from the per- 
fect God,— a course which, as a consistent thmker, he must have felt 
himself constrained to adopt by his own fundamental principle. Yet it 
is singular, that not one of Marcion’s opponents attempts to explain by 
what mediation it was, he connected one with the other, although this 
is a point which they never fail to notice in speaking of the systems of 
other Gnostics. We must infer, that in his writings he did not express 
any opinion on this subject himself. In fact, there was wanting in his 
system — which is another circumstance whereby he was distinguished 
from other Gnostics—the doctrine of emanation, necessarily pre-sup- 
posed in order to such a mediation and derivation.? It is from the pre- 
dominating practical interest, the unspeculative and unsystematic spirit 
of Marcion, that we shall perhaps have to account for these lacune. 

The great point of practical moment with Marcion was, next, to assert 
the absolute newness of the creation by Christianity ; to sever every 
thread of connection between it and the world as it had subsisted before. 
But hence it was impossible for him to apprehend in its true significancy 
this new creation itself; since it can be understood only as a restoration 
and fulfilment of the original one. And in this lies the deficiency of 
his moral system. 

The Demiurge of Marcion does not work after the pattern of higher 


1 The church teacher, Rhodon, (Euseb.1. 2 That nothing akin to the emanation- 
V. c. 13,) says that Marcion supposed only system of other Gnostics is to be found in 
two principles, δύο ἀρχάς. Esnig, howey- Marcion, seems to follow from the remarks 
ever, ascribes to him a Triarchy. of Tertullian, c. Marcion, lib. I. c. 5. 


468 MARCION. 


ideas, of which, though unconsciously, or even against his will, he is the 
organ; but he is the absolutely independent, self-subsistent creator of 
an imperfect world, answering to his own limited essence. ΤῸ this 
world Marcion reckoned also the nature of man, in which he did not 
acknowledge, like other Gnostics, the existence of another element be- 
sides. The Demiurge — so he taught — created man, his highest work, 
after his own image, to represent and reveal himself. Man’s body he 
formed of matter, — hence evil desires; to this body he gave a soul in 
affinity with himself and derived from his own essence. He gave him 
a law, to try his obedience, with a view either to reward or to punish 
him, according to his desert. But the limited Demiurge had it not in 
his power to give man a godlike principle of life, capable of overcoming 
evil. Man yielded to the seductions of sinful lust, and thus became 
subject, with his whole race, to the dominion of matter, and of the evil 
spirits which sprang out of it. From the entire race of fallen humanity, 
the Demiurge selected only one people, for his special guidance ; to this 
people, the Jews, he made a special revelation of himself, and gave a 
religious polity, answering to Azs own essence and character, — consist- 
ing, on the one hand, of a ceremonial confined to externals; on the 
other, of an imperative, deficient system of morals, without any inner 
godlike life, without power to sanctify the heart, without the spirit of 
love. Those who faithfully observed this religious law, he rewarded by 
conveying them at death to a state of happiness suited to their limited 
natures, in the society of their pious forefathers.!_ But all who suffered 
themselves to be seduced by the enticements of the ὕλη to disobey the 
Demiurge, and all who abandoned themselves to idolatry — a system to 
be traced to the influence of this ὕλη, he hurled down to perdition.” 

Not powerful enough to give his people the supremacy, and to extend 
his kingdom over the whole earth, the Demiurge promised them a Re- 
deemer, a Messiah, by whose means he would finally accomplish this 
end in the conflict with the hostile powers of the ὕλη; by whose means 
he would gather im all the Jews from their dispersion, bring heathens 
and sinners to a rigid judgment, and conduct his own people to the 
peaceful enjoyment of all earthly felicity in a kingdom erected over the 
whole world. But the perfect God, whose essence is mercy and love, 
could not suffer this severe sentence to be executed on men whose fall 
was owing to nothing but their inherent weakness. It is consonant 
with his character, not to wait, like the Demiurge, for merit, but out of 
his own free love to receive to himself those who are alienated from 
him, and lost; not to begin with giving a law, and making man’s des- 
tiny depend on his observance or disobedience of that; but to reveal 
and communicate himself to those who are willing to enter into fellow- 
ship with him, as the fountain of divine life and blessedness. ‘The ap- 
pearance of Christ was the self-manifestation® of the Supreme God, till 
then altogether hidden to this lower creation. 

According to the earlier known accounts of Marcion’s doctrine, we 


1 Apud inferos, in sinu Abrahami. Ter- 2 See Esnig, 1. ὁ. p. 74. 
tull. c. M. lib. 111, ¢. 24. Clem. Strom. lib. 8 Tertull. c. M. lib. 1. ὃ. 11. 
Υ. f. 546. 


MARCION. 469 


might suppose, that he represented the Supreme God himself as appear- 
ing without any mediation in the kingdom of the Demiurge, or upon’ 
the earth ; and thus he might have attached himself to the theory — 
so widely diffused in Asia Minor —of the Patripassionists,! in which 
form he had, perhaps, from the first, become acquainted with the doc- 
trine of Christ. This theory was exactly suited to his predominant 
practical tendency, to the element of Christian feeling which in his case 
prevailed over every other. Penetrated by the consciousness, that 
Christianity was nothing other than the communication of the Supreme 
God himself, that men have God himself immediately in Christ, the 
theory of subordination in the church doctrine of the Logos might be 
offensive to him. In this peculiar tendency of his doctrine concerning 
Christ, then, to simplification, he would once more agree with the other 
Gnostics, whose speculation tended to multiply the hypostases. The 
inadmissible form of representation, that God the Father appeared him- 
self, immediately, in a human body, might then easily pass over to the 
other notion, that this manifestation was merely in appearance. Yet 
however much this supposition must have in its favor,” according to the 
accounts thus far known to us, we notwithstanding venture no longer to 
hold on to it, since Esnig’s account has been communicated ; for accord- 
ing to this, Marcion expressly distinguished Jesus, as the Son sent down 
from the heaven of the Supreme God, from the latter as his Father. 
And to this distinction he must, in truth, have been led also by the 
authority of him who passed, in Marcion’s estimation, for the only 
apostle. | 

Marcion’s Docetism was not grounded solely in the view he enter- 
tained of matter, but was closely connected also with the whole essence 
and spirit of his dogmatic system. According to this, Christianity must 
make its appearance of a sudden, as an unprepared-for fragment, hay- 
ing no connection whatever with anything else. Everything, in fact, 
was with him sudden and unexpected. His gospel began when the 
Son of God, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, descended 
into the city of Capernaum, and appeared at once as a public teacher.® 

Jesus, therefore, according to the scheme of Marcion, was not the 
Messiah, promised through the prophets by the Demiurge, smce, indeed, 
he wanted many of those marks of the Messiah contained in the proph- 
ets; while, on the other hand, what was peculiar in his character and 
conduct was in no wise to be found among the characteristic traits of 
the Messiah announced by the prophets. Marcion attempted to carry 
out in detail the contrast between Christ as he is represented in the 
gospel history, and the Christ of the Old Testament, —and here too 
it is evident, how deeply Christ’s image had imprinted itself on his 
warm heart; but he was wrong in his very principle of requiring that 
the foretype presented to the prophetic vision under a temporal drapery 


1 Concerning whom we shall speak far- Jesus: Descendit de ccelo spiritus salutaris, 
ther in the section relating to the formation a distinction is implied between the redeem- 
of church doctrine. ing Spirit and the Supreme God. 

2Even when Tertullian (lib. I. ¢. 19) ὃ Tertull. c. M. lib. IV. c. 17. 
says in the sense of Marcion, concerning ; 


VOL. I. 


470 MARCION. 

should correspond exactly to the reality of the manifestation. Hence 
~when Jesus called himself the Messiah, it was only in aecommodation 
to the Jews. He wished to find some possible point of union with their 
views, to gain their confidence by some well-known form, to which he 
could afterwards give a higher meaning.? 

To bestow the greatest favors in vain on men who were wholly alien 
from him, was the great characteristic of his life. How far the Docetism 
of Marcion was from denying the reality of the works accomplished by 
Christ, is evident, when we consider what importance he attached to the 
miracles of Christ, as acts of succoring love, and of power over the 
kingdom of the Demiurge. He represents the Supreme God saying to 
his Son, when he sent him down to men: “ Heal their wounds, bring 
their dead back to life, make their blind to see, accomplish among them 
the greatest cures without reward.’’? The characteristic mark which 
distinguished the miracles of Christ from those of the prophets, consisted 
according to Marcion in this, that no mtermediate second causes, bor- 
rowed from the kingdom of the Demiurge, were needed to compass such 
effects, but he was able to do all by his word and his will alone — thus 
evincing his superiority over the kingdom of the Demiurge.®? Christ 
required no prophecies to confirm his divine mission ; his self-manifesta- 
tion by godlike actions above the kingdom of the Demiurge, was an 
evidence which rendered all other superfluous.* 

But as all that he required was a humble reception of the higher ele- 
ment which he came to bestow on men, he would meet with a readier 
reception among pagans, abandoned to the sense of their wretchedness, 
than among the men who were satisfied with their confinement in the 
kingdom of the Demiurge. As to the Demiurge himself, who saw in 
Jesus only the Messiah promised by himself, who like the Jews held 
him to be a man the same with other men; he had looked upon him as 
his instrument. Hence he must be the more exasperated, when he 
found himself deceived in his expectations, when he saw him perform- 
ing works which so far exceeded his own power, and must perceive how 
men would be led away by this Jesus to defection from his own law ; 
how he threatened to destroy that very kingdom, whose interests he 
should have subserved. He caused him to be crucified by those whom 
he employed to execute his purposes. 

The heart of Marcion would assuredly be touched by the idea of a 
love that suffered, and conquered through suffermg—so great impor- 
tance did he find attached, in the writings of his own Apostle Paul, to 
the redemptive sufferings of Christ ;— and yet this did not harmonize 


1 Ut per sollenne apud eos et familiare nem statim representasse. Tertull. c. M. 


nomen irreperet in Judeorum fidem. L. ¢. 
lib. IIT. e. 15. 

2 See Esnig. 1. 6. p. 74. 

8 In the work where Marcion treated of 
the opposition between the Old and New 
Testaments, his Antitheses, this remark oc- 
cured: Heliseum materia eguisse, aquam 
adhibuisse, et eam septies; Christum vero 
verbo solo et hoc semel functum curatio- 


lib. ΓΝ. c. 9. As Christ healed the ten lep- 
ers, sine tactu et sine verbo, tacita potestate 
et sola voluntate. L. ¢. ¢. 35. 

4 Non fuit ordo ejusmodi, (preparation by 
means of prophecy,) necessarius, quia sta- 
tim se et filium et missum et Dei Christum 
rebus ipsis esset probaturus per documenta 
virtutum. L. ο. lib. III. ο. 3. 


MARCION. 471 


well with his Docetism. Now although he was not allowed by that the- 
ory to attribute any real suffering to Christ, yet he was prepared to 
show how this very delusion, designed with reference to the Demiurge, 
must conduce to the accomplishment of the saving purposes of the Su- 
preme God. 

While it was taught in the church, that Satan deceived himself, and 
saw his own power destroyed, in supposing Jesus to be subject to death, 
like other men, Marcion simply substituted the Demiurge in the place 
of Satan; and we have already remarked how he might be led to sup- 
pose that he found some confirmation of this view in the words of the 
Apostle Paul. Moreover, he received from universal tradition the doc- 
trine of the descensus Christi ad mferos, and to this perhaps he 
referred the words in Paul’s epistle to the Laodiceans (Ephesians) 4: 9. 

~But his aversion to the Jews and preference of the pagans led him to give 
to this doctrine also another turn, so as to bring it into harmony with 
his own system. 

It was the will of the Demiurge to condemn him whom he placed in 
the same class with all the others that had revolted from his empire, to 
hell ; but here also he found himself deceived. Christ descended there 
for the purpose of taking to himself the poor heathens, whom the Demi- 
urge had condemned to everlasting punishment ; he released them, be- 
cause he found them possessed of the faith which he had not been able 
to find among the self-righteous Jews, from the power under which till 
then they had been subjected ; and raised them along with himself to 
the Father of love in the third heaven. Thus the wrath of the Demi-’ 
urge was excited afresh, “‘he eclipsed his sun, and veiled his world in 
darkness,” — an allusion perhaps to the phenomenon which took place 
at the death of Jesus. 

Then Christ revealed himself to the Demiurge in his true form, in 
his divine essence; he compelled him to acknowledge a higher God 
over himself, brought him to a consciousness of guilt according to his 
own laws, since he had shed the blood of an innocent person, who had 
shown to his creatures nothing but benevolence. Thus he must bow be- 
fore a higher power. 

It seems, although it cannot be determined with certainty, that Mar- 
cion taught, that the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament would 
still be actually accomplished in behalf of the believers in the Demi- 
urge. The Messiah promised by the Demiurge would appear, and 
bring to a rigid judgment those who had not been freed from his power 
by faith in the higher Christ ; awaken the just dead of the Old Testa- 
ment, and unite them all together in a millenial reign of earthly felicity. 
The eternal heavenly kingdom to which the Christians belonged, would 
then form the direct antithesis to this perishable, earthly kingdom. 
The souls of Christians would lay aside their gross bodies, as the bird 
rises out of the egg, as the kernel casts off the shell or leaves behind its 
husk in the earth, and lifts itself in freedom to the day-light, as the ripe 
fruit drops from the stem. The God of love does not punish; but 


1 Vid. Tren. lib. I. ο. 27, § 2; efr. lib. I. 2 Tert. c. M. 1. ΠῚ. c. 8, 4 et 24; LIV. 
c. 24. Esnig, l.c. p. 74. c.29, Ephr. Syr. Orat. CII. 6, f. 551 et 552. 


472 MARCION. 


those who were unwilling to receive the proffered fellowship with him, 
fall under the power of the Demiurge and his avenging justice.! But 
whoever, on the other hand, enters into fellowship with the Father 
through faith in the Son of God, becomes partaker even here on the 
earth of a divine life above the power of the Demiurge and of the Hyle ; 
and for him there is no longer any judgment. Delivered from the 
might of the Demiurge, he stands under the special guidance of the 
God of love. Plotinus, in his work against the Gnostics, among others, 
censures those who maintained a zpovoia of the Suprenie God which ex- 
tended to themselves and not to the whole world. We are not of the 
Opinion,” that he had the Marcionites particularly m view here ; but we 
must at least pre-suppose such a doctrme in Marcion. From Marcion’s 
connection of ideas resulted the antithesis between those who were left 
subject to the Demiurge’s government, and those who, released from his 
power, become objects of the providential care of the Supreme God, 
those whom God trains for his kingdom, those in whose behalf all things 
shall work together for good, serving to conduct them onward to the 
mark for which eternal love has destined them. Providence general 
and special Marcion must have attributed to the Demiurge ; that provi-. 
dence alone which has been designated by the term providentia special- 
issima, could be accounted by him as the work of the Supreme God in 
reference to his chosen ones. 

A dogmatical system like Marcion’s, in which the antithesis between 
law and gospel was expressed in such a way, could not fail to be fol- 
lowed by a system of morals full of meaning; for the distinction which 
he made between the two amounted in fact to this; that the former, by 
its precepts, could not confer on man any true, inward sanctification, 
any power to obtain the victory over sin; while the latter, by faith, 
brought man into union with a fountain of divine life, a union which 
must necessarily manifest itself by the conquest over sm and by holi- 
ness. of living. Hven Marcion’s warmest opponents, who sought 
eagerly to sum up every bad quality which could be imputed to him, 
and who refused to acknowledge the essential difference between his 
system and all other forms of Gnosticism, still could not deny, that 
the Marcionites differed entirely in their moral conduct from those 
Gnostic Antinomians ; — that they came fully up, for example, to the 
standard of the most rigid Christians, in their abhorrence of the pagan 
games and pastimes.? While many Gnostics, who held to the doctrine 
of an allowable accommodation to prevailing errors, or to the principle 
that no importance was to be attached to externals, found no difficulty 
in evading the obligation to become martyrs; the Marcionites, on the 
other hand, felt certainly constrained to bear witness of Christianity, 
which was a cause enlisting the affections of their heart. We have, 
in the previous remarks, alluded already to the necessary defect in Mar- 
cion’s system of morals, grounded in his peculiar doctrine concerning 
the creation and the origin of man. The ascetic bent of life, which he 


1 Abjecti, ab igne creatoris deprehenden- ® Tertull. c. Μ. 1. 1. 6. 28. 
tur. Tertull. c. M. 1. 1. ¢, 28. 4 See, e.g. Euseb. 1. IV. c. 15; 1. WI. 
2 See above, p. 390, etc. c.12. De Martyr, Palestin. c. 10. 


MARCIONITES. | 473 
had adopted already as a member of the catholic church, and in which, 
as we observed above, his system found a natural point of union, was 
now again still further promoted by the matured and perfected doc- 
trines of his system. He reckoned that mode of life, which, in the 
catholic church, was led only by a particular class of ascetics, as belong- 
ing to the essential being of genuine Christianity ; — Christians should 
lead, even here on the earth, a heavenly life, above all contaminating 
influence of matter. He who was not as yet capable of leading such 
a life, must remain in the class of catechumens, could not yet be admit- 
ted to baptism.? 

Marcion assuredly regarded Paul as the only genuine apostle who 
remained true to his calling. He taught, that after Christ revealed 
himself in his divine character to the Demiurge, and compelled him to 
acknowledge a higher power, he manifested himself to Paul, (referring 
doubtless to that revelation of Christ to the apostle of which the latter 
himself testifies,) and commissioned him to preach the gospel.?. The 
other scriptures of the New Testament, save Paul’s epistles, he 
rejected ; not because he supposed them interpolated at a later period, 
but because he did not recognize the authors of them as genuine teach- 
ers of Christianity. Besides the epistles of Paul, he made use of a 
pretended original gospel, which he held to be the record of the gospel 
history cited and used by Paul himself? ΑἸ] the other gospels he 
traced to those corrupters of the evangelical truth, against whom Paul 
himself had warned men. But we must ever keep it in mind, that 
Marcion regarded the older apostles themselves as such corrupters. As 
he presupposed everywhere in the church a corruption of the primitive 
truth, and the image of those Judaizing corrupters haunted him like a 
ghost, he thought it necessary, that even those religious records, whose 
authority he acknowledged in common with the church, should first be 
restored to their primitive condition, by a critical process of his own, 
designed to purge them of every element of Judaism. His pretended 
original gospel, used by the Apostle Paul, seems to have been a muti- 
lated copy of the gospel according to Luke.® His critical expurgation 
was not consistently carried through, many things being allowed to re- 
main, which could be brought into harmony with Marcion’s system 
only by resorting to a tortuous exegesis, made possible by ignorance of 
the right principles of interpretation. 

Marcron’s Sects. — Marcion differed from other Gnostics in this 
respect also, that while the latter, as Clement of Alexandria said of 


1 Tertull. c. M. lib. I. ο. 34: Quomodo 
nuptias dirimis? nec conjungens marem et 
feminam, nec alibi conjunctos ad sacramen- 
tum baptismatis et eucharistia admittens, 
nisi inter se conjuraverint adversus fructum 
nuptiarum. 

See Esnig, ]. c. p. 75. 

3 Perhaps there had been preserved in 
the apostolic churches of Asia Minor the 
remembrance of such an evangelical collec- 
tion, which St. Paul had brought with him. 

*See Tertull. c. M. lib. IV. ὁ. 2 et 3. 


40" 


Origines in Joann. T. V.§ 4. V. Dialog. 
de recta in Deum fide in Orig. opp. ed. de 
la Rue. T.I. f. 807. 

5 Detailed investigations into Marcion’s 
canon of the New Testament would be out 
of place here. See more on this subject in 
the learned and ingenious inquiries of my 
friends Hahn and Olshausen, and in my 
Genetic development of the Gnostic sys- 
tems. On Marcion’s gospel, consult Thi- 
lo’s edition of the Apocryphal writings of 
the New Testament, T. I. 


474 MARCUS. LUCAS. APELLES. 


them, endeavored to found schools only,! he, on the other hand, was 
for establishing a church, a community. ΤῸ restore the primitive 
church, designed by Christ, founded by the Apostle Paul, was the aim 
of his life. And being everywhere excluded from the catholic church, 
he was compelled, in preaching the pure doctrine of Christ as he un- 
derstood it, to found communities of his own.2 The universally intel- 
ligible and practical character of Marcion’s doctrines, the enthusiasm 
with which these principles were announced, might give this sect a 
wider spread than any other could reach. Very soon, however, differ- 
ences of opinion must begin to manifest themselves within it. 

While among the other Gnostics, the arbitrary character and great 
variety of the speculations they indulged in, furnished occasion for the 
later disciples to depart in many respects from the doctrines of the 
earlier masters ; so, on the other hand, the predominant practical ten- 
dency and the poverty of speculation in the system of Marcion com- 
pared with the other Gnostic systems, laid the foundation of changes, 
which his followers, not so exclusively governed as he was himself by 
the practical interest, undertook to introduce. Many of them endeav- 
ored to supply the defects which they thought they detected in the sys- 
tem, by appropriating to themselves elements from other Gnostic systems, 
not suited to Marcion’s theory. Many, like the Marcionite Marcus, 
espoused the doctrine of the Syrian Gnosis respecting the formation of 
man ;* which was, that the Supreme God communicated to man a por- 
tion of his own divine life, (the πνεῦμα,) which man lost however by 
sin, — a doctrine at variance with the whole character of the Marci- 
onite system. While Marcion probably gave himself no farther thought 
concerning the final destiny of the Demiurge and of the “ psychical 
natures,” the Marcionite Lucas, on the other hand, thought himself 
compelled to believe that everything “ psychical”? was perishable ; that 
the πνευματικόν only, which participated of the divine life, was im- 
mortal.° 

In the case of Apelles, who had for a while turned aside from the 
predominant practical tendency of Marcion, and indulged in various 
speculations foreign to the primitive Marcionite system, the original 
practical tendency finally gained once more the ascendency in a very 
remarkable manner. ‘Tertullian gives an unfavorable account of the 
moral character of this man;® but Rhodon, a catholic church teacher 
in the beginning of the third century, whose testimony, being that of 
an opponent, is beyond suspicion, sufficiently exonerates him of this 
charge ; for he describes him as a person’ whose moral character com- 
manded the respect of all. Probably, it was the altogether blameless 
intimacy subsisting between Apelles and Philwmene, a certain female 
theosophist, which furnished occasion for this charge —men being ever 


1 Διατριβαί. 4 See above, in the case of the Ophites 
2 Concerning the ecclesim, which were and of Saturninus. 
founded by Marcion or his disciples, cons. 5 See Tertull. de resurrect. carn. ¢c. 2. 
Tertull. c. M. lib. IV. ¢. 5. Orig. ec Cels. 1. III. ¢. 27. 


8 In the Dialogue de recta fide. Vid. opp. ὁ Preescript. heeret. c. 30. 
Origen, T. I. 7 Euseb. lib. V. ο. 18. 


APELLES. 475 


inclined to put a false construction on the actions of one stigmatized as 
a heretic. The only reproach that can be brought against Philumene 
is, that she forgot her mission as a woman, and hence was betrayed into 
fanaticism ; — against Apelles, that he confirmed her in this line of con- 
duct, and looked upon the fanatic discourses that proceeded from her 
distempered mind, as revelations, which he gave himself the trouble of 
expounding.1 We may make some use, however, of the report fur- 
nished by Tertullian, that the protracted residence of Apelles in Alex- 
andria effected a change in his Marcionite views; since all we can 
gather from the scattered accounts in Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius, 
and in the work of Ambrosius ‘“‘ De Paradiso,” intimates a modifica- 
tion of his system through the influence of the Alexandrian Gnosis. 
Hence it was, that he brought the visible and the invisible orders of the 
world, the Demiurge and the Supreme God, the Old and the New Tes- 
taments, into closer connection with each other, than was admissible 
according to the spirit and system of Marcion. Starting with the prin- 
ciple, that the Old Testament came from different authors, partly from 
the inspirations of the Soter, partly from those of the Demiurge, and 
in part from those of the evil spirit, who corrupted the revelations of 
the divine things,? he was for everywhere holding fast the good. “1 
use all the scriptures of the Old Testament,” said he, “ gathering from 
them what is profitable.’* He appealed to a saying, often cited by 
the ancients, which was attributed to our Saviour, perhaps in the 
εὐαγγέλιον ka Ἑβραίους: ‘ Be skilful money-changers, ever ready to dis- 
tinguish the genuine from the counterfeit, the true from the false ;”’ 
(yivecde δοκιμοὶ τραπεζῖται.)ὺ While Marcion, who was inclined to oljectize 
everything, received all in the Old Testament as true to the letter, but 
ascribed it not to the Supreme God, but to the Demiurge; Apelles, on 
the other hand, found in the Old Testament fables wholly destitute of 
truth. We see exemplified in this man the force of a tendency which 
ruled the minds of a particular age—the great difficulty which indi- 
viduals, who would gladly withdraw themselves from it, must still expe- 
- Yience in asserting their freedom. Thus Apelles felt the might of the 
dualistic principle, the incompatibility of which with Christianity he 
acknowledged, and to which, notwithstanding, he saw himself ever forced 
back again by the power that governed his thoughts. Accordingly he 
concluded his inquiries, at an advanced age, with the confession, that 
he could not do otherwise, but felt himself absolutely compelled to be- 
lieve in One eternal God, the author of all existence ; but scientifically 
to demonstrate how all existence could be traced back to one original 
principle, transcended his ability. The church teacher Rhodon, a 
stranger to such conflicts of the spirit, could not understand the confes- 
sion, and bantered him for professing to be a teacher, while at the 
same time he avowed that he only believed, but was unable to prove, 


1 His work of φανερώσεις, which has not ὅ8 Χρῶ ἀπὸ πάσης γραφῆς, ἀναλέγων τὰ 
reached our times. χρήσιμα. Epiphan. heeres. 44, § 2. 

2 He endeavored, in a work which he en- 4 Médoc τὰ ᾿Ιουδαίων γράμματα. Orig. 
titled “ Conclusions,” συλλογισμοΐ, to point ς, Cels. lib. V. c. 54. 
out the contradictions in the Old Testa- 
ment, 


476 FORM OF WORSHIP 

what he taught. Apelles seemed now to have lost all interest in dis- 
putes on these matters. ‘Let every man,” said he, “stand fast by 
his faith ; for all that put their trust in Christ crucified, shall attain sal- 
vation, if they only prove their faith by their works.” 


APPENDIX. 
Concerning the Worship or Cultus of the Gnosis. 


The different tendencies of Gnosticism, which we have thus far con- 
templated, had great influence also on the views which they entertained 
of divine worship. The reaction that sprang out of Gnosticism against 
the confounding together of the Jewish and Christian positions, and 
against the conversion of religion into an outward thing, could not fail 
to manifest itself strongly on this particular side. Indeed we have 
observed this already, in the declarations of Ptolemzeus respecting fes- 
tivals and fasts. But that tendency, growing out of the Dualism of 
the Gnostics, to abstraction from the world and estrangement from all 
human affections, which stood opposed to the Christian principle insist- 
ing on the transfiguration of the natural and the human, must, when 
consistently carried out and pushed to the extreme, have led in the 
case of worship also to the rending asunder of what Christ, for man’s 
benefit, had put together. And the exaggerated value placed on 
knowledge in religion, — the twilight knowledge which set up itself as 
the supreme good,—might end in a proud contempt for all those means 
of grace which had been furnished in aid to the Christian life: a 
similar tendency having in fact, at a still earlier period, grown out of. 
the Jewish Gnosis at Alexandria. Accordingly we find those among 
the Christian Gnostics who said that salvation consisted in knowledge ; 
in knowledge, man had all that he wanted. As the world of sense had 
sprung out of an alienation from the divine being, it was letting down 
the dignity of the transcendent things of God, to attempt representing 
them by sensuous, defective, perishable things! But the same theo- 
sophic tendency might bring with it too a symbolic cultus, full of mys- 
terious pomp and ceremony ; —as we see illustrated in the case of that 
sect of the Marcosians,? from whom Irenzeus derives the Idealists, men- 
tioned farther back, who discarded all external rites of religion. By 
virtue of the distinction between a psychical and a pneumatic Christi- 
anity, they were led to distinguish also two kinds of baptism — a bap- 
tism in the name of Jesus, the Messiah of the psychical natures, where- 
by believers obtained forgiveness of sin and the hope of eternal life in 


1 Their words are to be found in Irenzeus, 
lib. I. c. 21, § 4: Μὴ δεῖν τὸ τῆς ἀῤῥήτου 
καὶ ἀορώτου δυνάμεως μυστήριον δὶ ὁρατῶν 
καὶ φϑαρτῶν ἐποτελεῖσϑαι κτισμάτων, καὶ 
τῶν ἀγεννήτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων δὶ αἰσϑητῶν 
καὶ σωματικῶν. Ἑΐναι δὲ τελείαν ἀπολύ- 
τρωσιν αὐτὴν τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τοὺ ἀῤῥήῆτου 

ἐγέϑους. Theodoret. heret. fab. I. c. 10. 

f the Catanians, attacked by Tertullian in 
his work, “de Baptismo,” were identical 
with the Gnostic Cainites, with whom they 


are sometimes confounded, these last must 
also be placed in the same class, which 
would agree with their general tendency. 
But the reasons alleged by those Caianians 
against the necessity of outward baptism, 
have no resemblance whatever to the wild, 
fanatical spirit of the Cainites; and the 
sect generally exhibits none of the Gnostic 
peculiarities. 
2 Adherents of Mark. 


AMONG THE GNOSTICS. 417 
the kingdom of the Demiurge ; and pneumatic baptism, in the name of 
the Christ from heaven united with Jesus, whereby the spiritual nature 
attained to self-consciousness and to perfection, and entered into fellow- 
ship with the Pleroma. The ceremony of baptism and the baptismal 
formula probably differed with them, according as the cantlidate 
received the first or the second baptism, was received into the class of 
psychical or into that of pneumatical Christians. The latter was prob- 
ably accompanied with more pomp and parade than the former. Ac- 
cording to the Gnostic idea, (see above,)—that the baptized and 
redeemed pneumatic nature entered into a spiritual marriage (syzygy ) 
with its other half in the spiritual world, with the angel which with it 
constituted one whole, —they celebrated baptism as a wedding, and 
decorated the room where the ceremony took place, like a bridal cham- 
ber. One baptismal formula for the Pneumatics ran thus: “In the 
name which is hidden from all the divinities and powers, (of the De- 
miurge,) the name of truth,! which Jesus of Nazareth has put on in 
the light-zones of Christ, the living Christ, through the Holy Ghost, for 
the redemption of the Angels,?— the name by which all things attain 
to perfection.”? The candidate then said; “I am established and re- 
deemed,? —I am redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all 
that comes from it, by the name of Jehovah, who has redeemed the 
soul of Jesus* by the hving Christ.” The whole assembly then said, 
“Ὁ Peace (or salvation) to all on whom this name rests.”” Next they 
bestowed on the person baptized the sign of consecration to the priestly 
office, by anointing with oil, customary also in the church, (see above ;) 
but the oil in this case was a costly balsam; for the precious, far- 
spreading fragrance was intended to be a symbol of that transcendent 
bliss of the Pleroma which had been appointed for the redeemed. It is 
among these Marcosians we first meet with the ceremony of extreme 
unction. The dead were anointed with this balsam, mingled with water, 
and a form of prayer was pronounced over them, to the end that the 
souls of the departed might be able to rise, free from the Demiurge 
and all his powers, to their mother, the Sophia.? The Ophites also had 
similar forms of adjuration for the departed. To the same sect belonged 
too the well-known mystical table, (the διαγράμμα,.) which contained a 
symbolic representation of their system. 

The protestant, reforming tendency of Marcion shows itself also in 
reference to the forms of worship. His simple, practical bent kept 


1 The ἀλήϑεια, self-manifestation of the 
Bythos. 

2 Eic λύτρωσιν ἀγγελικῆν. To the same 
redemption, of which this spiritual nature, 
as well as the angel belonging to it, must 
partake, in order that both might be capa- 
ble of entering into the Pleroma, which 
neither could do separately, but only in mu- 
tual union. 

3 Εστέριγμαι καὶ λελύτρωμαι. See above, 
on Horus. 

*I suppose that in the above formula 
τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ should be read instead of αὐτοῦ. 


5 Tren. lib. I. c. 21. The practice of ex- 
orcism at baptism was in accordance also 
with the theory of the Gnostics respecting 
the indwelling of the various πνεύματα 
ὑλικώ until redemption. Exorcism (ὕδωρ 
ἐξορκιζόμενον) oceurs for the first time, 
still earlier than in the North African 
church, (see above,) in the Didascal. Ana- 
tol. f. 800, col. 11. D. It may have been 
cited here, however, not as a peculiarly 
Gnostic custom, but as belonging to the 
Alexandrian church generally. 


478 MANICHEANS. 
him remote from that mysticism which delights in outward pomp and 
show; but at the same time also from a proud, contemplative idealism. 
His efforts, in this matter too, were aimed to restore the worship of 
God to the primitive Christian form, and he attacked many of the new 
regulations, as corruptions of that original simplicity.!_ Thus he resisted 
the practice, which was now for the first time becoming common, of 
dividing the service into the two portions of the missa catechumenorum 
and the missa fidelium; since he required that the catechumens should 
share in all the privileges of their teachers,? and not be dismissed at 
the beginning of the prayer introductory to the celebration of the 
supper. He supposed the holy rite could not be profaned by their 
presence. 

It would indeed stand in contradiction with what has just been said, 
if it is true, that Marcion was the author of the superstitious custom, 
— founded on a mistaken interpretation of 1 Corinth. 15 : 29, — of ἃ 
representative baptism of the living for catechumens who had died ; 
but it is without any reason whatever, that the introduction of such 
vicarious baptism is imputed to Marcion, to whose simple, evangelical 
spirit such a superstition was altogether unsuited. If the practice had 
become dominant among the Marcionites who in the Μὰ century had 
spread themselves among the country population of Syria, yet we 
should by no means be warranted to infer from the customs of such 
ignorant and uncultivated men, who were hardly capable of com- 
prehending the spirit of Marcion, that the practice was authorized by 
hinself.? 

Il. Mani and the Manicheans. 


Christianity had come forth victorious out of the conflict with that re- 
action of the fundamental principle of the old world, which we have 
contemplated in the Gnostic sects. Christian Theism had vanquished 
Oriental Dualism. Gnosticism had accomplished its destined work. It 
had aroused men’s minds to a self-active appropriation and digestion of 
Christian truth, brought to clearer consciousness the peculiar essence 
of Christianity, and the subject-matter of its principal doctrines. After 
Gnosticism had entered thus deeply into the progressive movement of 
Christian doctrine and theology, it retired into the back-ground; it 
endured only in its subsequent influences ; but it was not till a later 
period that these received their greater significancy as reactions against 
the catholic, or Jewish-Christian element still further developed. 

When, however, the period of Gnosticism had already passed, a new 


1 Τὴ all probability Tertullian had in 
view particularly the Marcionites, when he 
says of the heretics, (Prescript. ¢. 41 :) 
Simplicitatem volunt esse prostrationem dis- 
cipline, cujus penes nos curam lenocinium 
vocant. 

2 ΤῸ this point, Marcion, by his forced 
interpretation, applied the passage in Gal. 
6: 6. See vol. 1. p. 328. 

8 Tertullian (de res. carnis c. 48, and adv. 
Marcion, 1. V. ο. 10) by no means so ex- 
presses himself, as if such a substitutive 


baptism was anywhere practised in his own 
time, but he only supposes the possibility 
that such a custom existed in the time of 
the apostle, and that the latter spoke in 
reference to it; and in the latter place, he 
considers in fact another explanation of 
1 Cor. 15: 29, as the more probable one. 
As to Chrysostom’s remarks on this pas- 
sage, they can apply only to many of the 
ignorant Marcionites of his own time, but in 
no wise to Marcion himself, and the older 
Marcionites. 


MANICHEANS. 479 


attempt was made by the Persian Mani or Manes, towards the close of 
the third century, to blend together Christianity and the religions of 
ancient Asia. Such attempts were called forth by the inner relation 
of Christianity to those ancient religions; for the facts of which the 
gospel witnesses — redemption, the union of God with humanity — 
answer to a fundamental want of the religious nature, which powerfully 
revealed itself in those old religions, and anticipated, in fantastic 
caprice, that which was destined to be given, in the fulness of the 
times, in the form of historical reality.!_ Superficial contemplation, or 
contemplation too much chained down to the position of the ancient 
world, might therefore, in comparing Christianity with those old reli- 
gions, imagine that it had found again the same divine element, only 
in a more multiform shape. But all becomes a different matter, 
through the different notion, lying at bottom, of the Divine Being, of 
his relation to the world, of the creation ; — since in those nature-reli- 
gions, instead of the idea of the personal, living God, such as he de- 
clares himself to be in revelation, the Pantheistic view predominates. 
Hence the seeming resemblance must transform itself into an essential 
difference ; and if those old religions, in consideration of such a sup- 
posed relationship, were to be transported into Christianity, it could be 
no otherwise effected, than by severing Christianity itself from its nat- 
ural connection with the preparatory revelation of religion in Judaism, 
and by fusing it with a Pantheistic nature-religion, transforming it into 
an entirely different thing. 

Manicheism differs from Gnosticism mainly in this respect, that in the 
former, the element of old Oriental theosophy introduces itself to a far 
greater extent into Christianity, appropriating it as a symbol for ideas 
foreign to itself, so that the Christian terms often appear here only as 
mere accidents. Moreover, in this system, which grew up in countries 
whither no influence of Platonic philosophy and of Jewish theology had 
penetrated, the Oriental theosophy could not become mixed up with 
ideas which were derived from such sources. More especially we find 
gleaming through the Manichean system, the Zoroastrian doctrines on 
the conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman, which we have already observed 
in the Gnostic systems. It is not to be mistaken, that Mani made the 
centre of the Parsic view of religion his point of departure ; that he 
was for reconciling with one another, for fusing together in one, the 
Zoroastrian and the Christian religions. But the remarks which have 
been already made respecting the opposition in the whole spiritual ten- 
dency between Gnosticism and the original Parsism,? is to be applied 
to Manicheism also, and indeed is here still more strongly marked. 
That leaning to a morose estrangement from the world, which is alto- 
gether alien from the original Parsism, constitutes a characteristic dif- 
ference between the latter and Manicheism. In Manicheism, we find 
‘ the aim to be perfection, the utmost possible estrangement from all that 
pertaims to the world ; in Parsism, plastic influence on the world; — 


1 ΤῸ is in such resemblances of the Chris- tullian thought he discovered the ingenia 
tian element in the old religion, that Ter- diaboli quedam de divinis affectantis. 
2 See above, p. 376. 


480 MANICHEANS. 

and this practical opposition stands connected with the radical differ- 
ence in the whole mode of looking at thmgs. According to the origi- 
nal Parsism, it is a pure creation, which proceeds from Ormuzd, into 
which Ahriman introduces a disturbing, destroying influence. Hence 
the genuine champion in the service of Ormuzd has to combat this influ- 
ence. According to the Manichean theory, an evil principle is at work 
in the whole creation, which holds in bondage the elements springing 
out of the kingdom of light. Deliverance from this bondage, so that 
the liberated spirit may become once more united with its original foun- 
tain, is therefore the highest end to be attained. Now it is true, that 
to account for this radical difference, it might be deemed sufficient to 
suppose that by a mixture of Parsism with Christianity, and especially 
with Christianity apprehended after a one-sided, ascetic manner, the 
character of Parsism itself must have undergone great alterations. It 
may be conceived, that the commixture of two systems might have 
given birth to a third, wearing in its general aspect, and in its details, 
a type different from either. Yet there is a great deal in Manicheism, 
—as, for example, the doctrine of metempsychosis, of a fettered soul 
throughout the whole of nature; that reverence shown by the perfect 
Manichean for all life in nature, which sprang out of his belief that 
he saw the same spirit of heavenly origin, more or less imprisoned and 
confined, in all natural objects ;\ the cautious fear, thence resulting, of 
injuring even the leaf of a tree, — which witnesses of a striking affinity 
of Manicheism with that religion, the most widely extended of all in 
Asia, which, through its institutions akin to the monasticism of the mid- 
dle ages, and through the feelings of gentleness and of self-sacrificmg 
benevolence which it excited, became to many tribes of people a means 
of transition from the wildest barbarism to semi-civilization, — we mean 
the Buddhaist religion. Add to this, that we are not merely led to 
such a result by comparing the inner character of the two systems, but 
that moreover there are quite distinct outward and historical indica- 
tions, going to show that Mani attached himself to Buddhaism, and 
visited countries where the Buddhaist missionaries and pilgrims had 
already spread themselves. 

Among the predecessors of Mani, if we may so consider one from 
whose writings Mani is supposed to have largely drawn, Western tradi- 
tion, which grew out of many misapprehended facts, names Buddas ; 
and of him it is related, that he pretended to be born miraculously of a 
virgin. Something similar occurs also in the tales relative to the birth 
of Buddha who appeared in humanity. Later Manicheans taught ex- 
pressly, that Mani, Buddas, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Sun are the 
same ;  -- and this view agrees entirely with the Buddhaist doctrine, 


1Jn the first edition of my Church His- 
tory, had alluded only in a cursory way 
to the relationship of Manicheism and 
Buddhaism; it is the great merit of Dr. 
Baur, constituting: an epoch in this depart- 
ment of history, that in his work on the 
Manichean system of religion, (Ziibingen, 
1831,) he has more fully exhibited and un- 


folded this relationship, and thus opened a 
new path for the genetic exposition of Man- 
icheism. 

2 Tov Zapadav καὶ Βουδᾶν καὶ τὸν Χρισ- 
τὸν καὶ τὸν Μανιχαῖον καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἕνα 
καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν εἷναι. See Jacob. Tollii 
insignia itinerarii Italici. Traject, 1696. 
Pag. 134. 


MANICHEANS. 481 


that Buddha presented himself on earth at different times, under dif: 
ferent forms of human existence, true or apparent shapes, and in all 
these different forms of manifestation, announced the same religion. 

Mani is said, moreover, to have retired to a cave in the province of 
Turkistan, from whence he came forth with the pretension of having 
received special revelations. Now sacred grottos occupied an import- 
ant place among the holy things of the Buddha religion; and in mod- 
ern times such monuments of Buddhaism have been discovered in the 
districts bordering on Persia and Bactria.} 

ΤῸ is in the highest degree probable, that in the public appearances 
of Mani, two epochs are to be distinguished, — and this view of the 
matter is also confirmed by indications in the historical notices, — the 
first, when his aim was simply to reconcile and blend together Parsism 
and Christianity ; the second, after he had become acquainted im his 
travels with Buddhaism, from which a new light arose within him, and 
he supposed that he first attamed, from this new position, to a better 
understanding of the truth in all the three religions. Dualism, with 
him, must now gradually pass over more completely into pantheistic 
Monoism. For we cannot help considering Buddhaism, although the 
fact has been denied by many in modern times, as one phase of the 
appearance of Pantheism ; since indeed we must consider as such every 
doctrine which does not recognize God as a self-conscious, free causal- 
ity of existence, acting with a view to certain purposes or ends. The 
Dualism of the Buddha system is of altogether another kind from that 
of the Parsic. It is not a positive kingdom of evil that stands opposed 
to the kingdom of good, and with a corrupting influence mixes into its 
creation ; but by Dualism here nothing else is expressed, than that the 
Divine Being is under the necessity of passing out of itself, and over 
into manifestation ; — and the problem then is, how to return back from 
this manifestation mto pure bemg. ‘The same may be said of this form 
of Dualism, in its connection with the pantheistic element, as was said 
of the apparent Neo-Platonic Dualism, described im a former part of 
this work. There are two factors, the Spirit-God, and nature, or mat- 
ter. When the Spirit passes out from itself into nature, then springs 
into existence the phenomenal world, the world of appearance, of San- 
sara— the Maia. The Spirit becomes ever more coagulated in nature, 
more completely estranged from itself, even to entire unconsciousness. 
In man, it returns back through various stages of development and 
purification once more to itself; till, wholly released from the bonds of 
natural force, after being stripped of all limited, mdividual existence, 
it becomes conscious of its oneness with the primal Spirit, from which 
all life has flowed, and passes over into the same. This is becoming 
Nirwana. The antithesis is obvious — the Spirit, in its estrangement 
from itself, the world of manifestation or of appearance, (Sansara, 
Maia;) and the pure being of the Spirit, (the Nirwana.) It is a 


1 566 the work of C. Ritter. Die Stu- Kolosse von Bamivan. Berlin, 1838. §. 
pa's, oder die architektonischen Denkmale 80, u. d. f. 
er indo-baktrischen Konigsstrasse und die 


VOL. I. 41 


482 MANICHEANS. 

characteristic mark of the Buddhaist mode of contemplation, and an 
evidence of the Monoism lying at the root of this Dualism, when we 
find it described as the highest stage of perfection, that the Sansara 
and the Nirwana become one for consciousness; the Spirit is no longer 
affected at all by the appearance, can energize freely in connection with 
it, and amidst the world of appearance, recognizing this as appearance 
and in its necessity, holds fast only the pure being—the entire oneness 
of the world on this side, and the world beyond time.1 Thus Buddha 
lets himself down to the world of Sansara for the redemption of the 
souls therein confined, and both are one to him. : 

Mani adopted the Zoroastrian Dualism, in all cases where he repre- 
sented his ideas in images of sense; but he introduced into these sym- 
bols Buddhaist notzons. Now we meet with diverse forms of represen- 
tation of the Manichean system — those in which the Parsic drapery 
appears the more prominent, — where an active kingdom of evil is ex- 
hibited in its attacks on the kingdom of light; and those which seem to 
have more of a Grecian coloring, and in which the great point of dis- 
cussion is the opposition between God and matter.2 We might indeed 
suppose, that the latter mode of representation sprung from a transfer 
of Mani’s doctrines into the Hellenic form of culture; but if we bear in 
mind the Buddhaistic principles into which Mani fused the Zoroastrian 
ideas, we shall rather perceive here the original form of apprehension, 
answering to the Buddha system; and Mani himself may perhaps have 
expressed himself differently, according as he preferred to employ con- 
ceptions and forms of the understanding, after the manner of Buddhaism, 
or chose the Parsic mode of representation by means of symbols. 

If we consider the two systems of religion which Mani placed in 
combination with Christianity, in their relation to the latter, the whole 
matter will shape itself as follows. The religion of Zoroaster presents, 
in the doctrine concerning the conflict between the kingdoms of good 
and of evil, concerning the mission of the servants of Ormuzd to exert 
a plastic influence on the world, and thus to counteract the destructive 
influence of Ahriman—%in the doctrine concerning the final victory 
awaiting the kingdom of light, and the regeneration of the world, which 
is to purify it from all disorders, and concerning the resurrection, a 
point of coalescence and union with Christianity. Moreover, the cen- 


1 This difference of Sansara and Nir- 
wana is a main position of Buddhaistic 
wisdom ; see Schmidt’s Essays on the fun- 
damental doctrines of Buddhaism, in the 
Memoirs of the Petersburg Academy of 
Sciences, vol. I. 1832, p. 223 and 235,— 
also, the History of the Eastern Moguls, 
written from the Buddhaistic point of view, 
with a German translation by Schmidt, 
published at Petersburg in 1829, where on 

age 271 it is said of a wise man, that “he 
followed the doctrine of the nothingness of 
all things, and attained to the knowledge 
that there is nothing terrible either in San- 
sara or Nirwana.” We may here compare 
the language of Jacob Boehman, which, it 


must be allowed, admits of being under- 
stood also in another sense than that of the 
pantheistic Buddhaism:—‘“ He to whom 
eternity is as time, and time as eternity, is 
delivered from all strife.” I have taken for 
the basis of my exhibition of Buddhaist 
doctrines, particularly the essays of Schmidt 
just referred to, and those which are found 
in the same collection of Memoirs for the 
year 1834, vol. 11. 

2 So says Alexander of Lycopolis, in his 
work against the Manicheans, in Combefis. 
Greecorum patrum auctarium novissimum. 
Paris, 1672, P. Il. f. 4, where he says of 
Mani: ἀρχὰς ἐτίϑετο ϑεὸν καὶ ὕλην. 


MANICHEANS. 483 


tral idea of Christianity, the idea of redemption generally, might per- 
haps lend itself to the here pre-supposed need of purification ; but the 
more determinate apprehension of the notion of redemption, the doc- 
trine of a personal, historical Redeemer, was something foreign to this 
system. On the other hand, Buddhaism testifies most distinctly to the 
consciousness of the need of a redemption, and that too of a redemption 
brought about through a true entrance of the divine essence into the 
forms of human nature — the incarnation of the Buddha. But this re- 
semblance between Christian and Buddhaistic ideas is still only an ap- 
parent one ; since the Christian notion of the redemption and of the 
Redeemer is conditioned by the Christian notion of that from which 
man is to be redeemed, the notion of sin, and of Him who is the su- 
preme causality of the redemption, of God. But the Christian notion 
of sin, which is grounded on the freedom of the creature, is foreign to 
Buddhaism. The world of appearance, the Sansara, is, in so far as it 
holds the spirit in oppression and confinement, the cause of all evil. 
Hence the tempter, in the sense of Buddhaism, who answers to Satan 
in the Christian representation, is not an intelligence fallen from his al- 
legiance to God, nor even, as in the Parsic system, an originally evil 
principle ; but he is the king of the Shimnus, (Demons,) standing at 
the head of the third world, which is the world of sensual pleasures and 
of changeable forms, who, for the purpose of keeping the souls confined 
in the Sansara, of preventing them from rising to the Nirwana, charms 
and deceives them with many a delusive show ;— nature personified, 
which seeks to retain everything within her enchanted circle, whose en- 
ticements the spirit must resist in order to attain to freedom. Redemp- 
tion is therefore the release of the soul from the bonds of Sansara, from 
the circle through which the spirits fettered in the bonds of nature 
must wander, — the metempsychosis, the spirit’s return to itself. The 
final end is the becoming Nirwana. That whereby this end is reached, 
is coming to the knowledge of the essence of the spirit, and of the 
world of appearance. And as Buddhaism knows no personal God, but 
substitutes in place of him the general notion of spirit; it follows that 
it could have nothing to say on the subject of God becoming man in a 
determinate person, — of a redemption accomplished by this person once 
for all; but a multitude of Buddha manifestations are supposed, which 
found the beginnings of the different periods in the history of the world ; 
and every man, by freeing himself from the bonds of the Sansara, is 
capable of raising himself finally to the dignity of a Buddha; for in all 
there existed in fact one and the same spirit. In Mani’s doctrine con- 
cerning Christ, and concerning the elects, we shall find much which is 
᾿ affinity with these views, only mixed up with Parsic and Christian 
ideas. 

In its determination of the ultimate end to which the conflict of the 
kingdom of light with the kingdom of darkness is to lead, Parsism ap- 
proaches nearer to Christianity than Buddhaism; for what the latter 
considers as the ultimate end of the redemptive manifestations of 
Buddha is, to deprive nature of spirit, and after the spirit shall have 
gathered to itself every kindred element held bound under the fetters 


484 MANI’S LIFE 

of Sansara, its return to the original unity of the universal spirit. We 
shall see how Mani’s doctrine agrees in this respect more with Buddha- 
ism than with Parsism. Taking the whole together, we cannot deny, 
that although Buddhaism comprises in itself, besides the notion of re- 
demption, insulated practical elements, such as the doctrine of self-sac- 
rificing love, self-denial, which might properly be received into a Chris- 
tian connection, yet in the main Parsism has more that is in affinity 
with Christianity than Buddhaism, and that the predominant spirit of 
speculative Buddhaism might easily exert an influence on the Christian 
doctrines brought in connection with it of such sort, as to deprive them 
of their true Christian substantiality ;—-a remark which we shall find 
corroborated by a closer examination of Manicheism. 

When we have convinced ourselves of the fact, that an outward and 
inner connection exists between Manicheism and Buddhaism, the result 
we have arrived at may also have some tendency to modify our views 
respecting the relation of several Gnostic systems to Buddhaism. It 
requires, no doubt, especial caution to avoid falling into the error of 
tracing to such outward influences, what may be satisfactorily and sufhi- 
ciently explained from inward similarity of spirit.1. Analogies of this 
sort, having their origin in the mind, independent of outward influences, 
will be found often recurring in the historical development of Christian- 
ity, wherever corruptions of purely Christian truth have sprung up ; — 
these will betray themselves precisely in this, that the earlier stages of 
religious development became once more dispersedly (sporadically) in- 
termingled and confounded; and to this category will belong also the 
pantheistic element of Buddhaism.? But now if we find in Manicheism 
so much that is in affinity with the earlier Gnostic systems, and the 
derivation of the former from the influence of Buddhaism is a point set- 
tled on historical grounds, the question may arise, perhaps, whether we 
have not to suppose a common source, from which those earlier systems 
drew as well as this last ?° 

Let us now first cast a glance at the early education of Mani. Re- 
lating to his history, we possess two distinct sources of information, which 
agree in only a few particulars, while in all other respects they are in 
direct contradiction to each other, the Greek and the Oriental sources. 
The account of Cyril of Jerusalem, of Epiphanius, of the ecclesiastical 
historians in the fourth and fifth centuries, all poimt to one common 


1 Thus Schmidt, in his Essay on the af- 
finity of gnostico-theosophie doctrines with 
the religious systems of the East, especial- 
ly Buddhaism, (Leipsic, 1828,) has evident- 
ly gone too far in this. 

2 When, in the legends of Buddhaism, it 
is related of a Buddha, that he addressed 
himself to fishes and birds, and that these 
devoutly listened to him, and thus the way 
was prepared for the emancipation of the 
spirit imprisoned in these creatures from 
the bonds of Sansara, the story is entirely 
consistent with the position held by this 
pantheistic, religious consciousness. But, 
on the other hand, when we find a similar 


story occurring in the life of St. Francis, 
we see in this latter case, how nearly the 
aberration of an eccentric religious feeling 
may graze on a foreign position, which re- 
fuses to enter into the connection of Chris- 
tian consciousness. 

8 For example, the gradual de-spiritual- 
izing of the world in the Ophitic system ; 
the completely Buddhaist idea, that he who 
has attained to the Nirwana in the midst of 
the Sansara, is lord over the Sansara, can 
perform all miracles; that he is even supe- 
rior to the mundane deities, who are beings 
still subject to change, in Carpocratianism. 


AND EDUCATION. 485 
source ;!— the Acts of a disputation, said to have been held with | 
Mani, by Archelaus, bishop of Cascar.*?- But those Acts have come 
down to us, to say the least, in a very questionable shape. With the 
exception of some few fragments, which have been preserved in the 
Greek, they appear only in a Latin translation from the Greek document, 
and this Greek work is perhaps nothing more than an unfaithful version 
from the Syriac.? These Acts manifestly contain a disconnected story, 
savoring in no small degree of the romantic. Although there is some 
truth lying at bottom —as we must allow there is much in the represen- 
tation of the doctrines which wears the appearance of truth, and 18 
confirmed also by its agreement with other representations, — yet the 
Greek author seems, from ignorance of Eastern languages and cus- 
toms, to have introduced a great deal that is untrue, by bringing in 
and confounding together discordant stories, to the neglect of all criti- 
cism, and with an unsparing indulgence of exaggeration. How difficult 
it was for a Greek to transport himself out of his own world, and to 
form any just conception of national peculiarities wholly foreign to his 
own, is what every one knows. 

In some few points, we may, even with such scanty means as we 
possess for deciphering this historical enigma, come upon the trace of 
the misapprehended facts lying at the bottom of these stories. The 
first origin of the Manichean doctrines is to be derived from a Saracen 
merchant, Scythianus by name, who, it is said, by many journeys to Asia, 
Egypt and Greece, accumulated a large fortune, and at the same time 
acquired an intimate knowledge of the Oriental and of the Greek phi- 
losophies. This Scythianus lived not far from the times of the apostles 
—a statement indeed which the story itself proves is an anachronism ; 
for otherwise Mani would have lived but a few generations after the 
same period. ‘The heir and disciple of Scythianus is said to have been 
a certain Terebinth, who afterwards called himself Buddas. We have 
already stated what, without any question, is to be understood here by 
the name Buddas.’ Now if it is clear, that by Buddas we are not to un- 


1 Eusebius, who wrote before this source 
of information became known, could say 
nothing relative to Mani’s personal history. 

2 Tf there is no mistake here in the name, 
—if it was not rather Carrhe, ( 1777,) in 


Mesopotamia, — according to what we must 
allow to be a very uncertain conjecture. 

8 Jerome reports, (de vit. illustr. 72,) that 
these Acts were written originally in Syriac ; 
but the first oriental author who shows any 
acquaintance with these Acts wes a church- 
teacher, who wrote about the vear 978, Sev- 
erus, bishop of Asmonina in Egypt. See 
Renaudot hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 40. His 
. account differs, however, in many respects, 
from the revision of the Acts which has 
come down to us. It is indeed much more 
simple; a fact which seems to show that 
his copy of the Acts was not the same with 
ours, but another of the same kind; and 
perhaps the original from which ours was 
derived. Heraclian, bishop of Chalcedon, 


41* 


says, (Photius, cod. 95,) that a certain He- 
gemonius was the compiler of those Gre- 
cian Acts. 

1 Beausobre properly rejected the West- 
erm narratives, whose want of authenticity 
he satisfactorily proved, and confined him- 
self wholly to the Oriental. The objections 
urged by Mosheim against this course, pos- 
sess but little force. 

5 It has been justly observed, that the 
Greek name Τερεβίνϑος is perhaps only a 
translation of the Chaldee 9013, by which 
in the Targums the Hebrew word TON is 


rendered, which the Alexandrians translate 
Τερεβίνϑος. Another hypothesis has been ° 
started by Ritter, in the work above referred 
to, p. 29, viz. that the Grecized name Tere- 
binthos is based on a predicate of Buddha, 
originating in those countries where Mani 
became acquainted with Buddhaism, — 
Tere-Hintu, lord of the Hindoos. It is a 
point on which nothing certain can be as- 


486 MANI’S LIFE 


derstand any historical person, the name Scythian also, as the designa- 
tion of a historical individual, becomes thereby suspicious. It is very 
natural to take it as simply a geographical name, having reference to 
those populations among which Buddhaism first extended itself. Mean- 
while we venture not, however, to express a decided opinion on the 
point, as letters of Mani, addressed to a person of this name, are cited.} 

The Oriental accounts possess a great deal more internal coherence 
and consistency. They are found, it is true, in historians of much 
more recent date than the Grecian sources; but the Oriental writers 
have undoubtedly made use of older records, in availing themselves of 
which, they were not liable to fall into the same errors with the Greeks.” 

To understand the appearance of such a man as Mani, we must fig- 
ure to ourselves the circumstances and relations under which he was 
educated. By birth he was a Persian; but it may be a question, 
whether the name of the country should be understood here in the 
stricter sense, or whether it refers only to some province belonging to 
the great Persian empire. In favor of the latter, might be adduced 
the fact that Mani composed his works in the Syriac language ; whence 
we might infer that he was a native of one of those provinces of the Per- 
sian empire, where Syriac was the vernacular tongue. This fact, how- 
ever, byitself, proves nothing ; for even without this supposition, it would 
easily admit of being explained, that as the Syriac, through the inti- 
mate connection of the Persian Christians with the Syrian church, 
might even thus early have become the language of books among the Per- 
sian theologians, — so Mani may have been induced to employ this lan- 
guage, (although it was not his native tongue,) hoping by this means to 
promote the more general introduction of his doctrines into other coun- 
tries. It is said, that he sprang from a family of the Magians, (the 
Persian sacerdotal caste ;) that at the age of manhood he passed over 
to Christianity, and became presbyter of a church in Ehvaz or Ahvaz, 
principal city of the Persian province Huzitis ;— whatever may be the 
accuracy of these statements. At any rate, it is quite probable that 
Mani was educated in the religion of Zoroaster, and embraced Christi- 
anity at some later period of life. 

We are not sufficiently informed with regard to his early history to 
be able to determine whether, in the outset, he abandoned the religion 
of his fathers and embraced Christianity from honest conviction, and 
afterwards, repelled by the form in which the latter was presented in 
the church doctrine, was led to revive in his soul the fundamental ideas 
of his earlier religious mode of thinking, and now became satisfied that 
by combining it with these, he first placed Christianity in the true and 
proper light; or whether he had been attracted from the first only by 
the affinity of Christianity with many Persian ideas, without noting the 


certained. Possibly Terebinth may have Bibliotheque Orientale, sub y. Mani, —in 

been a historical person, to whom many the Persian historian Mirkhond’s History 

things ascribed to Buddha had been trans- of the Sassanides, cited in Silvestre de Sacy 

ferred. Mémoires sur diverses antiquités de la Perse. 
1 Vid. Fabricii bibl. Gree. vol. VII. f. Paris, 1793. In Abulpharag. and Pococke 

316. Specimen hist. Arab. 
2 The oriental narratives in Herbelot’s 


AND EDUCATION. ' 487 


essential difference between resembling ideas, according to their pecu- 
liar mode of apprehension and position in Christianity and in the Per- 
sian religion ; so that from the beginning he had only been constructing 
for himself a religious system of his own, by the fusion together of Per- 
sian and Christian elements. 

By the reéstablishment of the ancient Persian empire, after the ex- 
pulsion of the Parthians, the effort had been called forth among the 
Persians, to restore the ancient religion of their fathers, purified from 
foreign elements, to its original splendor. The consequence was, that 
disputes arose on the question, what was to be considered the pure doc- 
trine of Zoroaster; and particularly on several points which had been 
left undecided by the previous religious tradition, as for example, 
whether a primal essence was to be supposed, exalted above the two 
conflicting principles. Councils were held for the purpose of investi- 
gating the questions in dispute; and pretended prophets arose, who 
were for settling every difficulty by divine inspiration.! The religion 
of Zoroaster, which now acquired fresh power, and set itself to oppose 
all the foreign religions that had before been tolerated, was brought 
into collision also with Christianity, which had been suffered to make 
progress without disturbance under the Parthian government. Under 
such circumstances, the thought might shape itself, in a man of a lively 
and profound mind, like Mani, that he was called to be the author of 
such a reformation of Christianity, now corrupted by the intermixture 
of Judaism, as should sever it from its connection with the latter, and 
bring it into more intimate union with ideas of the Zoroastrian religion. 
Mani — as was afterwards done by Mohammed — declared himself to 
be the Paraclete, promised by Christ.2 By this he in nowise under- 
stood the Holy Ghost, but a human person, an enlightened teacher 
promised by Christ, who was to bring out still more distinctly the reli- 
gion revealed by him, in his own spirit, purify it from the corruptions 
of Ahriman, especially from those which had sprung from the inter- 
mingling of Judaism, and lead the faithful to the consciousness of those 
truths which men in the earlier times were not yet in a condition to 
understand. By him that perfect knowledge should be given, of which 
Paul had also spoken as a knowledge reserved for some future period, 
1 Cor. 13: 10.8 Accordingly Mani could denominate himself at one 
and the same time the promised Paraclete and the apostle of Christ ; 
as indeed he began the letter in which he designed to unfold the fun- 
damental doctrines of his religious system (the epistola fundamenti, 
which was so famous among the Manicheans) with the following words: 
“‘ Mani, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the election of 
God the Father. These are the words of salvation from the eternal 
and living fountain.” 4 

He first made his appearance, with these pretensions, near the close 


1See Hyde hist. relig. vet. Pers. p. 276. antiq. ed. Basnage and Galland. bibl. patr. 
Mémoires sur diverses antiquités dela Perse T. V. f. 326. 
par S. de Sacy, p. 42. ὃ See Acta cum Felice Manicheo, lib. I. 
2 See Mirkhond in Sacy, p. 204.— Tit. ¢.9. Opp. Augustini, T. VIII. 
Bostr. c. Manich. lib. 111. in Canisii lect. 4 Augustin. c. epist. fundamenti, c. 5. 


488 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 


of the reign of the Persian king Shapur I., (Sapor,) about 270. To 
an ardent, profound mind, and lively imagination, he united various 
knowledge, and practical skill in the arts, of which he availed himself 
for the purpose of diffusing his doctrines. As a mathematician and 
astronomer, he is said to have been distinguished among his country- 
men;! the fame of his talents as a painter lasted for a long time in 
Persia. In the outset, he succeeded im conciliating the favor of that 
prince ; but when his heretical doctrines, as they were regarded by 
the Magians, came to be known, he was obliged, —if any confidence 
can be placed in the later legends, and the hypothesis was not invented 
simply to account for the different portions of which his doctrine is con- 
stituted, —to seek safety from persecution by flight. He now made 
distant journeys to India, and even to China; and tarried for a con- 
siderable time in the province of Turkistan. At all events, an impor- 
tant effect in the shaping of his system is to be ascribed to his longer 
residence in the last-mentioned province, where he became acquainted 
with Buddhaism; and this acquired so great an influence on his mind, 
that a peculiar stamp was thereby given to his whole mode of thinking . 
and a wider range to his aims, which now embraced in their scope the 
blending together of all the three religions into one. From one of the 
grottos consecrated to Buddhaism, he issued forth, with those symbolic 
pictures which were designed to represent, for immediate intuition, the 
doctrines made known to him, as he pretended, in his retirement, by 
divine revelations. These emblems were long preserved in lively re- 
membrance among the Persians, under the name of Ertenki-Mani. 

After the death of Sapor, in 272, Mani returned to Persia, where 
he was well received, together with his pictures, by Hormuz, (Hormis- 
das,) Sapor’s successor. The latter assigned to him, as a safe place 
of residence, the castle of Deskereh at Chusistan in Susiana. But 
this prince, after a reign of less than two complete years, was suc- 
ceeded by Behram, (Varanes.) He also appeared at first favorably 
disposed towards Mani; but perhaps only in semblance, and with a 
view to lull him and his followers into security. He caused a disputa- 
tion to be held betwixt Mani and the Magians, of which the result was, 
that Mani was pronounced a heretic. Refusing to recant, he was flayed 
alive,” and his skin stuffed and hung before the gates of the city Djon- 
dishapur in 277,? to terrify his followers. 

Let us now proceed to unfold the Buddhaist-Zoroastrian-Christian sys- 
tem of doctrines taught by Mani. 

It is still a disputed question, whether, in the doctrine of Zoroaster, 
absolute Dualism is the starting-point, and the hypothesis of a common 
principle of derivation lying at the ground of both Ormuzd and Ahri- 
man — time without end and without beginning, the Zervan Acarene, 


1 Who, however, possessed no great know- 2A cruel mode of punishment, which 
ledge, doubtless, in these sciences. Yet it is was doubtless resorted to in the East. 
highly probable that a good deal in his sys- 8 The chronology in this case is, it must 


tem stood closely connected, even when di- be admitted, quite uncertain. 
vested of its mythical dress, with a partial 
and defective knowledge of these sciences. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 489 
answering to the Gnostic αἰὼν, βῦϑος, to the Neo-Platonic 6» — sprang 
first out of a speculative need of reducing the duality to a higher unity ; 
or whether the recognition of such an original unity was the original 
principle, and this had only become suppressed in conscious thought 
through the predominant dualistic form of the religion as a practical 
system of living. From the proclamation, still extant,! of the Persian 
general and Grand-vizier Mihr Nerseh, after his invasion of Armenia, 
in 450, it is clear, that the acknowledgment of a primal essence, which 
existed before the antithesis pronounced in the creation, was reckoned 
to the Persian orthodoxy. We find here a view of the matter which is 
akin to that Gnostic scheme that reduced the Dualism to a Monoism,? 
and supposed the antithesis of good and evil as something necessary in 
the evolution of life from God. The first germ of evil is here derived 
from the supreme essence, from the great god Zervan himself. This is 
the Perhaps, which God spake, the principle of doubt, of uncertainty, 
which must some time make its appearance, before everything could 
form itself out into a certain and stable existence.? The opposite doc- 
trine of an absolute Dualism, was maintained by the Magusveian sect,* 
and the latter was the scheme followed by Mani. Thus he was able 
to transfer the Persian Dualism into the Buddhaist opposition of spirit 
and matter. 

He supposed accordingly two principles, absolutely opposed to each 
other, with their opposite creations; on the one side God, the original 
good, from whom nothing but good can proceed, from whom all destruc- 
tion, punishment, corruption is alien,—the primal hght, from whom 
pure light radiates ; — on the other side, original evil, which can work 
only by destroying, decomposing, — whose essence is wild, self-conflict- 
ing uproar ; matter, darkness, out of which flow powers of an altogether 
corresponding nature, — a world full of smoke and vapor, and at the 
same time full of fire that burns only without shining. These two king- 
doms subsisted at first wholly separate from one another. The Su- 
preme God was the king of the empire of light, as the original source 
of an emanation-world in affinity with himself; and most nearly con- 
nected with him were these Adons, the channels for the diffusion of 
light from that primal light, to whom, as representatives of the Supreme 
God, was transferred his own name ; who therefore might be styled dei- 
ties, without infraction of the honor due to the primal essence alone.° 
In the letter in which Mani exhibited the fundamental doctrines of his 


1 First communicated by St. Martin in 
his Mémoires historiques et géographiques 
sur Arménie. Paris, 1819. T. II. p. 472, 
—but more fully, after another recension, 
in the history of the religious wars between 
Armenia and Persia, composed by the Ar- 
menian bishop, Eliszeus, and translated from 
the Armenian into English by Prof. New- 
man. London, 1830. P. 11, ff. 

2 See above, p. 375. 

8 This remarkable view is expressed in 
the following language. “Before heaven 
or earth existed, the great god Zervan 
prayed a thousand years, and spake: ‘ Was 


I perhaps to obtain a son, Vormist, (Or- 
muzd,) who will create heaven and earth ?’ 
and he begat two in his body, one by vir- 
tue of his prayer, the other, because he 
said perhaps.” The first was Ahriman, 
the son of doubt, the principle, which 
makes everything a question. We here 
perceive the fountain-head of later Chris- 
tian sects, in which Satan was designated 
as the first-born. 

4 See Shahristani, in Hyde, 1. c. p. 295. 

5 Like the Amshaspands, Ized of the 
Parsian religion. 


490 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 

religion,! he thus describes this Supreme God enthroned in his kingdom 
of light: “ Over the kingdom of light, ruled God the Father, eternal 
in his sacred race, glorious in his might, the truth by his very essence, 
ever blessed in his own eternal being, who bears within him wisdom 
and the consciousness of his life, with which he embraces the twelve 
members of his light, that is, the transcendent riches of his own king- 
dom. In each of his members are hid countless, immeasurable riches. 
But the Father himself, glorious in his majesty, incomprehensible in his 
greatness, has united with himself blessed and glorious Afons, in num- 
bers and greatness surpassing estimation, with whom this holy and most 
glorious Father lives, — for in his exalted kingdom, no needy or feeble 
being dwells. But his resplendent realms are so deeply grounded in 
the blessed earth of light, that no power exists by which they could 
ever be destroyed or shaken.’’? The powers of darkness were engaged 
in wild conflict with one another, till in their blind struggle they ap- 
proached so near the realms of light, that a glimmer penetrated to 
them for the first time from that before unknown kingdom. They now 
forgot their mutual strifes, and attracted im spite of themselves by the 
splendor of the light, combined with one another to penetrate into the 
kingdom of light, with a view to appropriate some of this light to them- 
selves.t There now seems to be something like inconsistency in Mani, 
when, after having ascribed to the empire of light an unshaken stabil- 
ity, he proceeds to speak of a danger threatening it, which rendered 
precautionary measures necessary, and could thus express himself: — 
‘Then the Father of the most blessed light beholds a vast desolation 
rising up from the darkness, and threatening his holy Atons, unless he 
opposed to it an extraordinary divine power,° at once to conquer and 
destroy the race of darkness — so that, after its destruction, the mhab- 
itants of the light might enjoy tranquillity.’’® Simplicius and Evodius 
have in fact here accused him of self-contradiction ; — but this charge 
applies rather to the mythical or symbolic form of representation, than 
to the train of thought which is therein embodied. The fundamental 
thought with Mani, as with the Gnostics, is this, — that the blind force 
of nature, which resists the godlike element, tamed and subdued by 
intermingling with it, should finally be rendered altogether powerless. 
And accordingly Mani conveys the Zoroastrian theory over into the 
Buddhaist, — that nature, in degrading, disintegrating and fettermg 
the spirit, was to bring about its own dissolution, and the final result 


1 The epistola fundamenti. 

2 Augustin. contra epist. fundamenti, 
e. 13. 

8 This earth of light, Mani did not con- 
ceive to be any thing distinct from the su- 
preme, primal essence, but all to be simply 
a shaping of the one divine light-essence. 

4 It is easy to perceive the idea lying at 
bottom, — that the evil principle is in con- 
flict with itself, and becomes one only in 
struggling against the good; such is the 
attractive power which the good exerts on 
evil itself; — an idea, it must be allowed, in 


direct contradiction with the dualistic theo- 
ry of an absolute evil. 

5 Aliquod nimium ac preeclarum et vir- 
tute potens nomen. In the Zoroastrian 
system, also, the Amshaspands are repre- 
sented as armed champions for the king- 
dom of light. 

6 The epistola fundamenti, in the work 
de fide contra Manicheos, c. 11, of which 
Evodius, bishop of Uzala in Numidia, was 
perhaps the author,—to be found in the 
Appendix to the 8th vol. of the Benedictine 
edition of St. Augustin. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 491 
would be that of the unspiritualized nature, nothing would be left be- 
hind but the dead restduwm, and this would fall a prey to utter annihi- 
lation! To this last result of all, according to the Buddhaistic view of 
the world, Mani indeed, in his doctrine of final causes, did not proceed, 
as we shall see. 

The ruler over the kingdom of light, in order to guard its boundaries, 
caused to emanate from himself the Zon, Mother of life.2 The name 
of this Genius denotes that it stands for the highest mundane soul, — 
that the divine life was now to separate itself from the unity of the light- 
kingdom, and in the conflict with the ungodlike element, resolve itself 
into individual existences. The mother of life, like the ἄνω σοφία of the 
Valentinian system, could not as yet be affected by the kingdom of 
darkness. Here too we find the distinction between the higher mun- 
dane soul belonging to the kingdom of light, and a reflection of it, 
which mixes itself with the kingdom of darkness.* ’This mother of life 
generates the primitive man, with a view to oppose him to the powers 
of darkness — the same idea of the dignity of man’s nature, which we 
observed before among the Gnostics.4 The primitive man, in conjunc- 
tion with the five pure elements, fire, light, air, water and earth, enters 
into the conflict. Here we recognize again the forms of intuition bor- 
rowed from Parsism— reverence towards an originally pure nature, 
which had only been corrupted by the interference of Ahriman. More- 
over, according to the Parsian doctrine, a life which had flowed out 
from the kingdom of light is acknowledged to exist in the original ele- 
ments. They were summoned to act as fellow-combatants against Ahri- 
man’s destroying influences, by means of their fructifying, life-giving 
power. But this would be an element at variance with the Buddhaistic 
view of nature; and we cannot fail to perceive in it the preponderant 
influence of the Zoroastrian spirit. Yet this is modified in Mani by the 
circumstance that matter does not mean the elements of actual nature, 
but the elements of a higher world, that which is itself but one radia- 
tion and form of the manifestation of the divine essence.° When Mani 
opposes to the five pure elements of the kingdom of light the five ele- 
ments of the kingdom of darkness, the only question is, whether the 
idea, that evil is ever the distorted image and counterfeit of the good, 
or the idea that from the kingdom of light forms must go forth to the 
conflict with the kingdom of darkness, which seem like those of the 


latter, —is the fundamental one. 


At all events, it was necessary to 


explain, how visible nature arose out of the event that matter, or the 


1See Schmidt’s Essay on the thousand 
Buddhas. See the Memoirs of the St. Pe- 
tersburg Academy. 1834. Vol. II. p. 66. 

2 Μήτηρ τῆς ζωῆς. 

8 Simplicius (in Epictet. f. 187, ed. Sal- 
mas.) aptly describes the Manichean doc- 
trine in this respect: Οὔτε τὸ πρῶτον dya- 
ϑὸν κακύνεσϑαι λέγουσιν, οὔτε τὰ ἄλλα 
ἀγαϑὰ τὰ προσεχῶς αὐτῷ συνόντα, τὴν μη- 
τέρα τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τὸν δημιουργὸν (the ζῶν 
πνεῦμα) καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ αἰῶνας. 

4 The πρῶτος ἄνϑρωπος of Mani may be 


compared with the προὼν ἄνϑρωπος of the 
Valentinians, the Adam Kadmon, and es- 
pecially the Kajomorts of the Zendavista, 
respecting whom many similar things are 
there said. It is quite probable that Mani 
adopted this Parsian idea into his system ; 
and we shall see hereafter, how he might 
find something of a kindred nature even on 
this side in Buddhaism. 

5 Quinque elementa nihil aliud quam 
substantia Dei. Augustin. contra Faus- 
tum, 1. XI. ο. 3. 


492 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 

kingdom of darkness, had seized upon certain divine essences or ele- 
ments of the spiritual substances ; and this corresponds entirely with the 
Buddhaistic scheme. 

But the primitive man is worsted in the conflict ; he is in danger of 
falling into the kingdom of darkness ; in this strait, he prays to the 
ruler of the light-kingdom ; and the latter, to assist him, causes the Living 
spirit to emanate.!| This Spirit raises him up once more to the king- 
dom of light; but meanwhile the powers of darkness had succeeded in 
swallowing a part of the armor of the first man, and part of his light- 
essence ; which is the mundane soul, now mixed with matter.2 Here 
again we perceive the affinity of Mani’s ideas with those of the Gnos- 
tics; for according to the latter, too, the κάτω σοφία was delivered, it is 
true, by means of the Soter sent to her assistance, from the kingdom 
of the Hyle ; but still a seed of the divine life had fallen down into 
matter, and this must now go through a process of purification and de- 
velopment. It must so come about, that by the magical power of the 
divine life, of the light of the soul, or of the spirit, the wildly tumultuous 
kingdom of darkness shall be tamed in spite of itself, and finally ren- 
dered powerless.? The subjugation of that tumultuous and blind Na- 
ture-power is in fact the end aimed at in the creation of the world. 
Mani, it is said, endeavored to illustrate his doctrine by the following 
parable. A good shepherd sees a lion plunge into the midst of his 
flock. He digs a pit, and casts into it a ram; the lion springs rave- 
nously to the spot to devour his prey, but in so doing falls into the pit, 
from which he cannot extricate himself. The shepherd, however, finds 
means of delivermg the ram, and keeps the lion confined in the pit, 
thus rendering him harmless to his flock. In like manner is the king- 
dom of darkness rendered harmless; the souls it has devoured are 
finally delivered, and restored back to their native element. 

After the living spirit had raised man once more to the kingdom of 
light, he made preparations for the process of purifying the souls mixed 
in with the kingdom of darkness; which is the final cause of the entire 
creation, and the end aimed at in the whole course of the world.® 
That class of souls which had not been affected by mixing with matter 
or the nature of darkness, he raised above this earth, and placed in the 
sun and the moon, that from thence they might send forth their influ- 
ence to release and draw back again to themselves, by means of the 
refining processes in the evolution of vegetable and animal hfe, their 
kindred souls, which were scattered through all nature, and held in 
bondage by the kingdom of darkness. 


1 The ζῶν πνεῦμα occurs also in the Gnos- 
tic systems, which contain a good deal that 
is analogous to Manicheism. Actis Thome, 
ed. Thilo, p. 17. 

2 The ψυχὴ ἀπώντων. 

8 Titus of Bostra (c. Manich. lib. I. ὁ. 


12,) well describes the Manichean doctrine i 


in the following words: ‘O ayadig δύναμιν 
ἀποστέλλει τινὰ, φυλάξουσαν μὲν δηϑὲν 
τοὺς ὅρονς, τὸ δ' ἀληϑὲς δέλεαρ ἐσομέ- 


νην εἰς ἀκούσιον τῇ ὕλῃ σωφρονισ- 

μόν, ἐδέϑη τρόπον τινὰ ὥσπερ ϑη- 
ίον. 

4 Disputat. ο. Archelao, ec. 25. This par- 

able wears every mark of genuineness; it 

is at least wholly in the spirit of Maniche- 


sm. 
5 As in the Valentinian system, the Soter 


begins to put forth his influence, after he . 


has been first raised to the Sophia. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 493 


Conformably with his Buddhaistico-Zoroastrian view of the world, 
Mani saw the same conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of spirit and of 
matter, the same process of purification, gomg on in the physical as in 
the moral world. But in his manner of carrying this process through, 
he confounded together the physical and ethical elements, in contradic- 
tion to the essence of Christianity, which, by freemg religion entirely 
from the system of nature, separated these two elements from one 
another. As the religious system of the Persians assigned an impor- 
tant place to the sun and moon, in the conflict in the physical and spirit- 
ual world between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and in carrying forward the 
universal process of development and purification ; so was it also in the 
system of Mani. Very nearly the same that the system of Zoroaster 
taught concerning Mithras, as the Genius (Ized) of the Sun, Mani 
transferred to his Christ, — the pure soul, sending forth its influence from 
the sun and from the moon. Representing the soul as having sprung 
from the primitive man, he interpreted in this sense the biblical name, 
“Son of man” (υἱὸς ἀνϑρώπον,) and distinguishing between the pure 
and free soul, enthroned in the sun, and its kindred soul diffused 
throughout nature, and corrupted by its mixture with matter. So too he 
distinguished a son of man superior to all contact with matter and in- 
capable of suffering, from a son of man crucified, so to speak, and suf 
fering in matter.! Wherever the scattered seed pushed upward out of 
the dark bosom of the earth and unfolded itself in a plant, in its blos- 
som and its fruit, Mani beheld the triumphant evolution of the principle 
of light, gradually working its way onward to freedom from the bond- 
age of matter; he beheld how the living soul, which had been impris- 
oned in the members of the Prince of Darkness, loosens itself from the 
confinement, rises in freedom, and mingles with its congenial element 
the pure air, where the souls completely purified ascend to those ships 
of light (the sun and moon) which are ready to transport them to their 
native country. But whatever still bears upon it various blemishes and 
stains, is attracted to them gradually, and in portions, by the force of 
heat, and incorporates itself with all trees, with whatever is planted and 
sown. 

This may serve as an example of his mystical philosophy of nature, 
which is presented sometimes in strange myths, occasionally bordering 
on immodesty, but containing nothing which would appear singular to 
the Oriental imagination, — sometimes under the disguise of Christian 
expressions. ‘Thus the Manicheans could speak of a suffering son of 
man, hanging on every tree —of a Christ crucified in every soul; and 
in the entire world. ‘They could give their own interpretation to the 
symbols of the suffering Son of Man in the Lord’s supper. With the 
same, and even with still greater propriety, — for this confounding of 
religion with the theory of nature savored more of paganism than of 
Christianity — the Manicheans could employ the pagan fables as a dra 
pery for their ideas. Thus the boy Dionysius torn in pieces by the 
Titans, according to the mysteries of Bacchus, was considered by them 


1 The υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἐμπαϑῆς and the υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἀπαϑῆής. 
VOL. I. 42 


494 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 
nothing else than the soul swallowed up by the powers of darkness, the 
divine life rent to fragments by matter.} , 

The powers of darkness were now in danger of being gradually de- 
prived, through the influence of the spirit of the sun on the refining 
process of nature, of all the hight and life which they held imprisoned 
in their members. The soul on which they had seized, striving after 
freedom, and attracted by its kindred Sun-spirit, gradually liberates it- 
self and evaporates; so that at length, deprived of all its stolen light, 
the kingdom of darkness must soon be abandoned to its own intrinsic 
hatefulness and death. What was to be done? A being must be cre- 
ated, in whom the soul of nature, which was striving to liberate itself, 
might be securely charm-bound —in whom all the scattered light and 
life of nature, all that the powers of darkness had held imprisoned in 
their members, and of which they were gradually deprived by the pow- 
ers of the Sun, might converge. This is man, the image of that prim- 
itive man, — hence destined by his very form for domimion over nature.” 
The fact was as follows. That majestic shape of light, the primitive 
man (which probably also belonged to the Son of Man enthroned in the 
Sun)? shines down from the sun into the kingdom of darkness, or mate- 
rial nature. The powers of darkness are seized with longing after the 
shape of light, but at the same time with dismay. ‘Their prince now 
addresses them: ‘‘ What seems to you to be the great light that yon- 
der breaks forth? Behold how it shakes the pole, how it strikes down 
multitudes of our powers! It behooves you, therefore, to give up to 
me whatever light you may have in your power; thus will I make an 
image of that lofty one, who appeared so glorious, through which we 
shall be able to rule, and one day liberate ourselves from our abode in 
darkness.”” Thus human nature is the image, in this world of dark- 
ness, of a higher existence; by which image the higher existence itself 


1 See Alex. Lycopol. c.5.— We may in- its influence through the air on the refining 


sert here some peculiarly characteristic 
passages from Manichean writings, in proof 
of the exposition given above. From Ma- 
ni’s work entitled Thesaurus: “ Viva ani- 
ma, que earundem (adversarum potesta- 
tum) membris tenebatur, hac occasione 
laxata evadit, et suo purissimo aéri misce- 
tur: ubi penitus ablute anime adscendunt 
ad lucidas naves, que sibi ad evectionem 
atque ad suze patrie transfretationem sunt 
preeparate. Id vero, quod adhuc adversi 
generis maculas portat, per sestum atque 
calores particulatim descendit, atque arbo- 
ribus ceeterisque plantationibus ac satis om- 
nibus miscetur.” Euodius de fide, c. 10. 
From Mani’s letter to the Virgin Menoch : 
“ Agnoscendo ex quo genere animarum em- 
anayeris, quod est confusum omnibus cor- 
poribus et saporibus et speciebus variis 
coheret.” Augustini opus imperfectum con- 
tra Julian. lib. III. § 172. A passage from 
the Manichean Faustus, who lived in the 
first half of the fifth century, in which the 
Holy Spirit is represented as the quicken- 
ing and fructifying power of God, exerting 


process of nature, and the doctrine of 
Christ’s birth from the virgin, (a doctrine 
which the Manicheans, being Docetz, could 
not admit in the proper sense,) as a symbol 
of the birth of that Jesus patibilis from the 
virgin womb of the earth, through the in- 
forming power of the Holy Spirit: “ Spiri- 
tus sancti, qui est majestas tertia, aéris hune 
omnem ambitum sedem fatemur ac diver- 
sorium, cujus ex viribus ac spiritali profu- 
sione terram quoque concipientem gignere 
patibilem Jesum, qui est vita ac salus hom- 
inum, omni suspensus ex ligno. Quaprop- 
ter et nobis circa universum, (all the pro- 
ducts of nature, as forms of the manifesta- 
tion of the same divine principle suffering 
in the bondage of nature, of the same Jesus 
patibilis,) et vobis similiter erga panem et 
calicem par religio est.” Augustin. c. Faust. 
lib. XX. 

2 Compare the kindred doctrine of the 
Ophites. 

8 Alexand. Lycopolit. ο. 4: Eixéva δὲ ἐν 
ἡλίῳ ἑωρᾶσϑαι τοιαύτην, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ τοῦ 
ἀνϑρώπου εἶδος. 


495 


is to be attracted hither, and held fast m its domain. When they 
heard this, after long deliberation among themselves, they deemed it 
best to comply with the proposal, for they had no confidence that they 
should be able long to retain this light among themselves.1 They thought 
it expedient, therefore, to entrust it to their prince, since they had no 
doubt that in this way they should be able to gain the supremacy. 
The powers of darkness proceed now to intermarry and produce chil- 
dren, in whom their common powers and natures are once more repre- 
sented ; and all they themselves possess, of the essence of darkness and 
of light, is reproduced. All these, their children, the prince of darkness 
devours ;——he thus concentrates in himself all the substance of light 
that had been dispersed among the several powers of darkness, — and 
now generates man, in whom therefore all the powers of the kingdom 
of darkness and of light which had here been mixed together, are 
united. Man is therefore a microcosm, —a copy of the entire world 
of light and darkness, a mirror of all the powers of heaven and of the 
earth.2 What is here narrated, continually recurs as a fact in the 
course and movement of nature ;—at the birth of each man, the wild 
Forces of matter, the powers of darkness, intermingle to produce hw- 
man nature, in which they mix together whatever they possess of the 
higher and of the lower life, in which they endeavor to bind fast the 
soul of nature, which is held captive by them, and which is striving to 
get free. 

We must here distinguish, in the Manichean doctrine, the symbolic 
and mythical forms of representation, running into the imagery of 
Parsism, from the ideas lying at bottom, which were clearly appre- 
hended by Mani, and correspond to the doctrines of Buddhaism. Mani 
says himself, that what then transpired, still continues to take place at 
the generation of each man, where the evil nature which forms the 
human body, matter, absorbs the powers of light, in order, by this inter- 
mingling of the powers of light and darkness, to form man.? From 
these words it is quite apparent, that in the action of the prince of 
darkness, as it is represented in that fiction, the operation by which 
man is formed in the laboratory of spirit-absorbing nature, is meant to 
be exhibited under certain forms of sense. It is doubtless only another 
mythical mode of representing the same idea, when it is said, that the 
powers of darkness, to escape that threatened lot of despiritualization, 
which would be their utter destruction, and to hold fast the spirit in 
their own region, combine to create man, probably after the image of 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 


1 That is the main point. 

2 Mani, in the seventh book of the work 
bearing the title of Thesaurus, (citedin Au- 
gustin. de natura boni, c. 46,) says: “ Con- 
struebantur et contexebantur omnium im- 
agines, coelestium ac terrenarum virtutum ; 
ut pleni videlicet orbis id, quod formabatur, 
similitudinem obtineret.” We have follow- 
ed the method of construing the Manichean 
system, disputed by Mosheim, according to 
which, man was formed at a later period 
than the rest of nature, for the very pur- 
pose of holding the fleeting soul in nature 


fast.’ In favor of this view, speak, for the 
most part, all the passages in our fragmen- 
tary sources of information, and the whole 
analogy of the Manichean system confirms 
it. Comp. Baur’s work on the Manichean 
system of religion, p. 120, ff. One passage 
from Alexander of Lycopolis, which for- 
merly seemed to me against this view, has 
been more correctly explained by Baur. 

8 Augustin. de natura boni, c. 46: Sicuti 
etiam nunc fieri videmus, corporum forma- 
tricem naturam mali inde vires sumentem 
figurare, ita etiam antedictus princeps ete. 


496 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 

the heavenly, primitive man, that this form might exercise an entranc- 
ing power over the soul, that strove to return to its original fountain, 
and the latter be thus bound to the earth ;1 just as, according to the 
Buddhaistic doctrine, the prince of the Shimnus seeks, by various 
attractive and enticing objects, to hold fast the souls within his own 
kingdom, and to prevent them from elevating themselves to Nirwana. 
In all these forms of representation, we find the same fundamental idea, 
marking the destiny by which the spirit is held bound to nature, but is 
yet, through the transition-point of the human organism, conducted on- 
ward to its freedom. 

While the souls dispersed and scattered in the other kingdoms of 
nature, or the light-essence, is prevented by the predominance of mat- 
ter from becoming conscious of itself, the light-nature, on the other 
hand, which is concentrated in man, attains to a conscious and free evo- 
lution. The spirit, fettered by matter in the rest of nature, becomes 
first released from these fetters in man, comes first, in him, to itself. 
Here first begins the realm of consciousness and of freedom, the spirit 
emancipated from the bonds of natural necessity. Man, therefore, in 
the Manichean, as in the Buddhaistic system, occupies the loftiest post- 
tion ; — he forms the transition-point, conditioned by the act of freedom, 
to the complete disenthralment of the spirit that rises wholly above the 
cycle of metempsychosis to a reunion with the kingdom of light. Ac- 
cording to the Buddhaistic system, he is the necessary transition-point 
to the becoming Nirwana.” 

As the universal mundane soul seeks to subject to itself matter in 
the mass, in the great mundane bodies, so the human soul, that is of 
the same derivation, should govern this corporeal world im its details. 
‘The first soul,’ said Mani, “‘ which flowed from the God of light, re- 
ceived this structure of the body for the purpose of subduing it to its 
own bit.”3 The soul of the first man, as standing yet nearer to the 


1See Titus of Bostra, in the preface to 
the third book of his work against the Man- 
icheans, (in Canisii lect. antiqu. ed. Bas- 
nage, Antverp. 1725, T. 1. f. 137:) ‘Exao- 
τος τῶν τῆς ὕλης ἀρχόντων ἐμόρφωσεν Eav- 
τὸν εἰς ϑήραμα τῆς ψυχῆς, ---- ἀπα of Adam, 
as their production, ὄργανον ἐπιϑυμίας καὶ 
δέλαρ τῶν ἄνωϑεν ψυχῶν. And that some- 
thing is here represented as once beginning, 
which continually perpetuates itself in the 
generation of men, appears from what 
Mani says in his letter to the virgin Menoch, 
cited in Augustin. opus imperfect. contra 
Julian. 1. Ill. ο. 174: Sicut auctor anima- 
rum Deus est, ita corporum auctor per con- 
cupiscentiam diabolus est, ut in viscatorio, 
(analogous to that former bait whereby the 
souls were bound to bodies.) per concupi- 
scentiam mulieris, unde diabolus aucupa- 
tur, etc. 

2 According to the Buddha doctrine, man 
is in this respect superior even to the gods, 
who enjoy a life of serene blessedness, en- 
during through many periods of the world ; 
for, like all individual existence, so too the 


life of the gods must some time or other 
come to an end, while only in the Nirwana 
is to be found an eternal rest beyond all 
possible change. By the brief duration of 
his existence, and the multiform trials and 
sufferings which fall to his lot, man is ad- 
monished to strive after that higher end. 
But the gods, through default of such ad- 
monition, may easily be drawn away from 
that highest end, and become so fettered to 
their individual existence, which, however, 
is one of the changeable forms of the spirit, 
as to forget to aspire to anything beyond it. 
To man, in this world of trials and con- 
flicts, various means are given of rendering 
himself, — by a series of meritorious works, 
actions conditioning destiny, — worthy of 
the Nirwana; but these opportunities are 
wanting to the gods. See Schmidt's Es- 
says, above cited, vol. II. p. 87. : 1834. 

3 Oper pretium est, advertere, quia pri- 
ma anima, que a Deo luminis manavit, 
accepit fabricam istam corporis, ut eam 
freno suo regeret. Mani’s words, in his 
letter to the virgin Medoch, in August. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 497 
original fountain of the kingdom of light, was therefore endowed with 
preéminent faculties. 

But the first man consisted, like each of his descendants, of two oppo- 
site elements, a soul still living in the full possession of its original pow- 
er, springing from and akin to the kingdom of light,! and a body derived 
from the kingdom of darkness, with a soul in affinity to it, and the 
blind, material faculty of desire originating in the same principle — the 
wild power of nature that resists the godlike, (the ψυχὴ dAoyoc.2) This 
element, affining to the kingdom of darkness, supplied a channel for 
the introduction of its influences. The powers of darkness must now 
come to see how the lightnature, concentrating itself in man, became 
thereby more powerful; and they must resort still to the same artifices 
by which they sought at first to hold fast in their kingdom the element 
of light which had fallen down into it, in order to retain under the ban 
of their kingdom, this spirit concentrated in the human nature, which 
threatened to free itself from the bonds of matter, and to mount up- 
ward to its original fountain. Hence they must seek to draw him down, 
by every possible enticement, to the world. They invited man, as it is 
symbolically expressed, to partake of all the fruits of the trees of Par- 
adise. Only they would hinder him from eating of the tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil; that is, would suppress in him the con- 
sciousness of that which is in harmony with his true nature, and of that 
which is in contradiction to it, — would make him worldly. Yet an 
angel of light, or Christ himself, (the Spirit of the sun,) counteracted 
their artifices. This was the truth which was found in the narrative 
in Genesis concerning Paradise and the forbidden fruit, considered 
from the Manichean point of view. They believed that in the represen- 
tation of that earliest record, they saw only the influence of the evil 
principle, when the parts were reversed, and what should have been 
ascribed to the powers of darkness, was transferred to God, and what 
belonged to the Genius of light, applied to the serpent, the symbol of 
Ahriman.3 


opus imperfect. c. Julian. lib. III. § 186. ὃ This view of the matter we must as- 


T. X. opp. ed. Benedictin. P. 11. f. 1122. 
Paris, 1690. 

1 Quasi de prime facta flore substantiz, 
(namely, lucis Dianz,) says Mani, in his 
letter to a certain Patricius. L. 6. 

2 Baur has endeavored to show, that the 
hypothesis of two souls in man, which can- 
not be demonstrated from the words of 
Mani himself to be a Manichean doctrine, 
does not belong to the system. It may be, 
perhaps, that the expression “two souls” 
is something foreign to Manicheism; since, 
according to Mani’s doctrine, soul, spirit, 
light, godlike, are identical notions. But 
the thing itself, which the opponents of 
Manicheistn, from their own point of view, 
have designated with this name, the hy- 
pothesis of such a motive principle in aftin- 
ity with matter, the fountain of sinful de- 
sires, agrees perfectly with the Manichean 
system. 

VOL. I. 42 


cribe to Mani, if we may venture to consid- 
er what is cited as spoken from the Mani- 
chean point of view, in the preface to the 
third book of Titus of Bostra against the 
Manicheans, towards the end, as containing 
the thoughts of Mani himself. At least, I 
can find nothing therein, as Baur professes 
to do, which is incongruous with the other 
ideas of Mani; but as I have unfolded it, 
with a constant reference to Baur’s objec- 
tions, it seems to me to agree perfectly well 
with this man’s spirit and train of thought ; 
although I allow, that it fornis no necessa- 
ry member of the Manichean systemgand 
that possibly some later person may™ave 
thus expounded the record in Genesis, con- 
templated from the Manichean point of 
view. Moreover, Augustin favors the sup- 
position that this was the Manichean doc- 
trine, (de Genesi contra Manicheos, lib. IT. 
§ 39): Sic isti credunt, quod serpens 1116 


498 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 

When the powers of darkness saw their plots against the light-spirit 
concentrated in human nature, which they would hold captive by every 
possible charm within the bonds of nature, thus defeated, they made 
trial of another expedient. They seduced the first man, through his 
associate Eva, to abandon himself to the impulses of carnal desires, 
that by so doing he might prove faithless to his light-essence, and make 
himself a slave to nature. The consequence was, that the soul, which 
in its original powers should have risen to the kingdom of light, became 
divided by propagation, and was bound once more to a material body ; 
so that the powers of darkness were enabled continually to repeat over 
what they had done in producing the first man. 

Since every thing depended on man’s learning how to distinguish 
from one another the two opposite elements of his nature, and since, 
according to the Manichean system, it is the doctrine of man’s origin, 
(anthropogony,) taken in connection with that of the origin of the 
world, (cosmogony,) which clears up this point, Mani taught that it 
was of the utmost importance to obtain a mght understanding of these 
doctrines. Accordingly, in his “ epistle of the foundation,” he says: 
“ Had it been given man to perceive clearly how the matter stood in 
relation to the origin of Adam and Eve, they would not have been sub- 
jected to a transitory existence and to death.’ And hence he writes 
to the virgin Menoch:! ‘ May our God himself enlighten thy soul, and 
reveal to thee his justice, that thou art the fruit of a divine stock.? 
Even thou art become light, since thou hast known what thou wert 
before — from what race of souls thou art sprung; which race, inter- 
mixed with all bodies, is connected with numberless forms; for as souls 
are begotten of souls, so the bodily structure is composed of the corpo- 
real nature. What is born of the flesh, then, is flesh, and what is born 
of the spirit is spirit. But know, that the spirit is the soul — soul from 
soul, flesh from flesh.””® He appealed to the practice of infant bap- 
tism — a practice, therefore, which must have already become general 
in the Persian church —as a proof that Christians themselves pre- 
supposed by their practical conduct the existence of such a stain in 
human nature. ‘J ask them,” says he in the letter above cited,* ‘is 
all sin actual sin? Why then does any individual receive the cleansing 
by water, before he has done a sinful act; since in lamself considered 
he has contracted no guilt? But if he has contracted no guilt, and yet 
must be cleansed, then by this action they do of themselves bear wit- 
ness to the derivation from an evil stock ; — yes, those very persons do 
so, whose fatuity keeps them from understanding what they say or what 
they imply in their own acts.”’ | 


Christus fuerit, et Deum, nescio quem, gen- 
tis tenebrarum, illud preceptum dedisse 
cofftieant, tanquam invideret hominibus 
scientiam boni et mali. 

1 Augustin. opus imperfect. ¢. Julian. lib. 
ΠΙ. § 172. 


8 According to his system of light-eman- 
ation, Mani could make no distinction be- 
tween the Spirit of God and the spirit of 
man, — between spirit and soul. This again 
coincided entirely with the Buddhaist doc- 
trine. 


2 The revelation consists precisely in 
this, that man is brought to a consciousness 
of his light-nature. 


4 Augustin. opus imperfect. ¢. Julian. lib. 
III. § 187. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 499 

The lightnature concentrated in Adam is the fountain-head, from 
which all human souls are derived; but on account of its continual 
division and contamination by matter, the spirit has lost much of the 
original power which it had when it gushed fresh from the kingdom of 
light. That original power of the free light-nature is what the law pre- 
supposes, in order to its being fulfilled. ‘ The law is holy,” said Mani, 
“but it is a holy law for the holy soul; the commandment is just and 
good, — but it is so for the gust and good soul.’”’! In another place,? he 
says, “If we do good, it is not a work of the flesh, for the works of 
the flesh are manifest, Galat. 5:19; or if we do evil, it is not the 
work of the soul, for the fruit of the spirit is peace, joy. And the 
apostle to the Romans exclaims, ‘ The good that I would, that do I not ; 
but the evil that I would not, that do I.’ There you hear the voice of 
the struggling soul, defending her freedom against the slavery of lust ; 
for she is pained that sin, that is, Satan, should work in her all manner 
of concupiscence. The authority of the law discovers to her its turpi- 
tude ; by the authority of the law she is brought to the consciousness 
of evil — since it condemns the works of lust, which the flesh admires 
and prizes; for all the bitterness which is felt in renouncing lust, is 
sweet to the soul — it is that by which she is nurtured and grows vig- 
orous. In fine, the soul of that man who abstains from all the pleas- 
ures of lust, is wakeful, becomes mature and progressive; but by the 
gratifications of lust, the soul is wont to be enfeebled.”’? Now, to pro- 
cure the final deliverance of his kindred nature, the soul, from the 
power of darkness, to quicken it anew, to give it the complete victory 
over the evil principle, and raise it upward to himself, it was necessary 
that the same Spirit of the Sun, which had thus far conducted the whole 
fining-process of nature, and of the spiritual world, — both of which, 
according to the principles of Mani’s system above explained, consti- 
tuted one whole, — should reveal himself in humanity.* 

But there can be no communion between light and darkness. ‘The 
light shines in the darkness,”’ said Mani, explaining in accordance with 
his own views the words of St. John, ‘but the darkness comprehends 
it not. The Son of primeval light, the Spirit of the Sun, was incapa- 
ble of entering into any union with a material body; he only clothed 
himself in a shadowy, sensible form, in order that he might be per- 
ceived by sensual men.” ‘The Supreme Light,” says he, in another 
fragment,° “‘ when it placed itself on a level with its own, being among 
material things, assigned to itself a body, although it is all of it but 
one nature.” In defence of his Docetism he cited the fact, explained 
after his own arbitrary manner, that Christ, on a certain occasion when 


ΕἼ, c. § 186. 

21,. c. § 177. 

8 Aucustin. opus imperfect. ο. Julian. lib. 
1 § 177. . 

* Concerning the incarnations of the sun 
in the old oriental systems of religion, cons. 
Creutzer’s Symbolik, last ed., vol. II. p. 53, 
207. It was wholly in accordance with the 
Manichean system, that the Manicheans, 


ie 
cited in Alexander of Lycopolis, (c. 24,) 
said, Christ as the νοῦς is τὰ ὄντα πάντα. 
So too, in the Actis Thome, p. 10: Κύριε, 

ἐν πᾶσιν Ov, καὶ διερχόμενος διὰ πάν- 
των, καὶ ἐγκείμενος πᾶσι τοῖς ἔργοις cov, 
καὶ διὰ τῆς πώντων ἐνεργείας φανερούμενος. 

5 In the letter to ἃ certain Adas or Addas. 
hing Biblioth. grec. ed. nov. Vol. VIL. 
. 316. 


500 MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 
the Jews would have stoned him, passed on untouched through the mul- 
titude ; also, that Christ, at his transfiguration, appeared to the disci- 
ples in his true form of light.) Jesus assumed the title of Christ or 
Messiah only by a catachresis, in accommodation to the notions of the 
Jews.2 The prince of darkness sought to bring about the crucifixion 
of Jesus, not being aware that he was superior to all suffering; the 
crucifixion was, of course, a mere semblance. This seeming transac- 
tion symbolized the crucifixion of the soul, sunk in matter, which the 
Spirit of the Sun would raise up to itself. As the crucifixion of that 
soul which was dispersed through all matter, served but to accomplish 
the destruction of the kingdom of darkness, so much more was this the - 
effect of the seeming crucifixion of the Supreme Soul. Hence Mani 
said, ‘‘The adversary, who was hoping to crucify the Saviour, the 
Father of the righteous, was crucified himself. What seemed to be 
done in this case is one thing; what was really done, another.” ® The 
Manichean theory, which represented the doctrine of Christ as a mere 
symbol, is clearly set forth in an apocryphal account of the travels of the 
apostles. During the agony on the cross, Christ appears to the 
afflicted John, and tells him that all this is done but for the sake of the 
lower populace® in Jerusalem. The human person of Christ now 
vanishes, and instead of it appears a cross of pure light, surrounded by 
a countless multitude of other forms, still representing, however, but 
one shape and one image, (a symbol of the various forms under which 
the soul manifests itself, although it is in truth but one and the same.) 
A divine voice, full of sweetness, issues from the cross, saying to him, 
“The cross of light is, for your sakes, called sometimes the Word, 
sometimes Christ; sometimes the Door, sometimes the Way; some- 
times the Bread, sometimes the Sun; sometimes the Resurrection, 
sometimes Jesus ; sometimes the Father, sometimes the Spirit; some- 
times the Life, sometimes the Truth; sometimes Faith, and sometimes 
Grace.” | 

Siding with the advocates of an absolute Dualism among the Per- 
sians, Mani held the aim and purpose of the whole course of the world 
to be, not a reconciliation of the good and the evil principles — a sup- 
position which would have been at war with his whole theory —but a 
total separation of the light from the darkness, and the reduction of the 
latter to utter impotence. This was in accordance also with his Budd- 
haistic doctrine. Matter, after having been deprived of all its foreign 
light and life, was to be converted by fire into an inert mass.° All 
souls were capable, by means of their lightnature, of participating in 
the redemption ; but if they voluntarily surrendered themselves to the 


1 See the fragments from Mani’s letters, Augustin. The words of the Manichean 


Faustus, Augustin. ¢c. Faustum, lib. 32: 


2 

2'H τοῦ Χριστοῦ προσηγορία ὄνομά ἐστι 
καταχρηστικόν. I. ο. , 

8 From the epistola fundamenti, Euod. de 
fide, c. 28: Τὴν δύναμιν τὴν ϑείαν ἐνηρμό- 
oda, ἐνεσταυρῶσϑαι τῇ ὕλῃ. Alex. Ly- 
copolit. ¢. 4: Christus in omni mundo et 
omni anima crucifixus. Secundin. ep. ad 


Crucis ejus mystica fixio, qua nostra ani- 
mz passionis monstrantur vulnera. 

4 Ilepiodot ἀποστόλων. Concil. Nic. 11. 
Actio V. ed. Mansi. 'T, XIII. f. 167. 

5 TO κάτω ὄχλῳ. 

ὁ Tit. Bostr. I. ο. 30. Alex. Lycopolit. 
c. 5. 


MANICHEAN SYSTEM. 501 


service of sin or darkness, they would, in punishment, be banished, at 
the general separation of the two kingdoms, to the dead mass of matter, 
and stationed there as a watch over it. On this point Mani, in his 
epistola fundamenti, expressed himself as follows: ‘‘ The souls that have 
allowed themselves to be drawn, by the love of the world, away from 
their original nature of light; that have become enemies to the holy 
light, openly taken up arms for the destruction of the holy elements ; 
that have entered into the service of the fiery spirit, and by their 
deadly persecution of the holy church,! and of the elect who are found 
therein,” have oppressed the observers of the heavenly commandments, 
— these souls shall be precluded from the blessedness and glory of the 
holy earth. And since they have allowed themselves to be overcome 
by evil, they shall continue to abide with this race of evil; so that the 
peaceful earth and those realms of immortality are shut against them. 
This shall be their portion, because they have so devoted themselves to 
evil works as to become estranged from the life and freedom of the 
holy light. They will not be able, then, to find admittance into that 
kingdom of peace, but shall be chained to that frightful mass (of mat- 
ter or darkness left to itself,) over which too there must needs be a 
watch. Thus these souls shall continue cleaving to the things they 
have loved, since they did not separate themselves from them when it 
was time.”’? It is clear, that Mani did not entirely agree, in his doc- 
trine of the last things, either with Buddhaism, or with the Zoroastrian 
or the Christian system, but, by the fusion of the three, formed a pe- 
culiar theory of his own. 

In respect to the views of the Manicheans with regard to the sources 
of religious knowledge, they considered the revelations of the Paraclete, 
or Mani, as the highest and only infallible authority, whereby every 
thing else was to be judged. They went on the principle, that Mani’s 
doctrine embraced the absolute truths which enlighten the reason ; — 
whatever did not accord with them was contrary to reason, wherever it 
might be found. They received in part, it is true, the scriptures of 
the New Testament. But judging them by that standard principle 
which we have mentioned, they indulged in the most arbitrary criticism 
in applying them to points of doctrine or ethics.‘ Sometimes they as- 
serted that the original records of the religion had been falsified by 
various corruptions of the prince of darkness (tares among the wheat ;)® 
sometimes, that Jesus and his apostles had accommodated themselves to 
existing Jewish opinions, with a view to prepare men gradually for the 
reception of the pure truth; sometimes, that the apostles themselves, 
when they first appeared in the character of teachers, were entangled 
in various Jewish errors. Hence they concluded, that it was first by 
the teachings of the Paraclete, men were enabled to distinguish the true 
from the false matter in the New Testament. The Manichean Faustus 


1 That is, the Manichean sect. 4 This was said of them already by Titus 
2 Persecution of the Bramins of the Man- of Bostra, in the beginning of his third 
icheans, the Electi, was a crime of peculiar book. 
die, — wholly in accordance with the orien- 5 See, above, the similar principles of the 
tal ideas of the priests. Clementines respecting the Old Testament. 
8 De fide, c. 4. 


502 MANICHEAN CHURCH 


lays down the principles of Manicheism on this point, as follows :1 “* Of 
the New Testament we take only what is said to the honor of the Son 
of glory, either by himself or by his apostles ; and by the latter only 
after they had become perfect and settled m their faith. Of the rest, 
which was either said by the apostles in their simplicity and ignorance, 
while they were yet inexperienced in the truth; or inserted, with mali- 
cious design, by the enemy ; or incautiously asserted by authors? and 
transmitted to posterity; — of all this we desire to know nothing. I 
mean, namely, such assertions as these, that he was born shamefully of 
a woman ; that he was circumcised as a Jew; that he offered sacrifices 
like a heathen; that he was meanly baptized, led into the wilderness 
and miserably tempted of the devil.’? These same Manicheans, who 
slavishly submitted their reason to all that Mani had uttered, as if it 
was a divine revelation, were zealous for the rights of reason, and would 
have themselves regarded as the only rational class, inasmuch as they 
only knew how to separate what was consistent with, from what was re- 
pugnant to reason in the New Testament. The Manichean Faustus 
says, to him that believes without inquiry whatever is contained in the 
New Testament: ‘ Zhou blind believer of everything, who banishest 
reason, that gift of nature, from humanity ; who makest it a matter 
of conscience to decline judging between the true and the false ; thou 
art as afraid of separating the good from tts opposite, as children are 
of a ghost 8 

The Manichean sect had a church constitution of their own, suited 
to the distinction of the esoteric and the exoteric in the old religions of 
Asia ; — the two-fold mode of representation already described being, 
in truth, based on such a distinction existing within the sect itself. 
From what has been said, it is evident that Mani differed entirely from 
the majority of the founders of Gnostic sects. The latter wished to 
alter nothing in the existing Christian church; they were desirous only 
of introducing, in addition to the confession of faith for the ψυχικοί, a 
secret doctrine for the πνευματικοί, Mani, on the other hand, would 
have himself regarded as a man of God, endowed with divine authority 
for the reformation of the entire church. He was for giving the whole 
church, which had become wholly degenerated,‘ in his view, by the cor- 
rupt intermixture of Judaism with Christianity, a new shape. There 
was to be but one true Christian church, formed after the doctrines and 
principles of Mani. Within this church, there were to be two distinct 
grades. The great mass, consisting of the exoterics, were to constitute 
the Auditors. To them the writings of Mani might indeed be read, 
and his doctrines presented in their symbolical and mythical form ; — 
but they were to receive no explanation of their inner meaning. It 
may be imagined, to what pitch of expectation the minds of these Audi- 
tors would be raised when these enigmatical, mysterious sounding things 


1 Apud Augustin. lib. XXXII. 4 Hence he called other Christians, not 
2 Namely, the authors of the gospels, who Christians, but Galileans. Fabric. Bibl. 
were not apostles. grec. vol. VII. ἢ. 316. ' 


8 Augustin. c. Faust. lib. XVIII. also lib. 
XI. 


AND WORSHIP. 503 


were set before them, and, as usually happens, they were hoping to find 
lofty wisdom in what was so obscure and unintelligible. The Esote- 
rics were the Elect or Perfect, 1 — the sacerdotal caste, the Brahmins 
of the Manicheans.? They held a very important place, according to 
the Manichean doctrine, in the great refining process; they formed the 
link of transition between the earthly world, the circle of the metemp- 
sychosis, and the kingdom of light (between the world of Sansara and 
the Nirwana ;) — they constituted the last stadium of the purification 
of the spirit in redeeming itself from the bondage of nature. Their 
mode of life must answer to the position which they thus held — utter 
estrangement from the world, in the Buddhaist sense, which was ap- 
plied to Christian asceticism. They were to possess no worldly prop- 
erty, but were bound to lead a strictly ascetic and contemplative life ; 
to abstain from marriage, from all strong drinks, and from all animal 
food. They were to be distinguished for a holy innocence that shrunk 
from injuring any living thing, and religious reverence for the divine 
life which was diffused through all nature. They were not only to re- 
frain, therefore, from destroying or harming any animal, but even from 
pulling up an herb, or plucking a fruit or a flower. The whole round 
of their austere life was marked by three particulars, the signaculum 
oris, the signaculum manuum, and the signaculum’ sinus.2 The Audi- 
tors were to see that they should be provided with all that was neces- 
sary for their subsistence, and to reverence them as beings of a superior 
order. They should look upon them as their mediators, in direct com- 
munication with the kingdom of light. By their kindness to the Elect, 
the Auditors should enter into the companionship of their perfection ; 
and the defects adhering to them in consequence of their less rigid life, 
would be made up by the merits of their superiors ; — and among these 
defects were reckoned the neglecting to spare the life of animal or veg- 
etable, and the eating of flesh. The harm thus done was to be repaired 
by their sharmg their own means of subsistence with the Elect. The 
Importance attached by Buddhaism to the kind offices of the pious, 
shown towards the Buddhas who made their appearance in humanity, 
was transferred by the Manicheans to the kind offices shown by the 
Auditors to the Elect. And it was also according to the Buddhaist 
doctrine, that by repeated kind offices of this sort, shown in the differ- 
ent modes of human existence passed through by metempsychosis, one 
might gradually accumulate such a store of good works, as to arise at 
length to the dignity of a Buddha.® 

From this sacerdotal class were chosen the presiding officers of the 


1 Τέλειον, according to Theodoretus, —a 1 To this Ephrem Syrus refers, when he 
term which recurs once more among the accuses the Manicheans of bestowing abso- 
Gnostic Manichean sects of the middle age. lution in return for the bread given to them. 

2 Faustus, quoted by Augustin, calls them See the extracts published by A. F. W. von 


the sacerdotale genus. Wegner, in his work de Manichzorum in- 
; 8 See, 6. g., Augustinus de moribus Man- dulgentiis, Lips. 1827, p. 69, et seq. 
icheorum, c. 10, et seq. The word signac- 5 Comp. Schmidt’s Dissertation on the 


ulum seems to me to denote here, not a thousand Buddhas, in the Memoirs of the 
sign, but a seal, a means of safe keeping, as Academy of St. Petersburg. VI. series, 
a translation of the Greek σφράγις, applied, T. II. A. D. 1834, p. 88, ete. 

for instance, to the rite of confirmation. 


* 


504 MANICHEAN SACRAMENTS 

entire religious society. As Mani wished to have himself regarded as 
the Paraclete promised by Christ, so after Christ’s example, he chose 
twelve apostles. This institution contmued to exist; and twelve such 
persons, with the title of Magistri, had the government of the whole 
sect. At the head of these, was placed a thirteenth, who, as the leader 
of the sect, represented Mani. Subordinate to these, there were sixty- 
two bishops, answering to the sixty or sixty-two disciples of Jesus ;! 
and under these last were presbyters, deacons, and finally travelling 
preachers.” 

As to the mode of celebrating the sacrament of the supper among 
the Manicheans, it is a matter involved in much obscurity, owing to the 
fact that no credible account was known to exist about a transaction 
which was confined to the very secret assemblies of the Elect; for as 
the Auditors answered to the catechumens, and the Elect to the Fide- 
les in the dominant church, it is plain that the sacraments could be ad- 
ministered only among the Elect. The argument already alluded to, 
which Mani drew from the existing practice of infant baptism, has led 
some to suppose — though wrongly, as Mosheim has shown — they 
might infer the existence of the same practice among the Manicheans ; 
but in that place, Mani is simply refuting his opponents by adducing 
their own practice in favor of a principle which that practice necessa- 
rily presupposed; yet without expressing any approbation of the prac- 
tice. And it may be a question whether Mani would not object to this 
sign, as a Jewish rite derived from John the Baptist. Perhaps from 
the first, no other form of initiation prevailed among the Manicheans, 
than the one which we afterwards meet with, in the middle age, among 
the kindred sect of the Catharists. But the celebration of the Lord’s 
supper was an ordinance that could be easily explained in accordance 


1 According to the well-known various 
reading. 

2 Augustin. de heres. c. 32. 

8 From the words of the Manichean Fe- 
lix, lib. I. c. 19, ut quid baptizati sumus? 
it cannot be proved, that the Manicheans 
looked upon baptism as a necessary cere- 
mony of initiation ; for in this case too, the 
Manichean is employing rather the argu- 
mentum ad hominem; and very possibly 
he may have received baptism before he 
went over to the Manichean sect. Nor 
again can it in any wise be certainly inferred 
from the passage in the commonitorium, 

uomodo sit agendum cum Manichezeis, 
found in the Appendix to the 8th vol. of 
the Benedictine edition of Augustine,) 
where a distinction is made between those 
Manicheans who, on coming over to the 
Catholic church, were received among the 
catechumens, and those who, having been 
already baptized, were received among the 
Peenitentes, that baptism was a customary 
rite among the Manicheans,; and still less 
can it be inferred from the fact, that a dis- 
tinction of the same kind is made between 


the baptized and the unbaptized among the 
Elect themselves, who should come over to 
the Catholic church, that baptism was re- 
ceived by such of the Elect as chose it of 
their own free will; for here too the refer- 
ence may have been to such persons as, be- 
fore they joined the Manicheans, had been 
baptized in the Catholic church. Neither 
does it in any wise follow from the passage 
in Augustin, de moribus ecclesix, c. 35, 
where he represents the Manicheans as ob- 
jecting to the Catholic Christians, that the 
fideles et jam baptizati lived in the state of 
marriage, and in the family relation, pos- 
sessing and managing worldly property, 
that there were among the Elect a certain 
class of persons voluntarily baptized, who 
were alone bound under an inviolable vow, 
to a strictly ascetic life; for the fideles and 
baptizati— both terms being exactly sy- 
nonymous — answer generally here to the 
Electi among the Manicheans. Mosheim’s 
distinction, therefore, between baptized and 
unbaptized Electis, which in itself is not a 
very natural one, appears to be altogether 
arbitrary. 


AND CHARACTER. 505 


with the principles of their mystical philosophy of nature! Augustin, 
while he was a Manichean Auditor, had learned that the Elect cele- 
brated the Lord’s supper; but about the particular mode in which it 
was observed, he knew nothing.? It is only certain, that the Elect 
drank no wine. Whether, like the Encratites, the so called ὑδροπαρα- 
στάται, they used water instead of wine, or if not, what else they did, it 
is impossible to say. As a token of recognition, the Manicheans were 
used to give each other the right hand whenever they met, thus show- 
ing their common deliverance from the kingdom of darkness by the 
right hand of the redeeming Spirit of the Sun — the same act having 
been repeated in their own case as in that of their heavenly father, 
the original man, when, on the point of sinking into the kingdom of 
darkness, he was rescued by the right hand of the living spirit.? 

As festivals, the Manicheans celebrated the Sunday of every week, 
not on account of its reference to the resurrection of Christ, which 
would have been inconsistent with their Docetism, but as a day conse- 
crated to the Sun, which was in fact their Christ. On this day they 
fasted, — contrary to the practice of the dominant church. The Christ- 
mas festival of the church was, of course, not in harmony with the 
Manichean Docetism. If occasionally, as Augustin reports, they 
conformed to the practice of the dominant church im celebrating the 
festival of Easter ; yet we may easily suppose, that this festival would 
be of but little interest to them, as they were unaffected by those feel- 
ings which rendered the day so sacred to other Christians. So much 
the greater respect did they pay to the festival in honor of the martyr- 
dom of their master, Mani, which fell in the month of March. It was 
called βῆμα, (suggestus, cathedra,) the feast of the tribune or pulpit, — 
the feast in remembrance of the divinely enlightened teacher. A gor- 
geous pulpit, ascended by means of five steps, symbolizing perhaps the 
five elements, and decorated with costly drapery, was on this occasion 
placed in the hall, where they assembled. To this all the Manicheans 
paid obeisance, prostrating themselves on the ground after the custom 
of the East.® 

As it concerns the moral character of the Manichean sect, it is im- 
possible, with the scanty information we possess respecting its early fol- 
lowers, to give any just account of a matter in which the different peri- 
ods in the history of a sect should be so carefully distinguished. It 
can only be said, that Mani aimed at a strict system of morals; but 
without doubt the mystical language of the sect, which occasionally 
verges to immodesty, might, in the case of the uneducated, tend to 
introduce a sensuous fanaticism dangerous to good morals. 

Already, when the Manicheans began first to make progress in the 
Roman empire, a violent persecution broke out against them. As a 
sect which had sprung up in the Persian empire, then at war with the 


1Jn accordance with the idea, that the 4 Besides many other places, comp. Au- 
fruits of the earth represented the Son of gustin. c. Faustum, lib. XVIII. c.5: Vos 
man crucified in nature. See above. in die, quem dicunt solis, solem colitis. 
2 Augustin. contra Fortunatum lib. I. ὅ Augustin. contra ep. fundamenti, c. 8; 
Appendix. ce. Faustum lib. XVII. c. 5. 
Disputat. Archelai. c. 7. 


VOL. I. 43 


* 


506 THE THEOLOGY 


Romans, and in some sense allied to the Parsic religion, they were an 
object of peculiar hatred to the Roman government. The Emperor 
Dioclesian, A. D. 296, issued a law against the sect (cited already in 
the first section of this history) condemning its leaders to the stake, 
and punishing its adherents, if they belonged to the common order, 
with decapitation and the coufiscation of their property.? 


III. Doctrine of the Catholic Church, as it proceeded to form itself in 
opposition to the Sects. 
A. Genetic Development of the Church Theology generally. Charqcter of the several individ- 
ual tendencies of the religious and dogmatic spirit, which had special influence on τί. 

Having thus far considered the different tendencies of the heretical 
element as it grew up out of the reaction of ante-Christian principles, 
we now proceed to inquire how the movement of the church theology 
generally, and in its several particular modifications, was affected by 
these various forms of opposition. If it was the case in the heresies, 
that the unity of Christianity came to be split up into too many oppo- 
site theories, each excluding the other; the movement of the church 
theology was, on the other hand, distinguished, it is true, by the circum- 
stance, that the unity of the Christian consciousness here asserted 
itself much more strongly, and hence men were less exposed to run 
into such direct oppositions of doctrme; but even here, owing to the 
strong propensity In man’s nature to fall into one extreme or the 
other, the higher, comprehending unity had to resolve itself into oppo- 
sitions of a subordinate kind — oppositions which remained grounded, 
indeed, in the essence of Christianity, but which might approach, how- 
ever, on one side or the other, either to the position of Judaism, or of 
its opposite, Gnosticism. When the church had once established itself 


on an independent footing, the less 


1 The edict contains, in its style of thought 
and language, every internal mark of au- 
thenticity. It is scarcely possible to ima- 
gine by whom and for what purpose such an 
edict could have been forged in this partic- 
lar form. Had it been the intention of 
some Christian to fabricate an edict of this 
sort, with a view to excite following empe- 
rors to persecute the Manicheans, he would 
not have chosen Dioclesian certainly ; and 
still less would he have put such language 
into his mouth. Though the later Chris- 
tians had much that was analogous to the 
older pagan way of thinking about a domi- 
nant religion handed down from the fathers, 
yet a Christian would never have expressed 
himself after this peculiar fashion. 

What is there to forbid supposing that 
the Manicheans had extended themselves, 
even thus early, to proconsular Africa, since 
the Gnostics had already paved the way for 
them, and it is certain that the Manicheans 
early spread themselves in these countries, 
and since the chronological dates connected 
with the early history of this sect are so 
uncertain? If the law reads: “si qui sane 


it was obliged to defend its princi- 


etiam honorati aut cujuslibet dignitatis vel 
majoris personze ad hance sectam se transtu- 
lerunt,” —it does not necessarily follow from 
this, that the Emperor had certain informa- 
tion of the spread of the doctrines of this 
sect among persons of the highest rank ; and 
in the next place, it would be no singular 
matter, considering the prevalent rage at 
that time among people of rank,—a class 
ever prone to seize on any thing which 
would distinguish their religion from that 
of other people,— for theurgical specula- 
tions, and for searching after higher expla- 
nations respecting the world of spirits, that 
a mysterious and high-pretending scheme 
of faith like this, should meet among them 
with a welcome reception. The argumen- 
tum e silentio is, for the rest, very unsafe 
in historical criticism, unless supported by 
other considerations ; and the fact that the 
older fathers make no mention of a law by 
Dioclesian, directed particularly against the 
Manicheans, may be very easily accounted 
for. Yet this law is referred to by the Hila- 
ry who wrote a commentary on St. Paul’s 
epistles. In ep. 11. Timoth. ΠῚ, 7. 


OF THE CHURCH. 507 


ples in the struggle with Judaism, and the more it had to assert them 
in the conflict with Gnosticism, the more easily might it happen that a 
Jewish element would be imperceptibly introduced into the theological 
spirit; and that too, without beg communicated from without, but by 
spontaneously springing up within, as we observed it to do in the his- 
tory of the church constitution and of Christian worship. Gnosticism, 
again, might be attacked in two different ways; either in a way of un- 
compromising hostility, which refused to recognize in it a single ele- 
ment of truth, and which hence would be lable itself to run into some 
opposite extreme of error; or in such a way as to leave room for admit- 
ting, that along with the error there was also a fundamental truth, — 
that there was at bottom a true spiritual need, which was only seeking 
its proper satisfaction, and must find it m Christianity. And, in truth, 
Gnosticism could be effectually vanquished only in this latter way; only 
by separating in it the true from the false, and presenting something 
whereby the spiritual need, the failure to recognize and satisfy which 
had called Gnosticism into existence or promoted its spread, might find 
itself met and answered. Yet there was at the same time great 
danger that, in the very effort to seize and appropriate whatever of 
truth there was in Gnosticism, some of its errors might also be uninten- 
tionally included. 

The two main tendencies of the theological spirit here denoted, cor- 
respond to the two tendencies which necessarily belong together in the 
Christian process of transforming the world — but of which either one 
or the other is ever wont to predominate ; — the world-resisting and the 
world-appropriating tendency of the Christian mind. The undue pre- 
dominance of either one of these is, in truth, attended with its own pe- 
culiar dangers. In connection with this stands another antithesis. 
Christianity is based upon a supernatural revelation; but this revela- 
tion would be appropriated and understood by the organ of a reason 
which submits to it; since it is not destined to remain a barely outward 
thing to the human spirit. The supernatural element must be owned 
in its organic connection with the natural, which in this finds its full 
measure and complement. ‘The fact of redemption has for its very 
aim, indeed, to do away the schism between the supernatural and the 
natural ; — the fact of God’s becoming man is in order to the humani- 
zation of the divine, and the deification of the human. Hence there 
will ever be springing up two tendencies of the theological spirit, cor- 
responding, as must be evident, to the two just now described, and of 
which the one will feel itself impelled to understand and represent the 
supernatural element of Christianity in its opposition to, the other, the 
same element in its connection with,the natural: the one will seek to 
apprehend the supernatural and supra-rational element as such; the 
other will strive to apprehend the same in its harmony with reason and 
nature, — to present the supernatural and supra-rational to conscious- 
ness, as that which is still conformed to nature and to reason. Thus 
there comes to be formed a predominance of the supernaturalist or 
of the rationalist element, both of which should meet together in 
order to a sound and healthy development of Christian doctrine ; while 


508 MONTANISM. 


from the predominance of the one or the other of these elements, oppo- 
site dangers arise. 

It is very easy to see, that although Christian science must have its 
root in faith, and grow up out of the interest of faith, and although faith, 
which ought to receive into itself and animate all the powers of the 
human spirit, must seek to create a scientific understanding out of it 
self, yet according to the proportion in which one or the other of these 
interests predominates, one or the other of these tendencies will be 
formed ; and hence we must proceed in the first place to inquire, how 
the matter stood in this respect under the given circumstances and con- 
ditions of the national life and intellectual culture prevailmg in the 

eriod which is the subject of our consideration. 

The first thing that presents itself to our notice here will be, the differ- 
ence between the two great individualities of national character, out of 
which proceeded the civilization of those times, — the Greek and the 
Roman. In the Greek predominated the activity of the intellect, — 
the scientific, speculative element. Greece was, in fact, the birth-place 
of philosophy. The Roman character, on the other hand, was less mo- 
bile. It was more fixed and inclined to be tenacious of old usages ; — 
its tendency was to the practical. Both these mental characteristics 
will mark the peculiar shaping of Christian doctrine and theology, — 
will in different circumstances operate favorably or unfavorably on the 
process of their development; since both these individualities of char- 
acter correspond to the peculiar main tendencies above described ; and 
it was most desirable, that they should so act as mutually to balance 
and check each other. Alexandria, the principal seat of philosophical 
culture, where a philosophy most nearly akin to the religious element, 
viz. the Platonic, then held the supremacy; where, at a still earlier 
period, we saw growing up a Jewish philosophy of religion, gave birth 
also in these centuries, by the blending of Grecian elements of culture 
with Christianity, to a tendency which sought to present the new mat- 
ter given by revelation in harmony with the previous development of 
reason. But from the school of John, in Asia Minor, there had gone 
forth a tendency, which was opposed to the speculative caprice of the 
Gnostics, and which sought faithfully to preserve and hold fast the pe- 
culiar, fundamental doctrines of Christianity, so as to secure them 
against all corruptions. And this tendency it was, which Irenzeus, — 
who had been educated in Asia Minor, in the school of those venera- 
ble presbyters, the disciples of the Apostle John, — transplanted to 
the West. This Father, distinguished for the sobriety of his practical, 
Christian spirit, possessed of a peculiarly sound and discriminating 
tact in determining what was of practical moment in all doctrines, pro- 
foundly penetrated with a sense of the grandeur of God’s works and 
of the limited compass of the human understanding, perseveringly 
opposes the humility of knowledge to the arrogant pretensions of Gnos- 
tic speculation, and forms the link of connection betwixt the church of 
Asia Minor and that of Rome, — representing ‘in himself what, was 
common to them both. But as in the Roman spirit, the practical 
church interest was so absorbing as to leave no room for the scientific, 


MONTANISM. | 509 


the West was in want of an organ whereby the spirit which prevailed 
there could scientifically express itself. Such an organ was supplied 
by the church of North Africa, in a man who united in himself the ele- 
ments of the Roman and of the Carthaginian character —in Tertullian. 
Wanting the chaste sobriety of mind for which Irenzus was distin- 
guished, Tertullian, though a foe to speculation, yet could not resist the 
impulses of a profound speculative intellect; and to the devout practi- 
cally Christian element he united a speculative one, — destitute, how- 
ever, of the regular logical form, — which continued for a long time to 
operate through various intermediate agencies in the Western church, 
until it finally impregnated the mind of that great teacher of centu- 
ries, Augustin, in whom Tertullian once more appears under a transfig- 
ured form. A great impression was made on the peculiar temperament 
of Tertullian by the remarkable phenomenon which sprung out of the 
very midst of that spiritual tendency of Asia Minor we have already 
described, and which we may designate as the extreme of the anti-Gnostic 
position. Wemean Montanism. As this forms one of the essential 
elements in his peculiar cast of mind, so it was by him that the princi- 
ples which lie at the basis of this system were systematically deter- 
mined, and thereby made to have an influence on the history of West- 
ern theology. ΤῸ this important phenomenon we must now direct our 
attention. 

We should but poorly understand this product growing out of the 
developing-process of the church in the second century, if we consid- 
ered the personal character of the founder, by whom the first impulse 
was given, as the main cause of all the succeeding effects. Montanus 
was hardly a man of sufficient importance, to entitle him to be placed 
at the head of any new and grand movement. If an uneducated indi- 
vidual, who displays the characteristic spirit of the Phrygian race, 
under the impulse of a fanatical excitement, produced by his appear- 
ance great effects, yet these effects beyond question far exceeded the 
measure of this individual. A Tertullian, as being the person by whom 
such a spiritual tendency was systematically defined, would assume 
here a more important place. Nor were there any new spiritual ele- 
ments, which were here freshly called to life; but only a nucleus was 
furnished for elements long before existing, — a point of attachment, 
around which these elements would gather. Tendencies of mind, 
which were scattered about through the whole church, would here con- 
verge together. Thus Montanism points out to us kindred elements 
existing everywhere already ; and for this very reason it was that the 
impulse, once given, could produce such great and general movements; 
since the way had already been prepared for them in the course of the 
inner development of the church itself. Yet while we are careful not 
to overrate the importance of Montanus, we should also guard against 
the error of allowing him none at 8}1.: Without the impulse given by 
Montanus, this whole movement, which produced such a stir and excite- 


1 As is done with a fantastic sort of ex- extremely deficient, is sufficiently accredited 
aggeration, when persons, whose real exist- hy history, are represented as mythical per- 
ence, though our knowledge of them 18 sonifications of general tendencies. 


43* 


510 MONTANISM. 


ment in the minds of men, and which we may admit cannot be 
explained from his influence alone, would by no means have arisen. 
Let us in the first place, then, cast a glance at the process of church 
development to which Montanism attached itself, and at the general 
tendencies of mind which were grounded in and which are represented 
by it; and then we may proceed to a nearer examination of the person 
of the author, and of the effects which proceeded from him. 

Christianity forced its way among mankind, in“the first place, as a 
supernatural power; and as such a power it originally presents itself 
also in the character of its effects. The immediateness of inspiration 
was then more strongly marked than in the later times ; — those gifts 
of supernatural healing; those gifts of speaking with tongues, of proph- 
ecy; those effects which suddenly displayed themselves after baptism — 
such were the signs of the new creation which had seized on human 
nature. But this opposition between the supernatural and the natu- 
ral was not to last always, but to be overcome by the progressive devel- 
opment of Christianity. ΤῸ bring about the harmonious union of the 
supernatual and the natural was its ultimate aim; as to remove the 
discordance which has its ground in sin, was to be the end of the re- 
demption in its further unfolded effects. The new, divine power, which 
in its outward manifestations had just shown itself as an immediate one, 
was to enter into the circle of human instrumentality, and gradually 
appropriate to itself those natural organs and means-which were not as 
yet given to it on its first appearance. The Apostle Paul had indeed 
alluded to such an aim, when he admonished Christians to estimate the 
charismata, not by the extraordinary and supernatural appearances 
which more prominently marked their effects, but, on the contrary, by 
the degree in which the natural in them was permeated: by the super- 
natural, and in which the form of working of the supernatural was one 
that grew out of the natural course of development; and he distin- 
guished above all others the charismata of Gnosis and of Didascalia, as 
those which were most required for the edification of the church. Ac- 
cordingly, — as we remarked in the first section, — those extraordi- 
nary effects of the divine power, which was to be the dominant element 
of culture for human nature, continally diminished ; and the existing 
natural culture began to be turned more and more in the direction of 
Christianity and to be attracted by it. Now, on the boundary between 
these two periods of development, sprang up a reaction, which opposed 
this natural change required by Christianity, and which would hold 
fast the form which was the first to appear in the working of Christian- 
ity, as the perfect and the abiding one. That which opposed itself to 
the healthy and natural course of development, must necessarily be a 
morbid action. ‘The enthusiasm which surrendered itself to such a 
tendency, must degenerate into fanaticism. 

It may be gathered from what has been said, that since Montanism 
opposed itself to that union and conciliation of the supernatural with 
the natural, which Christianity in its progressive development required 
and prepared the way for, it would partially hold fast. to the supernat- 
ural as contradistinguished from the natural. The supernatural, the 


MONTANISM. . 511 


divine, presented itself here to the religious consciousness as an irre- 
sistible agency, which left no room for the human individuality of char- 
acter to thrive in free, independent development. Hence, from this 
point of view, the ecstatic element was reckoned as belonging to the 
essence of genuine prophecy ;— the human consciousness must retire 
wholly out of the way, where the voice of the divine Spirit caused 
itself to be heard. The human soul was to stand to this informing 
Spirit only in the relation of an altogether passive organ; as Montanus 
characteristically remarked, God alone is awake, the man sleeps. The 
soul stands in the same passive relation to the divine, informing 
agency, as the lyre to the instrument (the plectrum) with which it 1s 
played.! Here, too, in what Montanism introduced, there was nothing 
new. ‘This notion of inspiration had long been familiar to the Jews ; 
as we may see in the case of the Alexandrian legend about the verbal 
agreement of the seventy interpreters, in their independent transla- 
tions of the Old Testament. But such a form of inspiration is much 
better suited to the legal position of the Old Testament, which assumes 
this separation between the divine and the human, than to that of the 
New Testament, which aims at a union between the two, grounded in the 
redemption. But when this, however, was now prominently set forth as 
something belonging to the perfection of the Christian system, as some- 
thing requisite for the guidance and growth of the church, a foreign 
element was introduced, and the natural process of development, 
grounded in the church itself, and the spirit which quickens it, could 
not thereby be promoted, but must on the contrary be disturbed and 
hindered. Through such workings of the Paraclete promised by Christ, 
such revelations of the prophets and prophetesses, utterig themselves 
in those states of ecstacy, the church was to be ever conducted onward 
in its development, till it attained to its final consummation. We 
should not fail to remark, that Montanism was driven to this one-sided 
supranaturalism, by a polemical opposition which had its ground in a 
genuinely Christian interest against two aberrations of the Christian 
spirit. Opposing itself, on the one hand, to the introduction of foreign 
speculations in the Gnosis, it would secure the pure Christian doctrine 
from this source of corruption; while, on the other hand, it resisted a 
petrified, traditional element, which allowed no room for any progres- 
sive development of the church life, but was for confining down every- 
thing in fixed and unalterable forms. 

As it regards, however, the first designated opposition, it passed 
over into a tendency hostile to all culture, to all art and science. 
And, in virtue of this opposition to all the mediating activity of reason, 
the resistance also to the stiff and rigid church tendency must take a 
wrong direction. Montanism would tolerate no pause, no still-stand ; 
it required a progressive development, from the foundation of that un- 
changeable Christianity contained in the common tradition of all the 
churches, to the mature age of manhood. But as it had no confidence 


_1 Thus Tertullian considered the amen- sarily connected with the divina virtute 
tia, the excidere sensu, as something neces- obumbrari. 


512 MONTANISM. 


in the power of the spirit, regenerated and enlightened by Christianity, 
to unfold the contents of Christian truth: to ever clearer consciousness, 
and to form the life more and more in accordance thereto; as it dis- 
dained the instrumentality of reason, which was appointed to admin- 
ister, by its own peculiar activity, the treasure imparted to it from 
above, nothing else remained but to assume, that Christianity must be 
continually integrated and perfected by means of extraordinary reve- 
lations continually accruing from without, in relation to which the 
human mind was to remain in a state altogether passive. Thus, a one- 
sided supranaturalism, which failed duly to acknowledge the effects of 
the redemption in converting the mind, when restored to communion 
with God, once more into an organ for divine things, must be driven to 
deny the adequacy of the divine word bestowed on the church for its 
guidance in knowledge and -life, because it lacked the organ requisite 
for understanding and for applying, for working over and digesting 
the included truth therein delivered. A perfectibility of Christianity 
was maintained, after a way which disparaged the work of Christ. 
Thus, one-sided supranaturalism led to the same result as one-sided 
rationalism. 

Now, that which was to be superadded from without, in order to the 
perfecting of the Christian life, but did not proceed of itself from the 
regular development of the Christian principle, could, under the name of 
perfecting, really exert no other than a checking and corrupting influence. 
The perfection had reference to the introduction of a more rigid asceti- 
cism ; and in this respect too, we see in Montanism the one-sided appear- 
ance of a tendency of the Christian life, which had long since existed, 
pushed to its extreme. Multiform new positive precepts were to be im- 
posed on the church by the new revelations of the Paraclete. But Chris- 
tianity does, in fact, distinguish itself from Judaism by the very circum- 
stance, that it substitutes the law of the Spirit in place of the imperative 
letter, and has made an end of all positive commandments, through that 
love which is the fulfilling of the law. A great deal in the new precepts 
of Christ which the sermon on the mount contains, was, in the first 
centuries, less perfectly understood, because men did not refer these 
precepts to the one whole of the new law, grounded in love, and iden- 
tical with the essence of the Christian life itself, but regarded them as 
isolated, positive precepts. The free development of the Christian spirit 
was destined continually to suppress everything positive, by the progres- 
sive identifying of it with itself (Verinnerlichung). But Montanism, on 
the contrary, was for holding fast the positive as something permanent, 
and by adding to which the church was to be perfected. Accordingly, 
the spirit of Montanism, by itself, without the aid of any outward in- 
fluences, brought back the Jewish legal position. By this, however, 
we are not in the least degree warranted to suppose that Ebionitism 
had any influence on the development of Montanism; since the latter 
much rather made it a point to bring distinctly to view, and carry out, 
whatever there was new and peculiar, whereby Christianity differed 
from the Old-Testament position; and this end, the new epoch of de- 
velopment, introduced by the revelations of the Paraclete, was to sub- 


MONTANISM. 513 
serve. Without meaning to do so, Montanism grazed upon a Jewish 
element, which, with consciousness and design, it would directly com- 
bat; and, in like manner, by suppressing the Christian clearness and 
sobriety of understanding through the ecstatic trance, it encouraged 
the intermingling of excited and rapturous feelings with the develop- 
ment of the divine life, and thereby grazed on the Pagan position, as 
we shall afterwards have occasion more particularly to observe. 

The movement of which we speak, took its beginning from a Phry- 
gian by the name of Montanus, who lived in the village of Ardaban, 
on the boundary-line between Phrygia and Mysia. The characteris- 
tics of the old Phrygian race are displayed in his mode of conceiving 
Christianity, and in the shape which the zeal of the new convert as- 
sumed. In the nature-religion of the ancient Phrygians, we recognize 
the character of this mountain race, inclined to fanaticism and su- 
perstition, easily credulous about magic and ecstatic transports; and 
we cannot be surprised to find the Phrygian temperament which dis- 
played itself in the ecstacies of the priests of Cybele and Bacchus, 
exhibiting itself once more in the ecstacies and somnambulisms of the 
Montanists. 

Montanus belonged to the class of men in whom the first glow of 
conversion begat an uncompromising opposition to the world. We 
should remember that he lived in a country where the expectation that 
the church should finally enjoy on the theatre of its sufferings, the 
earth itself, previous to the end of all things, a millennium of victorious 
dominion—the expectation of a final millennial reign of Christ on 
earth, (the so-called Chiliasm,) particularly prevailed ; and where vari- 
ous pictures of an enthusiastic imagination, representing the character 
of this approaching kingdom, were floating among the people! The 
time in which he appeared — either during those catastrophes of na- 
ture which led to the tumultuary attacks of the populace on the Chris- 
tians,? or during the bloody persecutions of the Emperor Marcus Au- 
relius? — was altogether suited to promote such an excitement of 


ΠῚ Phrygia, Papias of Hierapolis had 
certainly lived and labored, and many pas- 
sages in the Pseudo-Sibylline books contain 
allusions to Phrygia. There is no existing 
reason whatever for supposing. with Lon- 
guerue and Blondel, that Montanus or any 
Montanists were themselves the authors of 
such passages; for nothing at all is to be 
found in those Pseudo-Sibylline writings 
which belongs to the peculiar ideas of Mon- 
tanism. We are led rather to recognize in 
them the same peculiar Phrygian spirit, of 
which Montanism is also the reflection. 
When we find the mount Ararat transferred 
in these writings to Phrygia, we perceive 
here the same partiality of the Phrygians 
for their own country, which they held to 
be the oldest in the world, as is shown by 
Montanus in fixing upon the village of 
Pepuza, in Phrygia, as the destined seat of 
the millennial kingdom. 

2 See Vol. I. p. 104. 


3 There are no distinct and well-authenti- 
cated facts from which it is possible to form 
a certain conclusion as to the time of Mon- 
tanus’ first appearance. From the nature of 
the case, however, the first beginning of a 
movement of this kind scarcely admits of 
being distinctly fixed. Eusebius, in his 
Chronicle, states the year 171 as the time 
when Montanus first appeared. But, as- 
suming that the Roman bishop who was 
induced by Praxeas to excommunicate the 
Montanists, was not Victor, but Anicetus, — 
the reasons for which opinion I have given 
in my work on Tertullian, p. 486.— it 
would follow, that Montanus had already 
made his appearance, in the life-time of the 
Roman bishop Anicetus, who died A. D. 
161. Apollonius, cited by Eusebius, (V. 
18,) and Epiphanius, both speak in favor of 
the earlier date. The latter fixes the ap- 
pearance of Montanus in about the year 
157. ". 


514 MONTANISM. 


feeling, and such a direction of the imagination. It was precisely at 
this time, that the violent controversy arose between the speculative 
Gnostics and the advocates of the ancient, simple doctrine. A great 
deal was said about the corruptions with which Christianity was threat- 
ened. All this would naturally work on the mind of the Phrygian 
convert, inclined already by temperament to a high-wrought enthusi- 
asm. And we should observe, moreover, that he lived m a period 
which has already been more fully described as the boundary epoch 
between two stadia in the development of the Christian church. 

He fell into certain states of ecstatic transport, im which, no longer 
master of his own consciousness, and made the blind organ, as he fan- 
cied, of a higher spirit, he foretold, in oracular, mystical expressions,} 
the approach of new persecutions ; exhorted the Christians to a life of 
more rigid austerity, and to an undaunted confession of their faith ; 
extolled the blessedness of the martyr’s crown, and charged the faith- 
ful to stake everything in order to win it. He announced the judg- 
ments impending over the persecutors of the church, the second com- 
ing of Christ, and the approach of the millennial reign, the happiness 
of which he set forth in the most attractive colors. Finally, he claimed 
to be considered as a prophet sent of God in behalf of the whole 
church, as an inspired reformer of the whole church life. The Chris- 
tian church was to be elevated by him to a higher stage of practical 
perfection. A loftier system of Christian morals, befitting its maturity, 
was to be revealed through him ; he appealed to Christ’s promise, that 
he would, by the Holy Ghost, make known things which the men. of 
those times were not yet in a condition to understand. He believed 
himself to be called also to give new expositions of the doctrine of 
faith, which were to serve for the clearing up of the disputed points 
most agitated in those districts, and for the defence of those doctrines 
against the objections of heretics. 

It is probable that different epochs should be distinguished in the 
history of Montanus. The ready sympathy with which, im that ex- 
cited period, what he delivered as revelations from above was received, 
contributed, doubtless, to urge him continually onward, till he attrib- 
uted to himself a higher mission than he may have thought of claiming 
in the outset ; and moreover the point-blank opposition which he after- 
wards met with from other quarters, served to increase his enthusiasm. 
But our information is too madequate, to enable us to separate and 
distinguish these several epochs with any degree of accuracy. In 
connection with Montanus, there were two women, Prisca or Priscilla, 
and Maximilla, who claimed also to be regarded as prophetesses. 

We will now proceed to a more detailed account of Montanism, as a 
tendency stamped and characterized by distinct principles and doc- 
trines. We mean that tendency of spirit, as it began with Montanus, 
developed itself still farther, down to the time of Tertullian, and became 
reduced by him to the form of a system. 


1 Ξενοφωνίαι. A contemporary writer γλῶσσαι. Plutarch on the ancient oracles, 
cited in Eusebius, 1. V. c. 16, uses the term de Pyth. orac. c, 24. 


MONTANISM. 515 


We have seen that the fundamental principle of Montanism was a 
one-sided supranaturalizing element, which placed the spirit in an alto- 
gether passive relation to the divine influence. This principle appeared 
most strongly prominent in the first gusts of religious feelmg in Mon- 
tanus and his prophetesses; and the approximation to the Old-Testa- . 
ment position, introduced by this principle, is more clearly discernible 
in the earliest Montanistic oracles, than in the later forms which Mon- 
tanism assumed ; for in the outset the whole discourse was of God the 
Almighty, not of Christ or the Holy Spirit. As the Almighty ruled 
alone in the prophet’s soul, and his own self-consctousness retired 
back, God therefore spoke from the soul of the prophet, of which He 
took entire possession, as if in His own name. Accordingly, it is as- 
serted, in one of these oracular sayings of Montanus: ‘ Behold! the 
man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man 
sleeps, and 1 wake. Behold! it is the Lord, who estranges the souls 
of men from themselves, and gives men souls.” + So, in another ora- 
cle: “I am the Lord, the Almighty God, who take up my abode in 
man:” 1 am neither an angel, nor a messenger; but I am come as the 
Lord himself, God the Father.” Also, in a prophecy of Montanus’s * 
associate, Maximilla, there is as yet no distinct mention of the Holy 
Spirit or the Paraclete; but the Spirit, vindicating himself from the 
objection that he set men beside themselves, declares, *‘ I am chased 
as a wolf from the midst of the flock. I am no wolf; I am word, and 
spirit, and power.’’? This supranaturalizing principle, expressing itself 
more after a form of the Old than of the New Testament, was, to all ap- 
pearance, consistently adhered to by the Montanistic tendency, as it 
first presented itself, in this respect also, that the new prophets did not 
promise a progressive development of the church, in the sense of one 
which was to proceed from the new revelations delivered to them ; but 
announced that which should bring to a close the whole thread of 
earthly development. They hint at the near approach of a new order 
of things, the final separation which was to be brought about by Christ 
himself, and the millennial kingdom to be set up by him on the earth. 
Maximilla is said to have declared expressly, “‘ After me no other 
prophetess shall arise, but the end shall come.” * The God who had 
determined to bring about the great judgment, called on the faithful 
by his voice in the new prophets, to prepare themselves for it by a 
stricter life, so that’ the Lord, at his second coming, which was 
near at hand, might find them well provided and waiting. With 
this expectation of the approaching end of the world, stood intimately 
connected the contempt of life and of all earthly things, to which the 
new spirit of the prophets called men. 

But though many of the predictions of the new prophets were not 


_ 11600, ἄνϑρωπος ὡσεὶ λύρα, κἀγὼ ἵπταμαι 8 Ῥῆμα εἰμὶ, καὶ πνεῦμα, καὶ δύναμις. See 
ὡσεὶ πλῆκτρον. ‘O ἄνϑρωπος κοιμᾶται, κἀγὼ Euseb. 1. V. c. 16. 


γρηγορῶ. Ἰδοὺ, κύριός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκστάνων 1 The words are cited in Epiphanius: 
καρδίας ἀνθρώπων καὶ διδοὺς καρδίας av- Μετ’ ἐμὲ προφῆτις οὐκέτι ἔσται, ἀλλὰ συν- 
ϑρώποις. Epiphan. heres. 48. τέλεια. 


2 Ἐγὼ κύριος, κύριος ὁ ϑεὸς, ὁ παντοκρά- 
τωρ, καταγινόμενος ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ. 


516 MONTANISM. 


fulfilled, yet the principle announced by them entered mightily into the 
development of the Christian consciousness in this period. And as 
these new revelations were brought into connection with the doctrine 
of the Holy Spirit, which, in the church system of theology, was still 
less completely unfolded, with the doctrine of spiritual gifts, and 
with the promises of Christ respecting the Paraclete, the idea went 
forth, that there were certain seasons or epochs of the outpouring of 
the Holy Ghost, through which the progressive development of the 
church was to be promoted ; a new momentum superadded to its ordi- 
nary, regular course of development, and designed to complete what 
was lacking in it. 

In receiving this principle and looking round for arguments in sup- 
port of it, Tertullian endeavored to show the necessity of some such 
progressive development of the church, by pointing to a law running 
through all the works of God in the kingdoms of nature and of grace. 
‘‘ In the works of grace,” said he, ‘‘as in the works of nature, which 
proceed from the same Creator, everything unfolds itself by certain suc- 
cessive steps. From the seed-kernel shoots forth first the plant; then - 
comes the blossom, and finally this becomes the fruit, which itself ar- 
rives at maturity only by degrees. So the kingdom of righteousness 
unfolds itself by certain stages. In the first place, there was the fear 
of God awakened by the voice of nature, without a revealed law (the 
patriarchal religion;) next followed the stage of childhood under the 
law and the prophets; then that of youth under the gospel; and at 
length the unfolding of the spiritual life to the ripeness of manhood 
through the new out-pouring of the Holy Ghost, connected with the ap- 
pearance of Montanus — through the new instructions of the promised 
Paraclete.!_ How should the work of God stand still and make no pro- 
gressive movement, while the kingdom of evil is continually enlarging 
itself and acquiring new strength?’’ On this ground, the Montanists 
denounced those who were for setting arbitrary limits to the agency of 
the Holy Spirit, as though his extraordinary operations had been 
confined to the times of the apostles alone. ‘Thus, in a Montanistic 
writing of North Africa, it was said: ‘¢ Faith ought not to be so weak 
and despondent, as to suppose that God’s grace was powerful only among 
the ancients; since God at all times carries into effect what he has 
promised, as a witness to unbelievers and a blessing to the faithful.’’? 
The later effusions of the Holy Spirit ought rather to exceed all that 
had gone before.? The fact was appealed to, that Christ himself prom- 
ised believers the revelations of the Paraclete, as the perfecter of his 
church, through whom he would make known what the men of those 
times would have been unable to comprehend. By this, it was by no 
means intended to deny in general, that the promise above mentioned 
had any reference to the apostles ;—-but the opinion was simply this, 
that the promise did not refer exclusively to the apostles — did not, in 
its application to them, become entirely fulfilled, but on the contrary 


1 Tertullian. de virgg. veland. c. 1. putanda novitiora queque ut novissimiora, 
2 Acta Perpetue et Felicitat. Preefat. secundum exuberationem gratiz in ultima 
ὃ Preefat. in Acta Perpetuw: Majora re-  szeculi spatia decretam. 


MONTANISM. 517 


referred also to the new revelations by the prophets now awakened, — 
that these last were a necessary complement and enlargement of that 
original revelation! The truth springing from the latter and trans- 
mitted by the general tradition of the church, was in the former always 
presupposed as an unchangeable foundation. The new prophets should 
distinguish themselves from false teachers, and prove their divine mis- 
sion, by their agreement with this original revelation. But proceeding 
on such foundation, the Christian system of morals and the entire 
church life should be carried still further onward by these new revela- 
tions ;—for the men who were first weaned from paganism and sensual- 
ity, were not as yet in a condition to understand the requisitions of Chris- 
tian perfection. Moreover, by these revelations, the Christian doctrines, 
attacked by the ever encroaching sects of the heretics, were to be de- 
fended. As the heretics made use of arbitrary and false interpretations 
to explain the holy scriptures, (from which, too, they might best be refu- 
ted, ) in accordance with their own notions ; so by these new revelations a 
fixed and settled authority would be established against them. Finally, 
they were to supply means for resolving disputed questions on matters 
of faith and practice.2, Hence the Montanist Tertullian, towards the 
end of his treatise on the resurrection, addressing himself to those who 
were willing to draw from the fountain of these new revelations, says 
to them, ‘ You will thirst for no instruction ; — no questions will per- 
plex you.” 

Thus Montanism set over against the rigid, traditional element, one 
of free, progressive movement. The occupiers of this new position 
were better prepared to distinguish between what was changeable and 
what was unchangeable in the church development, since they admitted 
the wmmutability of the doctrinal tradition alone ; — they maintained 
that the regulations of the church might be altered and improved by 
the progressive instructions of the Paraclete, according to the exigen- 
cies of the times.? While, moreover, according to the view taken by 
the church, the bishops were regarded as the sole organs for diffusing 
the influences of the Holy Spirit in the church, being the successors of 
the apostles and the inheritors of their spiritual power; —it was the 
opinion of the Montanists, on the other hand, that besides the ordinary 
organs of church guidance, there were still higher ones — those extra- 
ordinary organs, the prophets awakened by the Paraclete. The latter 
only, according to the view taken by the Montanists, were the succes- 
sors of the apostles in the highest sense, the inheritors of their spiritual 
power in full. Hence Tertullian sets over against the church consist- 
ing of the number of bishops, the church of the Spirit, which manifests 
wtself through men enlightened by the Holy Spirit.4 While it was the 
custom to derive the power conceded to the bishops from the power to 
bind and to loose conferred on Peter, the Montanist Tertullian, on the 


1 Tertullian. de pudicitia, ec. 12. 8 Tertullian. de corona milit. c. 3. 

2 Tertullian. de virgg. veland. represents 4 Tertullian. de pudicitia, c. 21: Ecclesia 
as the administratio Paracleti, quod disci-  spiritus per spiritalem hominem, non eccle- 
plina dirigitur, quod scripture revelantur, sia numerus episcoporum. 
quod intellectus reformatur. 


VOL. I. 44 


518 MONTANISM. 

other hand, maintained that these words referred only to Peter person- 
ally, and to those who, like Peter, were filled with the Holy Ghost, in- 
directly.!_ They who followed the voice of the Holy Ghost speaking 
through the medium of the new prophets, being the spiritually minded, 
genuine Christians, (Spiritales,) constituted the church in the proper 
sense; while, on the other hand, the opposers of the new revelations 
were usually styled the carnally minded, the Psychical. — 

Thus Montanism set up a church of the Spirit, consisting of the spir- 
itales homines, in opposition to the prevailing outward view of that in- 
stitution. Tertullian says: “The church, in the proper and preéminent 
sense, is the Holy Spirit, in which the Three are One, — and next, the 
whole community of those who are agreed in this faith (that God the 
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are one) is called, after its founder 
and consecrator, (the Holy Spirit,) the church.” ? The Catholic pomt 
of view expresses itself in this — viz. that the ¢dea of the church is put 
first, and by this very position of it, made outward; next, the agency 
of the Holy Spirit is represented as conditioned by, and hence derived 
through, this mediation. Montanism, on the other hand, like Protes- 
tantism, places the Holy Spirit first, and considers the church as that 
- which is only derived. Assuming this position, the order would be re- 
versed: Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia; et ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus. But 
the Montanistic conception does’ not coincide with the Protestant ; 
for in the former it is not the general fact of the actuation of the Holy 
Spirit, as it takes place in all believers, but the above described extra- 
ordinary revelation, which is meant. Partly this latter, which is here 
placed as the original thing, and partly the acknowledgment of the 
same in its divine character, constitute, according to the Montanistic 
view, the essence of the true church. It is that church in which God 
awakes the prophets, and by which the prophets are recognized as 
such. 

Since again, according to the Montanistic theory, prophets could be 
awakened from among Christians of every rank; since the Montanists 
expressly regarded it as one of the characteristics of this last epoch in 
the development of God’s kingdom, that, according to the promises in 
the prophet Joel, which were now passing into fulfilment, the gifts of 
the Spirit were to be dispensed to Christians of every condition and 
sex without distinction ; and since requisitions in regard to the Christian 
walk which before had been confined wholly to the spiritual order, 
were extended by the new revelations to all Christians as such; they 
were thus led to give prominence once more to that zdea of the dignity 
of the universal Christian calling, of the priestly dignity of all Chris- 


1Secundum Petri personam, spiritalibus 
potestas ista conveniet, aut apostolo aut pro- 
phetsx. L. c. 

2 Nam et ecclesia proprie et principaliter 
ipse est Spiritus, in quo est trinitas unius 
divinitatis. Illam ecclesiam congregat, quam 
Dominus in tribus posuit, (where two or 
three are gathered together in his name,) 


atque ita exinde etiam numerus, qui in 
hance fidem conspirayerint, ecclesia ab auc- 
tore et consecratore censetur. L. c. 

8 As in the well-known words of Irenzeus : 
Ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus; et ubi Spiritus, ibi 
ecclesia. 

4 Preefat. in Act. Felicit. 


MONTANISM. 519 


tians, which had been, in a measure, suppressed by the confounding 
together of the fundamental principles of Judaism and Christianity.1 

But although the idea of the church and of its progressive develop- 
ment was in one phase of it seized by Montanism after a freer and a 
more spiritual manner, yet in another respect, by deriving this progres- 
‘sive development from new, extraordinary revelations, from a newly 
awakened prophetic order, it fell back upon the position of Judaism. 
While, according to the ordinary church principles, the Old Testament 
priesthood was transferred over to the Christian church; according to 
the Montanistic view, the Old Testament order of prophets was thus 
transferred. And it is noticeable, that the Catholic church, which 
afterwards adopted many of the views which in the beginning she cen- 
sured in Montanism, seized particularly on many things asserted by the 
Montanists concerning the relation of the new revelations by their 
prophets to the ground-work of church tradition and scripture doctrine, 
im order to explain the relation of the decisions of general councils to 
both these matters. A new particular was superinduced on the church 
notion of tradition ; — to holding fast on the original doctrine once de- 
livered, was added the element of a progressive advancement in har- 
mony with this doctrine, and derived from the Holy Spirit. But while 
this actuation of the Holy Spirit was regarded, from the Montanistic 
point of view, as one that proceeded from newly awakened, extraordi- 
nary organs; it was, by the principles of the church, transferred to the 
regular organs of the church guidance, the bishops. We must here 
bring in also what has already been said concerning the Montanistic 
notion of inspiration.” 

But this way of considering inspiration, which, derived from the Jews, 
had, up to this time, chiefly prevailed also among the fathers of the 
church, was now gradually suppressed by the opposition to Montanism. 
Its violent opponents condemned the ecstatic state without reserve ; 
considering it rather as the sign of a false prophet. Unfortunately, the 
work against Montanism by the Christian rhetorician Miltiades, in which 
this very point was set forth, that the ecstacy was a state of mind at 
variance with the character of a true prophet,? has not reached our 
times ; —a work by which probably much light would be shed on the 
then interesting discussions about the notion of inspiration. Men were 
inclined to trace the ecstacy to an agency of the evil spirit, as a spirit 
of confusion and of schism ; and contrasted it with the influences of the 
Holy Spirit, as a spirit of sober and clear self-possession. Men were 
for denouncing the Montanistic notion of the prophet and the prophetic 
office in everything, without attempting to separate what was true in it 
from what was false. But the more free and unbiassed spirit of the 
Alexandrian school is to be seen also, in its judgment on these phenom- 


1 As, for example, Tertullian de mono- Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loqui- 
gamia. tur, necesse est excidat sensu, obumbratus 
2 The definition of such an ecstatic state  scilicet virtute divina. 
of the Montanistic mind, is to be found in ὀδὯ Ilep? τοῦ μὴ δεῖν προφήτην ἐν ἐκστάσει 
Tertullian, c. Marc. 1. [V. ὁ. 22: In spiritu λαλεῖν. 
homo constitutus, presertim cum gloriam 


520 MONTANISM. 

ena. It is true, Clement of Alexandria, too, represents the ecstacy as 
the sign of a false prophet, and of the actuation of the evil spirit, where- 
by the soul becomes estranged from itself ;1 but yet he declared him- 
self opposed to those who, as he expresses it, unreservedly condemned, 
with a blind zeal of ignorance, everything that proceeded from these 
false prophets, instead of inquizmg into what was said, without respect 
to the person, and ascertaining whether it contaimed any portion of 
truth.2_ In contradicting Montanism, men fell imto the erroneous the- 
ory at the opposite extreme. Unwilling to admit that there was anything 
at all of an unconscious nature in the prophets of the Old Testament, 
they attributed to them a clear, conscious knowledge of everything in- 
cluded in the divine promises which they announced ; ?— a view of the 
matter which could not fail to obscure the right understanding of the 
relation between the Old and New Testaments, and to prevent an un- 
biassed exposition of the latter. 

As we observed above, in giving the general characteristics of Mon- 
tanism, it grazed closely, by vitiating the Christian principle, upon Ju- 
daism on the one side and upon paganism on the other. 

States somewhat akin to what occurred in pagan divination, phenom- 
ena like the magnetic and somnambulist appearances occasionally pre- 
sented in the pagan cultus, mixed in with the excitement of Christian 
feelings. Those Christian females who were thrown into ecstatic 
trances during the time of public worship, were not only consulted about 
remedies for bodily diseases, but also plied with questions concerning 
the invisible world. In Tertullian’s time, there was one at Carthage, 
who, in her states of ecstacy, imagined herself to be in the society of 
Christ, and of angels. The matter of her visions corresponded to what 
she had just heard read from the holy scriptures, what was said in the 
Psalms that had been sung, or in the prayers that had been offered.*. 
At the conclusion of the service and after the dismission of the church, 
she was made to relate her visions, from which men sought to gain in- 
formation about things of the invisible world; as, for example, about 
the nature of the soul. 

The Jewish element discovered itself in the pretended completion 
of the system of morals by new precepts which had particular refer- 
ence to the ascetic life. Thus, fasting on the dies stationum, which 


1 Strom. lib. I. f. 311, where he says of 
the false prophets: Τῷ ὄντι οὗτοι ἐν éxora- 
σει προεφήτευον, ὡς ἂν ἀποστώτου διώκονοι, 
where, without doubt, there is a play on 
words in the use of the terms ἔκστασις and 
ἀποστάτης. 

2 His words are: Οὐ μὲν διὰ τὸν λέγοντα 
καταγνωστέον ἀμαϑῶς καὶ τῶν λεγομένων, 
ὅπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν προφητεύειν νὺν δὴ λεγο- 
μένων παρατηρητέον" ἀλλὰ τὰ λεγόμενα 
σκοπητέον εἰ τῆς ἀληϑείας ἔχεται. Strom. 
1. VI. f. 647. As we might expect from 
Clement a more unbiassed judgment than 
was commonly entertained by others, we 
have so much the more reason to regret the 
loss of the work, in which he designed to 


speak more fully of Montanism, — if, in- 
deed, he ever executed that design, — viz. 
his book wep? προφητείας. Vid. Strom. L 
VIF. ST. 

8 E. g. Orig. in Joann. T. VI. ὁ 2: Προ- 
πετῶς ἀποφήνασϑαι περὶ προφήτων, ὡς οὐ 
σοφῶν, εἰ μὴ νενοήκασι τὰ ἀπὸ ἰδίου στό- 

ατος. 

4 Tertullian. de anima, c. 9, says of her: 
Et videt et audit sacramenta, et quorundam 
corda dignoscit et medicinas desiderantibus 
submittit. Jam vero prout scripture legun- 
tur, aut psalmi canuntur, aut allocutiones 
proferuntur, aut petitiones delegantur, ita 
inde materiz visionibus subministrantur. 


MONTANISM. 521 
till now had been considered a voluntary thing, (see above,) was pre- 
scribed as a law for all Christians. It was also made a law, that this 
fast should be extended to three o’clock im the afternoon. During 
three weeks of the year, a meagre diet, like that adopted of free choice 
by the continentes or ἀσκήται, was enjomed as a law on all Christians. 
Against these Montanistic ordinances, the remaining spirit of evangeli- 
eal freedom still nobly and emphatically declared itself: but afterwards 
the spirit which here expressed itself in Montanism, also passed over 
into the Catholic church. 

From Montanism proceeded a tendency, which, instead of leading 
men to value the blessings of humanity according to their true rela- 
tion, in the view of Christianity, to the highest good — the kingdom 
of God —led them only to place the one over against the other. And 
the same tendency, by the undue prominence it gave to the divine ele- 
ment as a power to suppress every human motive, would lead also to a 
quietism that crippled and discouraged human activity. On this princi- 
ple, neither would the blessings of the éarthly life be estimated according 
to their real worth, nor the use of the requisite means for securing and 
preserving them be acknowledged as a duty. Accordingly, Montanism 
tended to foster a fanatic longing after martyrdom. It set up the prin- 
ciple, that in submitting to the divine will, men should do nothing to 
avoid those persecutions,” which it was God’s will to suspend over 
Christians for the trial of their faith. This spirit of Montanism char- 
acteristically expresses itself in the following oracle: ‘‘ Let it not be your 
wish to die on your beds in the pains of child-birth, or in debilitating fever ; 
but desire to die as martyrs, that He may be glorified, who suffered for 
you.” The same tendency of spirit pushed Montanism, in its anxiety 
to avoid an accommodating disposition, which might prove injurious to 
faith, to the other extreme of sternly renouncing all those usages of 
civil and social life which could in any way be traced to a Pagan ori- 
gin; of despising all those prudential maxims by which it was possible 
to avert the suspicion of the Pagan authorities. It seems, among 
other things, to have been objected to the Montanists, that, by their 
frequent meetings for fasting and prayer, they defied the established 
laws against secret assemblies.® 

This tendency of the moral spirit led to an undue estimation of ce- 
libacy ; — and the unmarried life was already particularly recommend- 
ed by the Montanistic prophetess Priscilla, to the clerical order, as if 
it was in this way only they could be the worthy channels of holy 
influences, could properly render themselves capable of receiving the 


1 The so called XKerophagize. — Sunday 
and the Sabbath were excepted from these 
fasts. The Montanists were at difference 


Quadragesimal fasts in the later church ; — 
and so indeed they are called by Jerome, 


with the Roman church in respect also to 
the not fasting on the Sabbath, (see above.) 
At the time of Jerome, when, however, the 
Montanists seem to have departed in many 
respects, as, for example, in respect to the 
church constitution, from their original in- 
stitutions, they had three weeks of Xero- 
phagie. These may be compared with 


44* 


(ep. 27, ad Marcellum): “illi tres in anno 
faciunt quadragesimas.” 

2 See Tertullian. de fuga in persecut. 

8 De jejuniis, c. 13: Quomodo in nobis 
ipsam quoque unitatem jejunationum et 
xerophagiarum et stationum denotaris ? 
Nisi forte in senatusconsulta et in princi- 
pum mandata coitionibus opposita delin- 
quimus. 


522 MONTANISM. 
divine gifts of the spirit.1 Hence, we may observe another instance 
in which Montanism passed over into the Catholic church. 

Now an ascetic spirit of this sort is elsewhere usually coupled with 
ignorance of the marriage state, as a form for the realization of the 
highest good; and this ignorance is usually based on a sensuous and 
barely outward conception of this relation. But Montanism united 
with this ascetic tendency, a conception of the marriage institution di- 
rectly opposed to the one just mentioned. We see the influence of 
the peculiar Christian spirit manifested in Montanism, by the promi- 
nence it gives to the idea of marriage, in that view of it which was 
first clearly suggested by Christianity, —as a spiritual union, conse- 
erated by Christ, of two individuals, separated by sex, im one common 
life. ‘The Montanists held, therefore, that the religious consecration 
of such a union was a matter of the highest moment; they reckoned 
it as belonging to the essence of a truly Christian marriage, that it 
should be concluded in the church, in the name of Christ. A marriage 
otherwise contracted, was looked upon by them as an unlawful connec- 
tion.2 Regarding the institution in this light, it followed again, that 
Montanism would allow of no second marriage, after the death of the 
first husband or the first wife; for marriage being an zndissoluble 
union in the spirit, not in the flesh alone, was destined to endure be- 
yond the grave.’ In this instance, also, the Montanists, m their legal 
spirit, only pushed to the extreme, a view to which others doubtless 
were inclined. And it is clear, that in this matter too, the Montanis- 
tic element passed over into a Catholic one; for the way was thus pre- 
pared for the sacramental view of the marriage institution. 

The severe legal spirit of Montanism displays itself m the zeal it 
manifested for the more rigid principles of penance.® But the Monta- 
nists, so far as they failed, like their opponents, rightly to distinguish 
baptism and regeneration, and rightly to understand the relation of 
faith and the forgiveness of sin to the entire Christian life, were in- 
volved in the same error which lay at the foundation of this whole dis- 
pute on the extension of absolution. The moral zeal against that false 
confidence in the efficacy of absolution which tended to encourage the 
feeling of security in sin, expresses itself in the following exposition of 
Tertullian, aimed against a wrong application of the passage in 1 John 


1 The words of Rigaltius, published in Ter- 
tullian’s work de exhortatione castitatis, c. 11, 
are: Quod sanctus minister sanctimoniam 
noverit ministrare. Purificantia enim con- 
cordat et visiones vident et ponentes faciem 
deorsum etiam voces audiunt manifestas, 
tam salutares quam et occultas. 

2 Tertullian. de pudicitia, ¢. 4: Penes nos 
occultz quoque conjunctiones, id est, non 
prius apud ecclesiam profess, juxta moe- 
chiam et fornicationem judicari periclitan- 
tur, nec inde conserte obtentu matrimonii 
crimen eludunt. According to the princi- 
ples of Montanism, the essence of a true 
marriage in the Christian sense is, (de mo- 
nogamia, c. 20): cum Deus jungit duos in 


unam carnem, aut junctos deprehendens in 
eadem, conjunctionem signavit. (Where to 
the marriage contracted by two parties 
while they were still pagans, the sanctifying 
consecration of Christianity is superadded.) 

8 See Tertullian. de monogamia and ex- 
hortat. castitatis. 

4 Athenagoras (legat. pro Christian. f. 
37, ed. Colon) styles the γώμος δεύτερος 
εὐπρεπὴς μοιχεία. Origen (Tom. in Matth. 
f. 363) says that Paul gave permission for 
a second marriage after the death of the 
first husband or the first wife: πρὸς τὴν 
σκληροκαρδίαν ἢ ἀσϑενείαν. 

2 See on this controversy, vol. I. p. 217, ff. 

γι 


MONTANISM. 523 


1: 7. “John says, if we would walk in the light, as he is in the 
light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus 
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Do we sin then, if we walk 
in the light, and shall we be cleansed if we sin in the light? By no 
means. For whosoever sins, is not in the light, but in darkness. He 
is showing, then, how we shall be cleansed from sin, if we walk in the 
light, in which no sin can be committed ; for such is the power of the 
blood of Christ, that those whom it has cleansed from sm, it thence- 
forth preserves pure, if they continue to walk in the light.’’} 

It is true, as we have remarked, that Montanism encouraged the 
fanatic enthusiasm for martyrdom; for, according to the Montanistic 
doctrine, the martyrs would be entitled to enter immediately after 
death into a higher state of blessedness, to which other believers could 
obtain no admittance ;? yet the struggle to maintain a rigid peniten- 
tial discipline induced the Montanist Tertullian to oppose the undue 
homage which in another respect was paid to the martyrs. Since 
many, for instance, to whom Montanism refused absolution, could ob- 
tain it,in the Catholic church, through the mediation of the confessors,? 
Tertullian was led to denounce this false confidence in the efficacy of 
their intercession, and to chastise the spiritual arrogance of these men. 
“ Let it satisfy the martyrs,” said he, ‘‘ to have purged themselves of 
their own sins. It savors of ingratitude or arrogance, to pretend to 
bestow on others what it must be considered a great favor to have ob- 
tained for one’s self. Who, but the Son of God only, has paid the 
debt of death for others by his own? For to this end he came, that, 
free from sin and perfectly holy himself, he might die for smners. 
Thou, therefore, who wouldst emulate Him in procuring the forgiveness 
of sins, suffer for me, when thou art free from sin thyself. But if thou 
art a sinner, how can the oil of thy puny lamp suffice at once for me 
and for thyself?’ 4 

In accordance with the one-sided, supra-naturalistic element of the 
scheme we have been considering, the expectations and attention of the 
Montanists were so directed as to observe, not how Christianity was to 
transform the life of humanity, by beginning from within and working 
outwards, but how the kingdom of Christ was to gain the dominion of 
the world by some outward miracle. Here full scope was given to 
their extravagant coloring of Chiliasm; and in this respect also, they 
only pushed to the furthest extreme, a way of thinking which very 
generally prevailed in the church. 

If by pretzsm we understand that morbid direction of pious feelings 
where some arbitrary figment, some excrescence from without, some- 
thing cast over and over in the same mould, is substituted for the nat- 
ural development of the Christian life, ——in other words, the reaction 
of a legal principle within the bosom of Christianity, — then we shall 
have good cause to consider Montanism as the earliest form of mani- 
festation of what may properly be styled pietism. 


1De pudicitia, c. 19. Which work re- 2The Paradise; see Tertullian, de ani- 
fers generally to this dispute. ma. c. 56. 


® See vol. I. p. 220. 4 De pudicitia, c. 22. 


524 MONTANISM: 


What tended to further the spread of this party, was in part its re- 
lation to Christian principles long before existing, and in part the con- 
tagious influence of enthusiasm, and the manner in which spiritual 
pride was here nourished ; since he who acknowledged the new proph- 
ets, might directly consider himself to be a truly regenerate man, a 
member of the select company of the spiritually minded, (Spiritales,) 
and despise all other Christians as carnally minded, (Psychici,) as not 
yet truly regenerated. 

The controversy on Montanism was conducted with extreme violence, 
first in Asia Minor. Synods were held for the purpose of inquiring 
into the affair, at which many declared themselves opposed to it; the 
proceedings of these synods were sent to the more distant churches, 
and these were thus drawn into the dispute. It is to be regretted, that, 
owing to the want of distinct accounts, the whole of these proceedings, 
and hence the gradual formation of the Montanistic sects, and their 
relation to the rest of the church, are matters involved in great obscu- 
rity. Though the Montanists considered themselves to be the only 
genuine Christians, and looked upon their opponents as being Christians 
but in part, and as occupying an inferior position ; though they thought 
themselves exalted above all the rest of the church, yet it does not ap- 
pear that they were inclined to separate immediately from the latter, 
and to renounce its fellowship; they wished only to be considered 
the ecclesia spiritus, spiritalis, withm the ecclesia made up of the 
psychical multitude. They introduced a similar distinction into the 
practical province, as the Gnostics had done into the theoretical. It 
is true, by this practically aristocratic spirit, the essence of the Chris- 
tian church was not exposed to so much danger, as it could not fail to 
be by the theoretical; but yet the adherents of the new prophetic or- 
der could not be tolerated in that relation to the rest of the church in 
which they were continually seeking to extend themselves more widely, 
without great injury to the church life; for they claimed only tolera- 
tion at first, in order that they might gradually establish their own 
supremacy. 

The community at Lyons had among them, at the time of the bloody 
persecution which they experienced under the Emperor Marcus Aure- 
lius, many members from Asia Minor; and they were led by their 
close connection with the Asiatic church, to take a lively interest in 
the proceedings relative to Montanism. The community wrote to 
Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, and the presbyter Irenzeus was the bearer 
of their letter. Much light would be shed on the whole subject, had 
we more distinct information respecting the contents of this letter ; but 
Eusebius! barely remarks, that the judgment on the matter expressed 
by the church was just and orthodox. Now, as Eusebius certainly 
considered the Montanistic tendency as heretical, we might infer from 
this remark of his, that the judgment expressed in the letter was one 
unfavorable to the Montanists. But in this case, the letter could not 
have had in view the end which Eusebius assigns to it, that of putting 


1 Lib. V. ¢. 3. 


MONTANISM. 525 


an end to the disputes. It would harmonize most perfectly with this 
end, to suppose that the letter was written im a spirit of Christian 
moderation, which sought to lessen the importance of the points in dis- 
pute, to refute the various exaggerated charges laid against the Mon- 
tanistic churches, and, in the diversity of views respecting the worth 
of the new prophetic order, to inculcate the importance of Christian 
unanimity. On this supposition, we may explain why Origen should 
express so favorable an opinion of the contents of the letter, which he 
could not have done, had it breathed a decidedly Montanistic spirit. 
This supposition accords best, moreover, with the known character of 
Irenzeus, a man of moderation and a lover of peace; as also with his 
opinions, which, without being Montanistic, were yet not wholly unfa- 
vorable to the Montanists. By this mission, Eleutherus was persuaded 
probably to make peace with those churches; but, soon after, Praxeas 
of Asia Minor, a violent opponent of Montanism, came to Rome; and 
partly by presenting before the Roman bishop the opposite conduct of 
his two predecessors, Anicetus and Soter,! partly by his unfavorable 
representations relative to the condition of the Montanistic churches, 
persuaded him to revoke all that he had hitherto done. The Monta- 
nists now proceeded to form and propagate themselves as a distinct 
sect. They were styled Cataphrygians, from the name of their coun- 
try; also Pepuzians, because Montanus, it was said, taught that a 
place called Pepuza, in Phrygia, perhaps the first seat of the Monta- 
nistic church, was the chosen spot from which the millennial reign of 
Christ was destined to begin. 

It might be gathered from the relation of Montanism to the prevail- 
ing spiritual tendencies in the church, that there would be various gra- 
dations and stages of transition between the latter and Montanism de- 
cidedly expressed; as also many shades of difference amongst its oppo- 
nents, from those that were not disposed to overlook the Christian ele- 
ment in this appearance, —as for example a Clement of Alexandria, — 
down to those who, by their uncompromising opposition, were driven to 
another extreme, and to a depravation of the Christian spirit of another 
kind. As Montanism confounded together the Old and New Testa- 
ment positions, its antagonists were led to draw with so much the 
greater precision the line of demarcation between them. Their current 
watch-word was borrowed from Matthew 11: 13, “‘ The prophets and 
the law prophesied until John the Baptist — then they were to cease.” 
This maxim they opposed as well to the new ascetic ordinances and 
to the new precepts curtailing Christian freedom, as to the new pro- 
phetic order by which the church must allow itself to be governed.” 
Tertullian remarks, of those who so applied the above passage, that they 
would have done better to banish the Holy Spirit entirely from the 
church, since his agency was so wholly dispensed with.? But his accu- 


1 The truth of what is here asserted de- itis Deo, sicut de gratia, ita de disciplina. 
pends, however, on the question whether De jejuniis, c. 11. 
the bishop before mentioned was Eleutherus 3 Superest, ut totum auferatis, quantum 
or Victor. in vobis tam otiosum. De jejuniis, c. 11. 

2 Tertullian replies: Palos terminales fig- 


526 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


sation is, in this case, unjust ; for both parties were agreed in believing 
that the church could not subsist without the continued actuation of the 
Holy Spirit. The only point of dispute between the two parties was 
the question about the form of that agency, whether it was one which 
lay at the ground in the whole ordinary course of the development of 
the church, or whether it was newly created by a divine, supernatural 
interposition. And it was these very antagonists of Montanism, who 
seem to have prominently set forth in contrast to the Old Testament 
view, the conception of the Holy Spirit, as the new, animating princi- 
ple, both of the individualities of character and also of their harmoni- 
ous combination in the communities which it actuated ;—-from which 
specific difference itself they drew their conclusion, that the church 
could not be made dependent on any new prophetic order. But the 
most decided opponents of Montanism, such as the Alogi hereafter to 
be mentioned, either denied the continuance of the miraculous gifts 
which distinguished the Apostolic church, the charismata, which, in their 
form, discovered something of a supernatural character; or were not 
ready to acknowledge the prophetic gift as a thing that pértamed to the 
Christian economy, but considered it as belonging exclusively to the 
Old Testament; and hence they could not admit any prophetic book 
into the canon of the New Testament. It is to be regretted, that our 
information is so scanty respecting the party of the Alogians, so called ; 
and that the work of Hippolytus on the charismata, which was proba- 
bly written in opposition to those ultra anti-Montanists, has not reached 
our times. We should otherwise have been enabled to speak with more 
definiteness and certainty on this disputed pomt, and on the manner in 
which it was handled. 

There were antagonists of Montanism, who opposed to a fanatical 
tendency on the side of the feelings, a negative tendency on the side 
of the understanding ; and who, from the dread of what was fanatical, 
rejected much also that was genumely Christian. It is true, as must 
be evident from what has been said, that Montanism formed the ex- 
treme point of the anti-Gnostic spirit; but that ultra anti-Montanistic 
tendency of the understanding, however, must, in order to maintain 
itself in its dry sobriety, so hostile to everything of a transcendent 
character, have been no less opposed to the speculative and mystical 
element in Gnosticism. And the dread of the Gnostic tendency 
might, precisely in the same way as the dread of the Montanistic, push 
men to one-sided negations. It is easy to understand how persons with 
some partial leaning of this sort must be struck with the peculiar ele- 
ment of St. John as wholly foreign from their own views; and how 
they would be inclined to bring up the differences between the gospel 
according to John, and the others, which seemed more accordant with 
their own opinions,! for the purpose of showing, that the gospel which 
the Montanists were chiefly in the habit of quoting in defence of their 
doctrine on the new revelations, was not a genuine one. Irenzeus, from 


1 As, for example, according to the testi- John, that in the Synoptical evangelists 
mony of Epiphanius, (heres. 51,) that the mention is made of one passover, in John 
history of the temptation is omitted in of two. 


SCHOOL. 527 
whom we have the first account of this party, certainly goes too far, 
when he tells: us, that they rejected the gospel of John on account of 
the passage in it which speaks of the Paraclete.’ That passage alone 
could not possibly have induced them to such a step; for in truth they 
needed only to limit, as was actually done by others, the promise to the 
apostles, in order to deprive the Montanists of this support. As it was 
their practice, however, when those words of Christ were adduced by 
those who held the Montanistic views, to pronounce the whole book 
which contained them a spurious one, it was a natural course, suggested 
by the propensity so common in theological polemics, of drawing general 
conclusions from partial facts, to infer that they had rejected the gospel 
on account of this single text alone. 

Apart from the consideration that the antagonists of Montanism 
must reject the Apocalypse as a prophetic book, and favorable to Chili- 
asm, the whole drift and style of this book must in itself have pos- 
sessed something alien from the spirit of this party of the sober under- 
standing. They made sport of the seven angels and the seven trum- 
pets of the Revelation. Yet such a prosaic tendency of the under- 
standing as the above described, was something too foreign from this 
youthful age of the church, to allow of its meeting with any very gen- 
eral reception. 

As in Montanism a tendency repellant of the existing elements of 
culture appeared in its most decided form; so, on the other hand, the 
tendency which strove to reconcile the existing culture with Christian- 
ity, and to cause it to be pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, pre- 
sented itself especially in the Alexandrian school. But the question 
arises, from what source is this tendency to be derived, and what was 
its original aim, — whether perhaps it was, in the outset, merely a pro- 
vision to communicate religious instruction to the pagans, or whether 
there had existed in Alexandria, from the first, a school to educate 
teachers for the Christian church, a sort of theological seminary for the 
clerical order.. The notices of Eusebius? and of Jerome® are too in- 
definite to furnish any solution of this question ; and besides, neither of 
these church Fathers was so situated as to be able duly to distinguish 
the form of this school as it existed in his own time from what it origi- 


nally was. 


1Jreneus, lib. III. c.11,§ 9, His words 
are: Ut donum spiritus frustrentur, quod 
in novissimis temporibus secundum placi- 
tum Patris effusum est in humanum genus, 
illam speciem non admittunt, que est se- 
cundum Joannis evangelium, in qua Para- 
cletum se missurum Dominus promisit. 

2 Lib. VI. c. 10, that a διδασκάλειον ἱερῶν 
λόγων had existed there from ancient times, 
which according to the church phraseology 
may be most naturally interpreted as mean- 
ing a school for the expounding of the 
scriptures. But this does not suffice to 
characterize the particular mode and form 
under which the Alexandrian school ap- 
peared; though it is easy to bring into these 
words all that belonged to theological study 


We must therefore content ourselves with what may be 


in the sense of this school, when its condi- 
tion and character are once understood. 
For its Gnosis was designed, without any 
doubt, to furnish a key for the right under- 
standing of scripture, and was to be derived 
from scripture by allegorical interpretation. 
A distinct classification of different theo- 
logical disciplines, as exegesis, dogmatics, 
etc., is, in this age of the church, when every 
thing was still in one chaotic mass, not to 
be thought of, —as has been very clearly 
pointed out by Hr. Director Hasselbach of 
Stettin, where he explains this phrase in 
his Dissertation de schola, que Alexandria 
floruit, catechetica, Part. I. p. 15. 
8 De vir. illustr. c. 36. 


228 THE ALEXANDRIAN 

gathered from our knowledge of the labors of the individual catechists 
who presided over the school. Now we find in the outset at Alexandria 
but one man appointed by the bishop to hold the office of catechist, 
whose business it was to give religious instruction to the pagans, and 
moreover doubtless to the children of the Christians in that place.} 
The catechist Origen was the first to share the duties of this office with 
another person, when they became too multiplied to allow him an oppor- 
tunity of prosecuting at the same time his works on scientific theology. 
The catechumens were then divided into two classes. But though the 
office of catechist at Alexandria differed in no respect originally from 
the same office in other cities, yet it could not fail to become gradually, 
of itself, an entirely different affair. 

Men were required for this office, who possessed a perfect and exact 
knowledge of the Grecian religion; especially, who had received a philo- 
sophical education, and been trained in the society and amidst the dis- 
cussions of those learned pagans, who, after having explored many sys- 
tems, had turned their attention to Christianity. It was not enough 
here, as in other churches, to present the main doctrines of Christian- 
ity, according to the so-called παράδοσις : it was necessary, with the ed- 
ucated catechumens, to go back to the primitive sources of the religion in 
the scriptures themselves, and seek to initiate them into the under- 
standing of these. They required a faith which would stand the test 
of scientific examination. Clement, who was himself one of these cat- 
echists, points to the need of a thorough method of administering the 
catechetical office at Alexandria, when he says:? “‘He who would 
gather from every quarter what would be for the profit of the catechu- 
mens, especially if they are Greeks,? (for the earth is the Lord’s, and 
the fulness thereof,) must not, like the irrational brutes, be shy of 
much learning, but he must seek to collect around him every possible 
means of helping his hearers ;’’ — and directly after,* * All culture is 
profitable, and particularly necessary is the study of holy scripture, 
to enable us to prove what we teach, and especially when our hearers 
come. to us from the discipline of the Greeks.” ® The patience and 
skill which must be exercised by these Alexandrian. teachers, in answer- 
ing the multifarious questions which would be proposed to them, is inti- 
mated by Origen, when he requires of the Christian teachers, that they 
should follow Christ’s example, and not show a fretful spirit, if they 
should be pushed with questions proposed not for the sake of learning, 
but for the purpose of putting them to the proof.® 

Much care was therefore necessary in selecting these Alexandrian 
catechists ; and the office was conferred in preference on those men of 


1 Eusebius (1. VI. c. 6) says, that Ori- 
gen, when a boy, had been a pupil of Clem- 


ent. 

2 Strom. |. VI. f. 659, B. 

8 To complete the thought;—he ought 
not to be timid in exploring the vestiges of 
truth even in pagan literature, and to ap- 
propriate the useful; for all comes from 
God, and is, as such, pure. 

4 Strom. l. VI. f. 660, C. 


5 With these remarks compare what 
Clement says generally with regard to those 
to whom the faith must be demonstrated 
after the manner of the Greeks. 

®In Matth. T. XIV. § 16: Πειραζομένου 
τηλικούτου σωτῆρος ἡμῶν, τίς TOV μαϑητῶν 
αὐτοῦ ἀγανακτοίη τεταγμένος εἰς διδασκα- 
λίαν, ἐπὶ τῷ πειράζεσϑαι ὑπό τινων καὶ 
πυνϑανομένων οὐκ ἐκ φιλομαϑείας, ἀλλ’ 
ἀπὸ τοῦ πειράζειν ἐϑέλειν; 


SCHOOL. 529 


learning and of a philosophical education, who had themselves been con: 
ducted to Christianity by the way of philosophical inquiry — such as 
were Pantenus, the first Alexandrian catechist of whom we have any 
distinct knowledge, and his disciple, Clement. 

The circle of studies taught by these men went on now of its own 
accord gradually to extend itself, and to embrace a wider range ; for it 
was the first attempt to satisfy, on the principles of the church faith, a 
want deeply felt by numbers,—the want of a scientific exposition of 
that faith, and of a Christian science. Their school was frequented 
partly by those educated pagans who, after having under their instruc- 
tions been converted to Christianity, were seized with the desire of de- 
voting themselves, and all they possessed, to its service; and with this 
in view chose the Alexandrian catechists for their guides; and partly 
by young men who, standing already within the Christian pale, were 
only thirsting after a more profound knowledge, and aiming to prepare 
themselves for the office of church teachers. Thus there grew up here, 
in a manner perfectly spontaneous, a theological school. It was the 
birth-place of Christian theology in the proper sense, — theology as it 
sprang partly from the inward impulse of the mind thirsting after scien- 
tific knowledge, and partly from an outwardly directed apologetic inte- 
rest to defend the doctrines of the church against philosophically edu- 
cated Greeks, and against the Gnostics. 

To form a right conception of this school in its early growth, we must 
consider its relation to the three different parties, in connection with, or 
in opposition to which, it shaped itself; and whose different tendencies 
it conceived the possibility of uniting together by means of a higher 
principle which should reconcile their antagonisms ; ---- its relation, 1. To 
those seekers after wisdom, the Greeks, who despised Christianity as a 
blind faith, that shunned the light of reason; and who were only con- 
firmed in their contempt of it by the gross, material views of those un- 
educated and sternly repulsive Christians with whom they came in con- 
tact ; 2. Its relation to the Gnostics, now a numerous class in Alexan- 
dria, who likewise spoke with contempt of the blind faith of a grovel- 
ing multitude, and by promising a higher, esoteric knowledge of reli- 
gion, drew to them those pagans who sought after wisdom, and those 
Christians who were not satisfied with the ordinary religious instruc- 
tion; 3. Its relation to that primitive class of church teachers, who 
occupied the ground of practical Realism, and more especially to those 
zealots among them, whom the pride and arrogance of the Gnostics had 
led to be suspicious of all speculation and philosophy, and whatever 
seemed like the striving after a Gnosis — and who were in continual 
fear of the corruption of Christianity by the mixing in of foreign phi- 
losophical elements. By means of a Gnosis resulting from, and harmo- 
niously combining with, faith,’ the Alexandrians supposed they should 
be able to avoid all that was partial and false in each of these tenden- 
cies, and even find means of reconciling them together. : 

They differed from the Gnostics in their theory of the relation of the 


1 Τνῶσις ἀληϑινῆ, opposed to the ψευδώνυμος. 
VOL. I. | 45 


530 THE ALEXANDRIAN 

γνῶσις to the πίστις, in that they acknowledged faith as the foundation of 
the higher life for al/ Christians; as the common bond, whereby all, 
however differing from one another in mental cultivation, are still united 
together in one divine community. They contrasted the unity of the 
catholic church, founded on this basis of faith, with the strife of the 
Gnostic schools, (διατριβαί) They held that the sources of knowledge 
for the πίστις and for the γνῶσις were not different, but the same for 
both; namely, the common tradition, handed down im all the churches, 
concerning the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and the holy 
scriptures. They made it the business of the Gnosis, simply to place 
in the clear light of consciousness, what had been first appropriated by 
faith, and incorporated with the inward life; to unfold this in its full 
extent, and according to its mternal connection ; to place it on the basis 
and under the form of science; to prove that this was the genuine doc- 
trine as it came from Christ; to give an account of its history, and to 
defend it against the objections of its enemies among pagan philoso- 
phers and heretics. Their watch-word, which seems to have been a cur- 
rent motto already handed down from some earlier period, and which 
subsequently continued to be the watch-word for marking the relation 
of faith to knowledge, from the time of Augustin to the establishment 
of the scholastic theology for which he prepared the way, was the pas- 
sage in Isaiah 7: 9 —a passage, it must be allowed, which admits of 
the sense they ascribed to it only in the Alexandrian version, and 
there only when taken without any regard to the connection: ---- 
‘Kav μὴ πιστεύσητε, οὐδὲ μὴ συνῆτε," if ye do not believe, neither shall ye 
understand. ‘These words, which were first used in the sense, He who 
believes not the gospel, can obtain no insight into the spirit and essence 
of the Old Testament, were in the next place employed in the kindred 
sense, that without faith in Christianity and its several doctrines, it is 
impossible to penetrate into the more profound knowledge of Christianity 
and its doctrines. According to the measure of faith will be the pro- 
gress made in the understanding of the truth ;—— the degree of knowl- 
edge will correspond with the degree of faith.? 

Clement of ‘Alexandria defends the worth of faith against those pagans 
and Gnostics who confounded faith with opmion. ‘“ It is plain,” says 
he, ‘‘ that faith is something godlike, which can be destroyed neither 
by the power of any other worldly love, nor by present fear.”? He 
represents faith as holding the same relation to the higher life, as the 
breath to the life of the body. An important character, for him, in the 
essence of faith, is that spontaneous seizure of the godlike, anticipating 


κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως, TO συνιέ- 
ναι. 


1 Just as, in more recent times, many 
texts from Luther’s translation of the Bible 


became current proof passages for propo- 
sitions relating to Christian faith or prac- 
tice, although this application of them was 
wholly inconsistent with the sense which 
they had in the original. 

2 Strom. 1. I. f. 273, A.; 1. 11 f. 362, A.; 
]. IV. f. 528, B. and Orig. in Matth. ed. 
Huet. T. XVI. § 9: ’Ex τοῦ πεπιστευκέναι 


8 Θεῖζόν τι εἷναι, μῆτε ὑπὸ ἄλλης φιλίας 
κοσμικῆς διασπωμένην, μῆτε ὑπὸ φόβου πα- 
ρόντος διαλυομένην. Strom. 1. II. f. 872. 

4 Τὴν πίστιν οὕτως ἀναγκαίαν τῷ γνωστι- 
κῷ ὑπάρχουσαν, ὡς τῷ κατὰ τὸν κόσμον 
τόνδε βιοῦντι,͵ πρὸς τὸ ζῆν τὸ ἀναπνεῖν. ---- 
L. ο. f. 373. 


SCHOOL. 5381 
conception, which proceeds from the recipient disposition of the heart.} 
In this phase of it, so far as faith presupposes an attractive power of 
the godlike on the human heart, and a spontaneous yielding to that 
power on the part of the latter, he well understood its essential charac- 
ter. He supposes, in human nature, a sense correlative to truth, which 
is attracted by the same, and repelled by what is false? Accordingly 
he characterizes faith as something positive, —a positive union with 
the godlike ; and, on the other hand, unbelief as a negative quality, 
which, being such, presupposes the positive.? With faith is already 
given, according to this view, the highest thing of all— the divine life 
itself. As he elsewhere remarks:‘ “ He that believes the Son, hath 
eternal life. If they who believe, then, have life, how can there be 
anything higher for them than life eternal? Faith wants nothing; it 
is complete in itself — self-sufficing.”” Clement here puts it down as the 
characteristic of faith, carrying in 10 the pledge of the future, that it an- 
tedates the future as if were present.° When this divine life, received by 
faith, permeates and cleanses the soul, it is in possession of a new sense 
for the discernment of divine things. So Clement remarks: “ Behold I 
will do a new thing — says the Logos, Is. 43: 19— which no eye hath 
seen, nor -ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to 
conceive, 1 Corinth. 2: 9; which ean be seen, heard and conceived only 
with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, through faith and understanding ; 
since the disciples of our Lord speak, conceive and act spiritually.” ® 
This intimate connection between knowing and living belongs to the 
peculiar character of the. Alexandrian Gnosis. The Gnosis was con- 
ceived by this school, not as a mere form of speculation, but as a result 
of the whole tendency of the new inward life growing out of faith and 
manifesting itself in the conduct, —as a habitus practicus animi. This 
is expressed in the following words of Clement: “ As is the doctrine, so 
also must be the life; for the tree is known by its fruit, not by its blos- 
soms or its leaves. The Gnosis comes, then, from the fruit and the life ; 
not from the doctrine and the blossom. For we say that the Gnosis 
is not merely doctrine, but a divine science ; — it is that light, dawning 
within the soul from obedience to God’s commands, which makes all 
things clear; teaches man to know.all that is contained in creation, and 
in himself, and instructs him how to maintain fellowship with God; 
for what the eye is to the body, such is the Gnosis to the mind.’’? 
There can be no such thing as a knowledge of divine things without 
that living them out, which is the fruit of faith. Knowing and living 
here become one. This unity of the theoretical and the practical ele- 


1 Ὕπόληψις ἑκούσιος καὶ πρόληψις εὐ- 
γνώμονος προκαταλήψεως. Τ,. c. f. 371. 

2 Τὸν ἄνϑρωπον, φύσει μὲν διαβεβλημέ- 
νον πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ψεύδους συγκατώάϑεσιν, 
ἔχοντα δὲ ἀφορμὰς πρὸς πίστιν τ’ ἀληϑοῦς. 
L. c. f. 384. 

8 Ἢ ἀπιστία ἀποσύστασις οὖσα τῆς πίσ- 
τεως δυναμὴν δείκνυσι τὴν συγκατάϑεσίν 
τε καὶ πίστιν, ἀνυπαρξία γὰρ στέρησις οὐκ 
ἂν γέγοιτο. Strom. |. IL f. 884. 

* Pedagog. lib. 1. c. 6. 


5 Ἐκεῖνο δὲ τὸ (τῷ) πιστεῦσαι ἤδη προει- 
ληφότες ἐσόμενον, μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἀπο- 
λαμβάνομεν γενόμενον. 

6 Strom. ]. IL. f. 865, Β. 

Ἰ bic ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ἐγγινόμενον 
ἐκ τῆς κατὰ τὰς ἐντολὰς ὑπακοῆς, τὸ πάντα 
κατάδηλα ποιοῦν, τά τε ἐν γενέσει αὐτόν τε 
τὸν ἄνϑρωπον ἑαυτόν τε γινώσκειν παρα- 
σκευάζον, καὶ ϑεοῦ ἐπίβολον καϑίστασϑαι 
διδάσκον. Strom. |. III. f. 444. 


5a2 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


ment, of objective truth and the subjective state of the individual, pre- 
sented itself to Clement just as it sprung out of the depths of his own 
Christian consciousness, — although the Neo-Platonic philosophy lent 
him a form for the expression of it, im what it taught concerning the 
identity of subject and object—of the νοοῦν and the νοητόν, at the 
highest position of knowledge.? | 

This accordingly is, in the Alexandrian scheme, the subjective con- 
dition, and the subjective essence of the Gnosis. As it respects the ob- 
jective source of knowledge, whence the Gnosticus should seek to de- 
rive still deeper and clearer views of the truths he has received by faith 
into his inner life,— this, according to Clement, is Holy Scripture. 
If it was the case with many, who were without the requisite training, 
necessary to enable them to search the scriptures for themselves, that 
they simply adhered to the essential and fundamental truths of faith, 
which, in conformity with the Paradosis, had been communicated to 
them in their earliest instruction, yet the Gnosticus must distinguish him- 
self from these ordinary believers by his ability to prove those truths ; 
to deduce them from a comparison of the different parts of holy scrip- 
ture; and to draw from the same source the refutation of all opposite 
errors. Instead of a faith grounded on the authority and tradition of 
the church, he should possess a faith grounded on the knowledge of 
the Bible. Accordingly Clement says :? “‘ Faith is, so to speak, the 
compendious knowledge of essentials; Gnosis, the incontrovertible 
demonstration of the things received by faith, erected on the founda- 
tion of faith, through the doctrine of our Lord, whereby faith is raised 
to an irrefragable scientific knowledge.” The same father, in meeting 
the objection of Pagans and Jews, that it was impossible, owing to the 
multitude of sects among the Christians, to know where the truth was 
to be found, points them to the infallible criterion of Holy Writ, and 
observes: “‘ We rely not on men, who merely give us their opinions, 
over against which we, in like manner, may set our own. But if it is 
not enough merely to give our opinion, if it is necessary to prove what 
we affirm, we do not wait for the testimony of men, but prove it by the 
word of the Lord, which is the most certain of all arguments, or rather the 
only one —the form of knowing whereby those who have barely tasted 
of the scriptures, become believers, and those who have made greater 
progress and become accurately acquainted with the truth, are 
Gnostics.” ὃ 

Hence Clement denominates the Gnosis which results from compar- 
ing different passages of scripture, and which deduces the conclusions 
that flow from the acknowledged maxims of faith, a scientific faith.* 
The Gnostic, according to him, is one who has grown grey in the study 
of the holy scriptures ; whose life is nothing else than a series of works 


1'Qe μηκέτι ἐπιστήμην ἔχειν καὶ γνῶσιν κυριακῆς διδασκαλίας ἐποικοδομουμένη τῇ 
κεκτῆσϑαι, (τὸν γνωστικὸν,) ἐπιστήμην δὲ πίστει, εἰς τὸ ἀμετάπτωτον καὶ μετ’ ἐπιστή- 


εἶναι καὶ γνῶσιν. LL. 6.1. IV. f. 490. , μῆς καταληπτὸν παραπέμπουσα. Strom. |. 
2 Ἢ μὲν οὖν πίστις σύντομός ἐστιν, ὡς VII. 782. 
ἔπος εἰπεῖν, τῶν κατεπειγόντων γνῶσις, ἡ 8 Strom. VII. f. 757. 


γνῶσις δὲ ἀπόδειξις τῶν διὰ πίστεως παρ- 4 ᾿Επιστημονικὴ mores. Strom. 1. Il. f. 
εἰλημμένων ἰσχυρὰ καὶ βέβαιος, διὰ τῆς 381]. - 


SCHOOL. 533 
and of words, corresponding with the transmitted doctrine of our Lord.! 
But it is only for the Gnostic that the holy scriptures generate such a 
knowledge of divine things, because it is he only who brings to them 
the believing recipient sense. Where this is wanting, the scriptures 
appear unfruitful.2 This inner sense, however, is not sufficient of itself 
to deduce from the holy scriptures the truths they contain, to unfold 
these truths in all their bearings and form them into an organic whole, 
as well as to defend them against the objections of pagans and heretics, 
and to apply them to everything hitherto presented to man’s faculty of 
knowledge. There is required for this a previous scientific culture, 
and such a culture could not be created new and at once by Christian- 
ity ; but Christianity must here form a union with the scientific culture 
which had resulted from the previous history of mankind, in order that, 
as the leaven for all that pertains to humanity,’ it may gradually per- 
vade it, and fashion it to its own likeness. : 

It was here the Alexandrian Gnosis drew upon itself numerous ob- 
jections from the other party, who despised the culture of the Greeks 
as altogether repugnant to Christianity. Against these, its advocates 
must defend themselves and vindicate their peculiar method on what 
grounds they could. Interesting is this conflict, which has so often 
been repeated in history. It was argued against the Alexandrians, that 
the prophets, and the apostles at any rate, had no concern with philosoph- 
ical culture. Clement answered: ‘‘ The apostles and prophets, as disci- 
ples of the Spirit, spake certainly what the Spirit communicated to 
them ; but we can rely on no such guidance of the Holy Spirit super- 
seding all human means of culture, to enable ws to unfold the hidden 
sense of their words. He who would have his thoughts enlightened by 
the power of God, must already have accustomed himself to philoso- 
phize on spiritual things, must have already inured himself to that form 
of thought, which is now to be animated by a new and higher spirit. 
A logical cultivation of the mind is necessarily required, in order duly 
to distinguish the doubtful and synonymous words of scripture.” 4 
In answer to those who would have men satisfied with faith alone, and 
who rejected all science which men might wish to employ in the service 
of faith, he says: ‘It is as though they would look for the grapes at 
once, without having bestowed any previous culture on the vine. Un- 
der the figure of the vine our Lord is presented to us, from which we 
must expect the fruit to come only im proportion to the reasonable care 
and art of the husbandman. It is necessary to prune, to dig, and to 
bind up; the hook, the hoe, and other implements used in the culture 
of the vine, must be employed, that it may yield us the pleasant fruit.’ 


¢ 


1 Strom. 1. VII. f. 762, et 763. 

2 Strom. |. VIL. f. 756. Τοῖς γνωστικοῖς 
κεκυήκασιν αἱ γραφαί. 

8 Which similitude of the leaven Clem- 
ent understood how to explain in a very 
beautiful manner. He calls it “the power 
bestowed on us by the Word, which by 
small means effects much in a secret, invis- 
ible manner, attracting to itself every one 
who has received it, and reducing his whole 


45" 


nature to unity.” ‘H ἰσχὺς τοῦ λόγου ἡ 
δοϑεῖσα ἡμῖν, σύντόμος οὖσα καὶ δυνατὴ, 
πάντω τὸν καταδεξάμενον καὶ ἐντὸς ἑαυτοῦ 
κτησώμενον αὐτὴν, ἐπικεκρυμμένως τε καὶ 
ἀφάνως πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἕλκει καὶ τὸ πᾶν αὐτοῦ 
σύστημα εἰς ἑνότητα συνάγει. Strom. lib. 
.. Τωβ, 

4 Strom. lib. I. f. 292. 

5 L.c. f. 291. 


534 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


Tt appears, according to this, to have been considered as the proper 
business of the Gnosis, to unfold the included sum of the faith, to di- 
gest it, and preserve it from the intermixture of foreign elements. .ὃ 

Clement had to defend the Alexandrian Gnosis against the objection, 
that divine revelation was not allowed to be in itself the sufficient source 
of truth, but was represented as standing in need of additional aid and 
support from without itself; that such as had not enjoyed the advan- 
tage of scientific culture, were precluded from the possibility of under- 
standing it. To this he answers:! “If it were necessary to draw a dis- 
tinction for the sake of those who are always ready with their com- 
plaints, we might call philosophy a co-operating help in acquiring the 
knowledge of truth; a seeking after truth; a preparatory discipline of 
the Gnostic ; but that which simply codperates we make not the cause, 
the principal thing. We do not represent it as though the latter could 
not exist without philosophy; for in fact nearly every one among us, 
without having gone through the circle of the sciences,? without the 
Grecian philosophy, many of us without even knowing how to read or 
write, carried captive by that divine philosophy which came from the 
barbarians, have, by the power from on high, through faith, received the 
doctrine of God. Complete and sufficient in itself, then, is the doctrine 
of our Saviour, as the power and wisdom of God; and when to this 
is added the Grecian philosophy, it does not indeed make the truth any 
more powerful, but it renders futile the attacks of sophistry, and, as it 
wards off every fraudulent plot devised against the truth, has been 
properly denominated the wall and hedge of the vmeyard.? The truth 
of faith is like the bread which is indispensable to life ; the preparatory 
discipline may be compared to that which is eaten with the bread, and 
to the dessert.” 

In general, we must allow, Clement was distinguished for the mild- 
ness and moderation with which he met the opponents of the Alexan- 
drian Gnosis. He was himself aware how their fears had been excited 
by the corruptions to which simple Christianity was exposed among so 
many sects who were inclined to mix up into the gospel what was most 
foreign to its spirit; he was aware how natural it is for man to con- 
found the abuse and the right use of the same thing; but yet the zeal 
— often we must allow too ignorant zeal— of his opponents, and his 
own conviction that that grossly material and one-sided tendency was 
a serious hindrance to the spirit of Christianity which was striving to 
ennoble the whole man, and that many were thereby prevented from 
embracing it, seduced him into the error of expressing himself some- 
what too roughly against these opponents, and of denying them the justice 
due to their honest zeal; as when he says:* “ It is not unknown to me 
what many an ignorant brawler® has at his tongue’s end, that faith 
should cling to the most necessary things, to the essential points, and 
pass over those foreign and superfluous matters which detain us to no 


1 Strom. lib. I. f. 318. the Alexandrians applied to the relation of 
2"Avev τῆς ἐγκυκλίου παιδείας. philosophy itself to the Christian gnosis. 
8 What the ancients said of logic in its re- 4 Strom. lib. 1. f. 278. 

lation to philosophy, that it was the ϑριγκός, δ᾽ Αμαϑῶς pooaderc. 


SCHOOL. 585 


purpose on what has no concern with our great object ;’’ and again:} 
«<The multitude dread the Grecian philosophy,” as children do a mask, 
fearing it will carry them off. But if their faith is of such a sort (for 
knowledge I certainly could not call it) as that it may be subverted by 
specious words, it is always liable to be so subverted ; for they confess 
themselves that they have not the truth ; smce truth is invincible, but 
false opinions are overthrown at any moment.” We perceive here the 
high-hearted confidence of Clement in the might of Christian truth, 
which had nothing to fear from opposition, but would rather shine forth 
by its means with still greater lustre —although it must be allowed, 
this confidence leads him to bear too hard against a faith which, in the 
consciousness of its own weakness, is too anxiously concerned about the 
safety of its dearest possession. The Gnostic, according to Clement, — 
alluding to that saying ascribed in the apocryphal gospels to our Sa- 
viour — “ γίνεσϑε δοκιμοὶ τραπεζῖται," (be ye skilful money-changers) — 
should in all cases be able to distinguish truth from specious error, as 
genuine from counterfeit coms, and therefore stand in no fear of error, 
however specious. He needed to be familiar with the Grecian philoso- 
phy, for the very purpose of pointing out to the philosophically educa- 
ted pagans its errors and its insufficiency, of refuting them on their 
own position, and of conducting them from this to the knowledge of 
the truth. ‘Thus much,” observes Clement,’ “61 would say to those 
who are so fond of complaining: if the philosophy is unprofitable, yet 
the study of it is profitable, if there is profit to be derived from thor- 
oughly demonstrating that it is an unprofitable thing. Then again, we 
cannot condemn the heathens by merely pronouncing sentence on their 
dogmas; we must enter with them into the development of each in de- 
tail, until we compel them to acquiesce in our senténce ; for that sort 
of refutation wins the most confidence, which is united with a thorough 
knowledge of the matter in hand.”’ He says in another place :* ‘“* We 
must offer to the Greeks who seek after that which passes with them 
for wisdom, things of a kindred nature, so that they may come, as it 
may be expected they will, in the easiest way, through what is already 
familiar to them, to the belief of the truth. For I become all things 
to all men, says the apostle, that I may win all.” 

The most violent opponents of this liberal tendency, in order to a 
total condemnation of the study of the Greek philosophy, brought in the 
Jewish legend related in the apocryphal book of Enoch, which repre- 
sented all the higher kinds of knowledge as having come to the heathen 
out of due course through the agency of fallen spirits; and they held 
all heathen philosophers, without distinction, to be organs of the evil 
spirit. They either considered the whole pagan world before Christ to 
be in direct opposition to Christianity; confounded what was pagan 
with the original and divine element, without which Paganism, which 


1L. c. lib. VI. f. 655. rantly stopping their ears; for they are con- 
2 Clement, Stromat. VI. 659, wittily re- scious, if they once lend an ear to the Greek 
marks, “ Most Christians treat the doctrine philosophy, they would be unable to make 
in a boorish manner, like the companions good their escape.” 
of Ulysses, who sought not to avoid the ὃ Stromat. lib. I. f. 278. 
Syrens, but their rhythm and song, igno- 4 L.c. lib. V. f. 554. 


536 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


only adulterated and obscured this, could not have existed at all; re- 
fused to know any point of union betwixt Christianity and that part 
of man’s nature which, through all his corruption, intimates his relation- 
ship to God, and without which Christianity never could have been 
planted in the soil of heathenism ; or, like the stern and fiery Tertullian, 
the friend of nature and all original manifestation of life, the foe of art 
and false cultivation, they saw in philosophy nothing but the hand of 
Satan, falsifying and mutilating the original form of nature. Clement 
endeavored to confute this party also, on their own chosen position. 
‘¢ Even were this view correct,” says he, ‘“‘ yet even Satan could deceive 
men, only by clothing himself as an angel of light; he must be obliged 
to draw men by the appearance of truth, by mingling truth with false- 
hood ; and we must still search for, and acknowledge, the truth, from 
whatever quarter 1t may come. And even this communication can 
take place no otherwise than according to the will of God; must there- 
fore be included with all the rest in God’s plan of education for the 
human race.” 1 

Yet, speaking from his own position, he declares himself very strongly 
against such a view. ‘‘ How should it not seem strange,” says he, 
“‘when disorder and sin are the appropriate works of Satan, that he 
should be represented as the bestower of a benefit, philosophy, — 
for in this he would seem to have been more benevolent to the good 
men amongst the Greeks, than Divine Providence itself.” ? 

Clement, on the other hand, in the progressive steps of the Greek 
philosophy traces the working of a divine system for the education of 
mankind, — a sort of preparation for Christianity, suited to the pecu- 
liar character of the Greeks. It was the favorite idea of Clement, that 
the divine plan for the education of mankind constituted a great whole, 
the end of which he considered to be Christianity, and within which he 
included not merely the providential dealings of God with the Jewish 
people, but also, though in a different way, the providential dealings of 
God with the heathen world.? In reference to that particularizing 
conception of history, which would confine the directing agency of God 
in preparing the way for Christianity exclusively within the narrow 
compass of the Jewish nation, Clement remarks: “ Every movement 
to that which is good, comes from God. He employs those men who 
are peculiarly fitted to guide and instruct others,* as his organs to work 
on the larger portions of mankind. Such were the better sort among the 
Greek philosophers. That philosophy which forms men to virtue, can- 
not be a work of evil; it remains, then, that it should be of God, whose 
only work is to move to that which is good. And all gifts bestowed by 
God are bestowed for right ends, and received for right ends. Philos- 
ophy is not found in the possession of bad men, but was given to the 
best men among the Greeks: it is evident, therefore, from what source 
it was derived, and that it is the gift of that Providence which bestows 
on each whatever, under his own peculiar circumstances, it is proper he 


1 The sense of the passages in Strom. lib. 8 See the General Introduction, vol. 1. 
VI. 647, and lib. I. 310. 4 The ἡγεμονικοί and παιδευτικοί. 
2 Strom. lib. VI. f. 693. 


SCHOOL. 5387 


should receive. Thus we see, that to the Jews was given the law, to 
the Greeks philosophy, until the appearance of our Lord. From this 
period the universal call has gone forth for a peculiar people, who are 
to be made righteous through the doctrines of faith, now that the com- 
mon God of both Greeks and barbarians, or rather of the entire human 
race, has brought all together by one common Lord.! Before the ap- 
pearance of our Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks as a 
means of righteousness ; but now it is useful in the service of piety, as 
a sort of preparation for exhibiting the evidence of faith: for thy foot 
will not stumble when thou derivest all good from Providence, whether 
it belong to the heathens or to ourselves ; since God is the Author of 
all good — partly in a special sense, as in the gift of the Old and New 
Testaments, partly in a more indirect sense, as in the case of philoso- 
phy. Perhaps the latter, however, was also given to the Greeks in a 
special sense, before our Lord called the Gentiles, since it educated the 
Gentiles, as the law did the Jews, for Christianity; and philosophy was 
a preparatory step for those who were to be conducted through Christ 
to perfection.” When Clement speaks of a righteousness to be ob- 
tained by philosophy, he does not mean that philosophy could lead men 
to the end of their moral destination, and qualify them for attaining to 
everlasting life: for this he held the redemption to be absolutely neces- 
sary; nothing else could, in his opinion, be an adequate substitute for 
this fact; it would all serve only as a preparation for the appropriating 
of this as the ultimate end. The firmness of his conviction on this 
point is evident indeed from the fact— which we shall consider more 
minutely in another connection—that he held to the necessity of a par- 
ticular arrangement, in order to bring even those heathens whom he so 
mildly judged, to the conscious appropriation, after death, of the re- 
demption. He distinguishes between a doctrine that makes man right- 
eous, which in his view is the gospel only, and a doctrine which could 
do no more than prepare the way for this. He distinguishes between 
a certain stage in the awakening of the religious moral sense, a certain 
stage of excitement to moral effort, of moral preconformation, and that 
universal complete righteousness which is the end of man’s nature gen- 
erally,* in contradistinction to that partial cultivation of human nature 
which belongs to a distinct period of human development. He says® 
of the Greek philosophy, that it is too weak to fulfil the precepts of our 
Lord; that it only servés, by ennobling the manners and by encour- 
aging the belief in a Providence, to prepare the minds of men for the 
due reception of the royal doctrine.6 ‘ As God showed his regard for 
the well-being of the Jews,” says Clement, “‘ by giving them the proph-, 
ets, so too he separated from the mass of common men the most eminent 
among the Greeks, making them appear as the prophets of that peo- 
ple in their own language, according to the degree in which they were 


1 Strom. lib. VI. f. 693 et 694. 4 Ἢ καϑόλου δικαιοσύνη. Strom. I. 8319. 
2 Strom. lib. 1. f. 282. 5L.c. 1. f. 309. 
8 Διδασκαλία 7 τε Otkaiovoa, ἤ τε εἰς 6 ᾿Αμηγέπη σωφρονίζουσα τὸ ἦϑος καὶ 


τοῦτο χειραγωγοῦσα καὶ συλλαμβάνουσα. προτυποῦσα καὶ προστίφουσα εἰς παραδοχὴν 
Strom. lib. VI. f. 644. τῆς ἀληϑείας τὸν πρόνοιαν δοξάζοντα. 


538 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


capable of receiving his blessing. And as now, at the proper time, 
comes the proclamation of the gospel, so at the proper time were given | 
to the Jews the law and the prophets, and to the Greeks, philosophy, 
that their ears might be practised for this proclamation.” 2 

In fact Clement had observed with regard to many a man of philo- 
sophical education, perhaps he had learned from his own experience, 
that the previous cultivation of philosophy might prove a transition- 
point to Christianity ; and hence he appeals, in evidence of what he had 
said, to the fact, that those who received the faith were conducted alike 
from the discipline of the Greeks, as well as of the law, to that one 
family composed of the people of the redeemed.’ ‘‘ As the Pharisees, 
who mingled the divine law with human ordinances, came through the 
medium of Christianity to a right knowledge of the law, so the philos- 
ophers, who had obscured the revelation of divine truth in the mind of 
man by human one-sededness, came through Christianity to the true 
philosophy.”’* To illustrate the transfiguration of philosophy by Chris- 
tianity, Clement uses the comparison of the graft, a figure which had 
already been employed by the apostle in an analogous sense, and 
which happily sets forth the ennobling influence of Christianity on hu- 
man nature. ‘The wild olive,’ he observes, ‘is not wanting in sap, 
but in the power of rightly digesting the sap which flows to it in abun- 
dance. In like manner the philosopher, who may be compared to the 
wild olive, is possessed of a great deal of crude and indigested matter, 
being full of an active spirit of inquiry, and of longing after the noble 
sap of truth; and when now he receives the divine power, through 
faith, he digests the nutriment which had been conveyed to him and 
becomes a noble olive-tree.”’® This comparison is certainly well suited 
to express the thought which Clement had in his mind, that as the 
whole wealth of human culture cannot make up for the want of the 
divine life, which it needs in order to be ennobled by it; so the new 
divine principle of life imparted by Christianity needs the whole wealth 
of human culture, in order to acquire shape, and to incorporate itself 
therein. Clement employs another happily chosen similitude, when he 
says, that the full, pure revelation of divine truth im Christianity stands 
in the same relation to the fragmentary, partial, and turbid apprehen- 
sion of it in human systems, as the pure, clear rays of light beaming 
forth immediately from the sun, to those which are artificially col- 
lected under a burning glass.6 Thus Clement secures the central posi- 
tion for a more unbiassed contemplation of the developing process of 
religious truth, as well in the period after, as before, Christ’s appear- 
ance; as well in the Christian heresies, as in the systems of Greek 
philosophy which were more or less connected with a religious interest. — 
Everywhere he finds alloyed, dissipated, and sundered from its natural 


1 Κατὰ καιρόν, i.e. when, under the pre-e 5 Lc. f. 672. 
vious guidance of Divine Providence, man- 6 Ἢ μὲν ἑλληνικὴ φιλοσοφία τῇ ἐκ τῆς 
kind had become prepared for it. ϑράλλιδος ἔοικε λαμπήδονι, ἣν ἀνάπτουσιν 
2 'Λὰς ἀκοὰς ἐϑίζουσα πρὸς τὸ κἤρυγμα. ἄνϑρωποι παρὰ ἡλίου, κλέπτοντες ἐντέχνως 
L. ο. lib. VI. f. 636, seq. TO φῶς, κηρυχϑέντος δὲ τοῦ λόγου, πᾶν 
8 Strom. lib. VI. f. 636 et 637. ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἅγιον ἐξέλαμψε φῶς. Strom. 1. V 


41. c.f. 6446 f. 560; 1. VI. f. 688. 


SCHOOL. | 539 


and original unity, what in the primitive, pure Christianity is exhibited 
as a whole, uniting together all the individual momenta in harmonious 
agreement. ‘The error arises from giving undue prommence and indi- 
viduality to the moments, which only by their mutual union form the 
whole. In this view, Clement says:1}“‘As the truth, then, is one, for 
falsehood only has a thousand bye-paths — a thousand fragments, (like 
the Bacchantes who cut to pieces the limbs of Pentheus;) so the sects 
that come from the barbarians (the Christian sects) and the sects of 
the Greek philosophy boast of that portion of truth which they possess, 
as if it were the whole truth; but by the rising of the light, everything 
is brought into day.” “As Eternal Being,” says he, “‘ brings to view 
in ἃ moment what in time is divided into past, present, and future ; so 
truth has the power of assembling together its kindred seeds, although 
they may have fallen on an alien soil. The Greek and the barbarian 
philosophies have in some sort rent eternal truth into fragments, not as 
in that mythus of Bacchus, but in the divime revelation of the eternal 
Word. But he who brings together again what they have rent asunder, 
and reduces the Word to its completeness and unity, will discern the 
truth without any danger of mistake.”’ 3 

Thus it was Clement, from whom first proceeded the idea of a scien- 
tific conception of history having its ground in Christianity, — the idea 
of a true understanding of the history of doctrines, as a developing 
process goig forth from the Christian consciousness, exhibiting itself, 
with more or less of purity, in all forms, within and without the church, 
— an idea which, after it had first taken start, and been propagated in 
the Alexandrian school, compelled to yield to a one-sided dogmatic and 
a narrow polemic spirit, was soon lost, to rise again, and find — only after 
many great revolutions of the human mind in religion and science—a 
more congenial soil in far later times. Thus the Alexandrians knew ἡ 
how to distinguish, even in the heresies, a Christian truth at bottom; 
and to discriminate the importanee of controverted questions by their 
different relations to the essence of Christianity.’ 

In one aspect of the case, it might seem, then, that Clement, so far 
from acknowledging the distinction which the Gnostics made of an esoteric 
and an exoteric Christianity, held to one life of faith im all Christians, 
and understood by the Gnosis nothing more nor less than the scientific 
knowledge and development of the included sum of doctrines contained 
in the faith : —and so conceived the difference between the γνῶσις and 
the πίστις, not as a material, but only as a formal one. But although 
such a view must have occurred to him, from the connection of the 
Christian life with Christian thinking, yet it was something too novel to 
be at once fully apprehended and consistently carried out. The all- 


1L. c. I. 298. 8 See, for example, in Strom. lib. VI. ἢ. 
2 Ἥτε βάρβαρος ἥτε ἑλληνικὴ φιλοσοφία 675, the important distinction between Οἱ 
τὴν ἀΐδιον ἀλήϑειαν σπαραγμόν τινα οὐ τῆς περί τινα τῶν ἐν μέρει σφαλλόμενοι and οἱ 
Διονύσου μυϑολογίας, τῆς δὲ τοῦ λόγου τοῦ εἰς τὰ κυριώτατα παραπίπτοντες. Compare 
ὄντος ἀεὶ ϑεολογίας πεποίηται. Ὁ δὲ τὰ Clement’s judgment on Montanism, cited 
διῃρημένα συνϑεὶς αὖϑις καὶ ἑνοποιῆσας above, p. 520. 
τέλειον τὸν λόγον, ἀκινδύνως εὖ ἴσϑ᾽ ὅτι 
κατόψεται τὴν ἀλήϑειαν. - 


540 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


pervading Christian principle, in contradistinction from the aristocratic 
principle of education and scientific culture among the ancients, had 
still to come into conflict, even in those minds to which it found access, 
with various reactions of the earlier systems, until an mdependent 
Christian theology and system of faith could proceed out of it; as we 
shall see when we come to consider the genetic development of these 
principles down to the revolution brought about in the Western the- 
ology by Augustin. Accordingly, we see Clement still verging again 
towards the Gnostic or the Platonic position. With that idea of faith, 
derived from the essence of Christianity, was mixed up in his concep- 
tion of it, the notion that still clung to him, and which was derived from 
the Platonic philosophy, of the opposition between a religion of the 
more highly cultivated minds, to be arrived at through the medium of 
science, and the religion, cleaving to sense and entangled in mere opin- 
ion, ( δόξα,) of the many. : 

He seems, if we may judge from several of his explanations, to un- 
derstand by πίστις only a very subordinate position of subjective Chris- 
tianity — of the Christian life; a carnal, implicit faith, adhering to the 
mere letter, which was still at a very far remove from the proper spirit 
and essence of Christianity, answering rather to the standing ground 
of the law, than to that of the gospel. The Gnosis, on the other hand, 
is according to him an inward, living, spiritual Christianity, a divine 
life, similar to what the mystic opposes, as true inward Christianity, to 
mere historical faith. While the simple believer is impelled to that 
which is good by the fear of punishment and the hope of future bless- 
edness ; the Gnostic, on the other hand, is stimulated to all his efforts 
by the inward and free impulses of love. He requires no outward evi- 
dence to convince him of the divine character of Christianity — he 
lives in the consciousness, the immediate intuition, of divine truth, and 
feels himself to be already blessed in this. While the mere believer 
(πιστικός ) acts from obscure feelings, and sometimes, therefore, fails of 
what is right, or at least fails to do what is right in the right way; the 
Gnostic, on the other hand, acts uniformly with clear Christian con- 
sciousness, under the guidance of an enlightened reason.1 Clement 
fixes as the distinguishing characteristic of the Gnosticus, what belongs 
to the essence of the purely Christian position generally ;— namely, 
that through love the future is already made present.? What the 
Stoics said of the wise man, he applied to’ the Gnosticus. The latter 
alone does right for the sake of the right end, to which the whole life 
should be referred, with clear consciousness. All his actions are there- 
fore, as Clement terms them, according to the Stoic terminology, 
κατορϑώματα. The good, on the other hand, which the πιστικός does, m 
a more unconscious way, — instinctively, — is a μέσον, something inter- 
mediate between good and evil.2 This resembles what the Gnostics 


1 Strom. f. 518, 519, et 645. Strom. lib. VI. f. 669. With which may be 
2*Kotw αὐτῷ δι’ ἀγάπην ἐνεστὸς ἤδη τὸ compared, perhaps, what he says of the 
μέλλον. Lc. 1. VI. f. 652. ὀρϑοδοξάσταις καλουμένοις. “Epyoig προσ- 


8 Τοῦ δὲ ἁπλῶς πιστοῦ μέση πρᾶξις λέ- φέρονται καλοῖς, οὐκ εἰδότες ἃ ποιοῦσι. L. 
your ἂν μηδεπω κατὰ λόγον ἐπιτελουμένη, 6. lib. I. f. 292. 
μηδὲ τὴν Kar’ ἐπίστασιν κατορϑουμένη. 





SCHOOL. 541 


said of the good works of the psychical natures. Hence the γνῶσις is 
its own end, and the highest — not a means to something else ; for itis 
the life in the godlike itself. It would live only in the uninterrupted 
contemplation of the godlike, and struggles only to come in possession 
of itself. But the πίστις is a means, inasmuch as it is impelled to the 
avoidance of sin and to obedience by the fear of punishment and the 
hope of reward! We find in Clement a remarkable exposition of the 
difference between intuition, knowledge, and faith, wherein he defines 
their relation to each other. Faith receives the fundamental doctrines, 
without intuition, only with a view to practical exercise; the intuition 
of the spirit soars immediately to what 1s highest; the intermediate 
steps of demonstration is what he calls γνῶσις and ἐπιστήμη. 

In speaking of the progressive steps in the divine education of man, 
where he represents the Logos as the ϑεῖος παιδαγωγός, Clement says : 3 
“All men belong to him, some with consciousness of what he is to 
them, others as yet without it; some as friends, others as faithful 
servants, others barely as servants. He is their Teacher, educating 
the Gnostics by the revelation of mysteries, (the inward intuition of 
truth,) the believer by good hopes, and the hardened by corrective dis- 
cipline affecting the outward sense.”” What Clement says, then, on the 
relation of the γνωστικός to the πιστικός in respect to subjective Christian- 
ity, would seem to agree entirely with what the Gnostics taught con- 
cerning the relation of the πνευματικός to the ψυχικός in the same respect: 
but still there is this important difference, in two particulars ; first, that 
Clement did not derive these two several positions from an original dif 
ference of human natures, but allowed that a capacity for attaining to 
the highest existed equally in all; so that everything was made to de- 
pend simply on the cultivation of that capacity, conditioned on each 
one’s own activity. Next, Clement differs from the Gnostics, in that 
he recognizes the same foundation of objective Christianity for both the 
higher and lower position of Christian knowledge and life. It might 
be said, that the two different positions of subjective Christianity, how- 
ever, which Clement here distinguishes, actually existed at that time ; 
and moreover, since they are grounded in human nature, are found 
again in other times; so that the language employed to denote these 
two several positions is not of so much importance ; — for it can make 
no so great difference whether we suppose two several degrees in the 
development of faith and of the life in faith, or whether, like Clement 
in many passages of his writings, we attribute the true spiritual life of 
faith to the Gnosis only. Yet this distinction is by no means of such 
inferior importance as it might seem to be at the first glance, but is 
both more deeply grounded and followed by more important conse 
quences than would at first appear. The reason why the Alexandri- 
ans conceived the matter in this way, lay partly in their predominant 


1L. ¢. lib. VI. ἢ, 663 γνῶσις τε καὶ ἐπιστήμη ὀνομάζεται: ἔν δὲ 
2 The different meanings of φρόνησις, ἃ.ο- τοῖς εὐλαβείαν συντείνουσι γενομένη, καὶ 
cording to the different ways of employing ἄνευ ϑεωρίας παραδεξαμένη τὸν ἀρχικὸν 
the conception: ᾿Επειδὰν μὲν ἐπιβαλλῃ λόγον, κατὰ τὴν ἐν αὐτῇ ἐξεργασίας τήρησιν, 
τοῖς πρώτοις αἰτίοις, νόησις καλεῖται" ὅταν πίστις λέγεται. L.c. lib. VI. f. 691. 
δὲ ταύτην ἀποδεικτικῷ λόγῳ βεβαιώσηται, 8 Lc. lib. VIL. f. 702. 


VOL. 1. 


542 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


intellectual tendency, and partly in the form under which faith was 
presented to them in the case of many of the ‘Christians of that 
eriod. 
: As regards the first point, it is evident that, by their prevailing con- 
templative and speculative tendency of mind, their entanglement in the 
forms of the Platonic philosophy, the Alexandrians were hindered from 
acknowledging, in its full extent, the mdependent practical power of 
faith to transform the whole spiritual life from within; although, in order 
to arrive at this truth, Clement needed only to unfold what was already 
clearly involved in his own language on this subject, which we cited - 
above. 

As to the second pomt, we should not forget the particular shape un- 
der which faith, as many possessed it, was presented to the Alexandri- 
ans — where it ‘consisted of little else than a blind belief on authority, 
accompanied, as it would seem, with a sort of sensuous Hudemonism. 
They could not fail to observe, it is true, the meliorating influence of 
faith on the life, even where it appeared to them under this form, 
when they compared the condition of these men, as Christians, with 
what they had previously been as Pagans; and indeed, as we have 
already remarked, they were far from denying it: but still they 
thought they could see nothing here of the ennobling mfluence of Chris- 
tianity on the whole inner nature of the man— nothing of the divine 
life ob the spirit; and this sensuous Christianity was repugnant to their 
own spiritualizing mode of thought. They might be led, too, it may be 
supposed, by the repulsive impression which this sensuous form pro- 
duced on their minds, to overlook the divine life which lay hidden un- 
der this incrustation, without being able as yet to break, through the 
indurated shell. And again we ought not to forget, that, when the new 
spiritual world first began to be formed out of Christianity, there was 
much still lying confused in a chaotic mass that could be separated and 
reduced to order only by slow degrees ; —as for example, the different 
parts of theology, which afterwards mutually set bounds to each other, 
and the departments of a theology which was to sprmg immediately out 
of Christianity, and of a Christian philosophy, which was to receive 
from Christianity its main impulse and direction. Thus a great deal 
that was vague and erroneous might be traced to the fact, that hetero- 
geneous interests and wants were confounded with each other in the 
souls of these men; although the immediate religious mterest was with 
them ever the predominant one. Hence, forgetting the immediate and 
originally practical aim of holy writ, they sought im it for the solution 
of questions which it was never designed to answer. 

This mistake discovers itself in the answer which Clement gave to 
those who opposed the humility of knowledge to the Alexandrian 
Gnosis. ‘The wise man is convinced,” said they, ‘‘ that there are 
many things incomprehensible; and precisely in acknowledging the in- 
comprehensibleness of these things consists his wisdom.” But Clement 
replied: ‘ This wisdom belongs as well to those also who are capable 
only of very narrow and limited views. The Gnosticus comprehends 
what to others appears incomprehensible ; for he is convinced, that to 


SCHOOL. 543 


the Son of God nothing is aeriecuiballiey and that there is nothing, 
therefore, concerning w vhich he may not be taught by him; for he who 
suffered out of love to us, could withhold from us nothing which i is neces- 
sary for our instruction in the Gnoiis.1”’ 

The fundamental ideas here unfolded, respecting different stages of 
development im Christianity, we find presented once more by Origen, 
the second great teacher of the Alexandrian school; but in such a way 
as leads us to recognize in him a disciple gifted with creative powers of 
his own ; — one who, although excited by. ideas received from, another, 
or passing current in a certain circle, yet did not adopt them as a mat- 
ter of tradition, but reproduced them in an mdependent manner out of 
his own Christian experience and reflection, — seized and digested them 
in a form peculiar to himself, and full of his own life and spirit. And 
here we must notice the fact, that he did not belong to that class who 
had been conducted by the Platonic element of philosophical culture 
out of the midst of paganism to Christianity, but that he came to strive 
after a Gnosis from the position of a well-assured faith and childlike 
piety. This earnest and settled faith he had received from a Christian 
education ; and to this he ever remained true, amidst all the changes of 
his outward and inner life. As the fervor of his piety, when a child, 
had led him to seek martyrdom; so in the evening of life, when his fun- 
damental principle in theology.and dogmatics had undergone an entire 
change, he still displayed the-same earnest zeal, which subjected him to 
great sufferings in the cause of his faith. Even after he had settled 
the principles of his Gnosis, far was it from his thoughts ever to resolve 
Christianity into a certain system of general ideas, and to consider the 
historical element as nothing but their drapery. The acknowledgment 
of the great facts of Christianity in their reality — this was the pre- 
supposition which his Gnosis adopted from faith; and it was to be the 
aim of the former, to understand the full significance of these very facts 
in their connection with the whole developing process of the universe. 
The Gnosis was to demonstrate, that without these facts the universe 
could never have reached the ultimate goal of its completion. With 
the striving to penetrate beneath the surface into the interior of things 
is not united here, as might possibly happen in such a tendency, an in- 
clination to evaporate everything into the subjective ; but, on the con- 
trary, an aim to understand the great phenomena of religion according 
to their objective import, and in their connection with supernatural fac- 
tors. We will illustrate this position by a remarkable example. Thus, 
Origen seeks for the cause of the sudden conversion of entire popula- 
tions or cities, not in their previous course of development, but in the 
impression which the appearance of Christ produced on the spiritual 
powers presiding over these populations ; just as, in the case of the 
Gnostics, the effect of Christ’s appearance on the spirit of humanity 
and of history was oljectized into an effect on the Demiurge.” 


1 Strom. |. VII. f. 649. δημίᾳ, ὥστε τινὰς ὅλας πόλεις ἢ καὶ ἔϑνη 
2 Origen, T. XIII. ὁ 58: ᾿Εγὼ δὲ νομίζω οἰκειότερον πολλῶν ἐσχηκέναι τὰ πρὸς τὸν 
καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντάς τι γίνεσθαι, μετα- Χριστόν. 
βαλόντας ἐπὶ τὸ βελτίον ἐν τῇ Χριστοῦ ἐπι- 


544 THE ALEXANDRIAN 

In his controversies with the Pagans, who reproached the Christians 
as followers of a blind faith, Origen often declares it to be the peculi- 
arity of Christianity, as a revelation from God, who cares for the salva- 
tion of all men, that it has the power of attracting even the great mas- 
ses of mankind, those who are incapable of scientific inquiry, and of 
operating, by virtue of bare faiti,! with divine power for their sanctifi- 
cation. He appeals to the experience of the many thousands who 
could bear testimony to this power of Christianity, and also to the 
analogy of all life, where every course of action, that contemplates 
some end in the future, must proceed on the ground of faith and 
trust.2, Those who had first attained to the faith only in this form, and 
become renewed by it, might next be led of themselves to penetrate 
by degrees more deeply into the sense of the holy scriptures.? The 
Pistis he considers to be the lowest position of Christianity,—a stage 
of it which must exist, ‘in order that the simple also, who devote them- 
selves so far as they can to a pious life, may obtain salvation.”” Above 
this he places the position of the Gnosis and of the Sophia. The latter 
is a divine wisdom, communicated by divine grace to such souls as are 
capable of receiving it, and as seek after it by the study of the scrip- 
tures and prayer to God. Human wisdom, the wisdom of this world, 
is only a preparatory discipline of the soul, designed to fit it, by culti- 
vating the powers of thought, for the attainment of that higher wis- 
dom, which is its true end.* In refuting the Gnostics, who confined 
the faith which is awakened by miracles exclusively to the psychical 
natures, Origen adduced the example of the Apostle Paul, who was 
led to the faith by a miraculous vision.® In relation to the fundamental 
principle of the Montanists, he took the right ground; placing the 
gifts connected with knowledge and teaching above the gift of miracles, 
and appealing to the fact, that Paul assigns to them the highest place, 
in that passage of the second epistle to the Corinthians which treats of 
the relation of these gifts to each other.® 

Like Clement, Origen, in many passages of his writings, expresses 
himself emphatically with regard to the essence of faith, as being a fact 
of the inner life, whereby man enters into a real communion with divine 
things; and from this living faith, he distinguishes that which clings 
only to outward authority. Thus in his exposition of John 8: 24,’ he 
says; ‘Faith brings with it a spiritual communion with him in whom 
one believes ; — hence a kindred disposition of mind,® which will mani- 
fest itself in works. The object of faith is taken up into the inner 
life, and becomes to it an.informing principle. Where this is not the 
case, it is only a dead faith, and deserves not the name. Now as Christ 


1 Ψιλὴ πίστις, πίστις ἄλογος. 

2 Compare, 6. g. 6. Cels. lib. I. ο. 9, and 
lib. VI. c. 12, seqq. 

ὃ Μετὰ τὴν ἅπαξ γενομένην εἰσαγωγὴν, 
φιλοτιμήσασϑαι πρὸς τὸ καὶ βαϑύτερα τῶν 
κεκρυμμένων νοημάτων ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς 
καταλαβεῖν. Philocal. ec. 15. 

4 Τυμνάσιον μέν φαμεν εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς 
τὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην σοφίαν, τέλος δὲ τὴν ϑείαν. 
ce. Cels, 1. VI. ο. 18. 


5 In Joann. T. XIII. ὁ 59. 

θ᾿ Ἐπεὶ tov λόγον προετίμα τῶν τεραστί- 
wv ἐνεργειῶν, διὰ τοῦτο ἐνεργήματα δυνώ- 
μεων καὶ χαρίσματα ἰαμάτων ἐν τῇ κατωτέρω 
τίϑησι χώρᾳ παρὰ τὰ λογικὰ χαρίσματα. 
6. Cels, 1. IIT. ο. 46. 

7 In Joann. T. XTX. § 6. 

8 Διακεῖσϑαι κατὰ τὸν λόγον καὶ συμπε- 
φυκέναι αὐτῷ. 


SCHOOL. 545 


presents himself to the religious consciousness as the Logos who has 
appeared in humanity under various relations,! so the faith will corre- 
spond to these various relations; and as Christ is an object of faith in 
these different relations, he is received as such into the inner life ; — 
and this must be actually manifested — nothing can gain admittance 
into the life which conflicts with what Christ is in these several rela- 
tions. Thus with the faith in Christ as the justice, the wisdom, the 
power of God, is given also the appropriation of that which is involved 
in these conceptions, — and whatever contradicts them is banished.” 
It might be said, it is true, “‘ that Origen is here speaking rather of an 
ideal than of a historical Christ. Were the latter left wholly out of 
the account, and those general attributes, of which Christ is here con- 
sidered as the bearer, substituted in place of him, nothing would be 
‘thereby changed.”’? But assuredly a meaning would thus be foisted 
into the words of the great teacher which is wholly foreign from him ; 
for it is difficult to conceive, how he whose higher life had sprung out 
of faith in the Christ of history, and ever continued to be rooted in that 
faith, could possibly, when this Christ had certainly become all that to 
himself which he denoted by these conceptions, entertain the intention 
of separating what was so closely united in the experience of his own 
inner life. From the spiritual fellowship, springing out of faith, with 
this real Christ, all these qualities should be developed in the case of 
each individual — an order of connection which is grounded moreover 
in his ideas, hereafter to be explained, on the relation of the ἐπιδημία 
νοητὴ τοῦ λόγου to the ἐπιδημία aiodn77?, And he says expressly, with the 
Apostle John, that whosoever denies the Son, the same hath not the 
Father, in any form, *‘ neither for the Pistis nor for the Gnosis.””? It 
is true, as we have just seen, that Origen acknowledged the importance 
of miracles as a means of awakening religious faith, and he recognizes 
a certain stage of faith, proceeding in the first place from the impres- 
sion produced by miracles; but yet he requires that the faith should 
‘rise higher than this stage, to the spiritual apprehension of the truth. 
Accordingly he distinguishes * a sensuous faith in miracles from faith in 
the truth. He says, comparing John 8: 43 and 45: ‘‘ Those sensuous 
Jews had indeed been impressed by the miracle, and believed in Jesus 
as a worker of miracles; but they had not the recipient temper for 
divine truth, and did not believe in Jesus as a revealer of the more 
profound truths of religion; * and he adds: ““ We see the same thing 
exemplified at the present day by multitudes, who wonder at Jesus 
when they contemplate his history, yet believe in him no longer, when 
some more profound doctrine, exceeding their own power of compre- 
hension, is unfolded; but suspect that it is false. Let us therefore 
take heed, lest he say to us also, ‘ Ye believe me not, because I tell 
you the truth.’ ”’ 

Origen sometimes compares the relation of the Pistis to the Gnosrs, 


1 The different ἐπινοῖαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 4 As if Christ would have said: Ka ὃ 
2JIn Joann. T. XIX. ὁ 1. Ed. Lom- μὲν τεράστια ποιῶ, πιστεύετέ μοι, καϑ' ὃ δὲ 
matzsch, T. II. p. 143. τὴν ἀλήϑειαν λέγω, οὐ πιστεύετέ μοι. 


8 Τὴ Joann. T. XX. ο. 25, 
46* 


546 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


with the relation of the present world to the future, — of that which is 
in part to that which is perfect, — of faith to intuition. So when he 
says: ‘They who have received the charisma of the Gnosis and of the 
Sophia, live no longer in faith, but in open vision ;— they are the 
spiritually-minded, who are no longer at home in the body, but even 
while here below are present with the Lord. But theyare still at home 
in the body, and not yet present with the Lord, who do not understand 
the spiritual sense of scripture, but cleave wholly to its body, (its let- 
ter, see below.) For if the Lord is the Spirit, how can he be other- 
wise than still far from the Lord, who cannot as yet seize the spirit that 
maketh alive and the spiritual sense of scripture? But such a person 
lives in faith.” He takes great pains here to explain, in his own 
sense, what Paul had said, so directly contradictory to this view, con- 
cerning the relation of faith to open vision, in the fifth chapter of the 
second epistle to the Corinthians; combating, not without sophistical 
equivocation, the position correctly maintained by most of the church. 
fathers, that Paul spoke of himself as one who still lived im faith, and 
had not yet attained to open vision. He assumes that the phrases, “ to 
be present in the body” and “in the flesh,” and ‘to live after the 
flesh,” are synonymous; and so arrives at the conclusion, that Paul 
asserted this, not of himself and all spiritually-mided men, but only of 
believers who were still carnally-minded. 

Yet we ought not to infer too much from such a passage as the one 
above cited. We should wholly misapprehend Origen, if for this rea- 
son we supposed, that he placed the Gnosis of this present life on a 
level with the intuition of the life eternal. Far was he from this. The 
longing after a divine life beyond this world was too deeply seated in 
his lofty spirit, to find its satisfaction so easily mm the self-delusion of 
over-strained speculations. He longed after a knowledge of divine 
things no longer confined by the limitations of this earthly existence. 
In such places as the one alluded to, he speaks only in the way of com- 
parison, in conformity with the principles of a method of interpretation 
which allowed the same biblical expression to be variously explained, 
according to its several grades of application. ‘Thus he might employ, 
in order to explain the relation of the Old Testament to the New,— 
the relation of the Pistis to the Gnosis, — the same expression which, in 
its highest and fullest sense, had reference to the relation of the pres- 
ent world to the world to come.? In other passages, he expresses him- 
self strongly on this point, namely, that not only the knowledge of this 
life, as a knowledge only in part, shall vanish away, when the fulness 
of the eternal life appears, but that the same shall be true also of all 
the goods pertaining to the present life. He considers even the faith 
of this earthly life only as in part, and describes a perfect faith, which 
shall enter in at the same time with the perfect knowledge; of which 
faith so denominated, in this higher sense, that of course could not be 


1JIn Joann. T. XIII. § 52. τὰ πρὸ τῆς τηλικαύτης καὶ τοσαύτης γνώ- 
2 Τῷ ἐρχομένῳ τελείῳ καταργοῦντι τὸ ἐκ σεως οὐ σκύβαλα τῇ ἰδίᾳ φύσει τυγχάνοντα, 


μέρους, ὅταν τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χρισ- σκύβαλα ἀναφαίνεται. In Matth. T. X. § 9. 
τοῦ χωρῆσαι τις δυνηϑῇ, οὐ συγκρίσει πάντα 


SCHOOL. 547 
predicated, which is affirmed of the faith belonging to the “many,” and 
which is opposed to the Gnosis.! 

The two different stages or positions of the Pistis and of the Gnosis 
stand, according to this view, in the same relation to each other, as the 
χριστιανισμὸς σωματικός to the χριστιανισμὸς πνευματικός, the σωματικῶς χριστιανίζειν 
to the πνευματικῶς χριστιανίζεν. He who stands at the position of the fleshly 
Christianity, continues to adhere only to the letter of scripture, to the 
history of Christ;—he cleaves to the outward form of the manifesta- 
tion of the godlike, without elevating himself in spirit to the inward 
essence therein revealed. He stops short at the earthly, temporal, his- 
torical appearance of the divine Logos ;—he does not mount upward 
to the intuition of the Logos himself. He is intent upon that which is 
the outer shell of the doctrines of Christianity, without reaching the 
spiritual kernel within; he cleaves to the mere letter of scripture, in 
which the spirit lies bound. The spiritual Christian, on the other hand, 
sees in the temporal appearance and actions of Christ, a revelation and 
representation of the eternal acting and working of the divine Logos. 
The letter of scripture is for him but an envelope of the spirit ; and he 
knows how to disentangle the spirit from this covering. Everything 
temporal in the form of the manifestation of divine things is for him 
taken up into the inner intuition of the spirit; — the sensuous gospel 
of the letter? becomes spiritualized into the revelation of the eternal, 
spiritual gospel ;* and the highest problem for him 15, to discern the 
latter in the former; to translate the former into the latter; to under- 
stand the holy scriptures as a revelation of one coherent plan of the 
divine Logos for the progressive education of humanity, — of his unin- 
termitted activity exerted for the salvation of fallen bemgs — the cen- 
tral point of which is his appearance in humanity, (the sensible repre- 
sentation of his eternal, spiritual agency,*) and its end, the return of 
every fallen being to God. Since he makes everything refer to this, it 
follows, that by the gospel, as he views it, all scripture is transfigured 
into gospel. It is by spiritual fellowship with the divine Logos — Ori- 
gen supposes therefore — by receiving the spirit of Christ into the 
inner life alone,° that each for himself attains to true, spiritual Christi- 
anity, and to the right, spiritual understanding of all scripture. Now 
as the prophets, even before Christ’s temporal appearance, shared in 
the spiritual fellowship with the divine Logos, and by virtue of this fel- 
lowship were enabled to-announce before-hand the whole of Christian- 
ity; as they already possessed, therefore, the spiritual understand- 
ing of the Old Testament, and were already, even before the appear- 


1'Q¢ πρὸς τὸ τέλειον, ὅπερ ὅταν ἔλϑη, TO 
ἐκ μέρους καταργηϑήσεται, πᾶσα ἡ ἐνταῦϑα 
πίστις ἡμῶν ὀλιγοπιστία ἐστὶ καὶ ὡς πρὸς 
ἐκεῖνο οὐδέπω νοοῦμεν οἱ ἐκ μέρους γινώσ- 
κοντες. In Matth. T. ΧΙ]. ὁ 6. Ὅπερ ἐπὶ 
γνώσεως εἴρηται" ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους" 
τόδε καὶ ἐπὶ παντὸς καλοῦ ἀκόλουϑον οἷμαι 
λέγειν: ἕν δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡ πίστις. Διόπερ 
ἄρτι πιστεύω ἐκ μέρους. ὅταν δὲ ἔλϑῃ τὸ 
τέλειον τῆς πίστεως, τὸ ἐκ μέρους καταργη- 


ϑήσεται, τῆς διὰ εἴδους πίστεως, πολλῷ 
διαφερούσης τῆς, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, δι’ ἐσόπ- 
τρου καὶ ἐν αἰνίγματι, ὁμοίως τῇ νῦν γνώ- 
σει, πίστεως. In Joann. T. Χ. § 27. 

2 Τὸ εὐαγγέλιον αἰσϑητόν. 

8 Tod εὐαγγελίου πνευματικοῦ, αἰωνίου. 

4 ΤῊς ἐπιδημία αἰσϑητῆ, symbol of the 
ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ λόγου. 

5 The ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, 


548 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


ance of Christianity, in a certain sense Christians ; — so, on the other 
and, there are still to be found among Christians, since the appearance 
of Christ, men who have not as yet come to share in this spiritual fel- 
lowship with the divine Word — men who, like the Jews of old, still 
cling to the outer veil, and of whom the same may be asserted, — as 
Paul said of the Jews who lived before the appearance of Christianity, 
Gal. iv. —that they are children to whom “ the time appointed of the 
Father’’ has not yet come; and that, as children, they are still under 
tutors and governors, still possessed of those habits of thinking which 
are pre-requisite in order to fit them for receiving the true spiritual 
Christianity. ‘* Every soul,” says Origen, ‘‘ which enters on its child- 
hood, and finds itself on the way to maturity, needs, till its appointed 
time of maturity arrives, a task-master, tutor, or governor.”’ ὦ 
Accordingly, Origen compares the different stages of the develop- 
ment of Christianity in the same period, with the different stages of 
religious development in the succession of time. His theory is, that 
as Judaism was a necessary stage preparatory to Christianity, so also 
there is still, in the Christian church, a Jewish mode of thinking, 
which forms a preparatory stage and a transition-point to the true, 
spiritual apprehension of Christianity; that as, under the Old Testa- 
ment, we must admit, there was a spiritual revelation of Christ pre- 
ceding his temporal appearance, and an anticipation of the Christ-like, 
so under the New again, there must be supposed to exist, in the case 
of the great mass of believers in a historical Christ, a stage of religious 
faith approaching much nearer to a Jewish than a Christian position. 
ἐς 76 must know,” says he,” “ that Christ’s spiritual presence was re- 
vealed, even before he appeared in the body, to those perfected ones 
who had passed their season of childhood; to those who were no 
longer under tutors and governors, but to whom the spiritual fulness 
of time had appeared ; to the patriarchs, to Moses the servant of God, 
and to the prophets who saw Christ’s glory. But as he appeared 
himself, before his visible appearance in the flesh, to those perfected 
ones; so too —since his predicted assumption of human nature — there 
have appeared, for the sake of such as are still children, being under 
tutors and governors, and not yet come to the fulness of time, those 
precursors of Christ, the ideas which are suited to the minds of child- 
ren, and which may be said to be necessary for their education. But 
the Son himself, the divine Word, has not as yet appeared to them in 
his glory; since he waits for that preparation of mind which must 
open the way for him to those men of God who are destined to com- 
prehend his divine dignity. And again, we should know, that as 
there is a law, containing the shadow of those good things to come, 
which are revealed by the promulgation of the true law, Gin Christian- 
ity,) so too it is only the shadow of the Christian mysteries which is 
presented in that gospel which every common reader supposes he 
understands. Zhat gospel, on the contrary, which John calls the 


1 Commentar. in Matth. 213. Πᾶσα ψυ- αὐτῇ τὸ πλήρωμα Tod χρόνου, παιδαγωγοῦ 
χὴ, ἐρχομένη εἰς νηπιότητα καὶ ὁδεύουσα καὶ οἰκονόμων καὶ ἐπιτρόπων. 
ἐπὶ τὴν τελειότητα, δεῖται μέχρις ἐνστῇ 2 Orig. in Joann. T. I. § 9. 


SCHOOL. 549 


everlasting, which may be properly called the spzritual gospel, sets 
clearly before the eyes of all who understand it, whatever pertains to 
the Son of God himself, the mysteries typified under his discourses, 
and the things of which his actions were the symbols. Accordingly, 
we must believe, that as there is a Jew which is one outwardly, and a 
circumcision which is outward in the flesh, so there is also an outward 
Christian, and an outward baptism.” 

This theory of two different positions in Christianity is, in Origen’s 
ease, closely connected with another theory of his, respecting the 
different forms of the revelation of Christ with reference to these 
different positions. While the Gnostics separated the revealing and 
redeeming power of God into various hypostases,! according to the 
different grades or positions which, owing to a radical difference of 
natures, they supposed to exist in the spiritual world ; while they had 
their Monogenes, Logos, and Soter, their ἄνω and their κάτω Χριστός, their 
pneumatical and their psychical Christ; Origen, on the contrary, 
acknowledged the unity of essence, and of the divine and human 
elements in the appearance of Christ. There was for him but one 
Christ, who is all; but he appeared under different predicates, through 
different ways of intuition, in different relations to those to whom he 
revealed himself, according to their different capacities and wants, and 
hence, either in his godlike majesty, or in his human condescension. 
It is a thought often recurring in Origen, that, in a more divine sense 
than Paul did, the Redeemer becomes all things to all men, in order 
that he may win all.2_ “‘' The Redeemer,” says he, ‘ becomes many 
things, perhaps even all things, according to the necessities of the 
whole creation capable of being redeemed by him.”’® Those predi- 
cates which belong essentially to the divine Word, as the eternal 
revealer of God to the whole world of spiritual being, the fountain 
of all truth and goodness, must be distinguished from those predicates 
which he has only assumed, in behalf of those fallen beings who are 
to be redeemed by him, and in condescension to the different positions 
at which they stand. ‘‘ Happy are they,’’ says Origen,‘ ‘“‘ who have 
advanced so far as to need the Son of God no longer as a healing 
physician, no longer as a shepherd, no longer as the redemption; but 
who need him only as the Truth, the Word, the Sanctification, and in 
whatever other relation he stands to those whose maturity enables 
them to comprehend what is most glorious in his character.’’? Histori- 
cal, practical Christianity, the preaching of Christ crucified, was 
regarded by Origen as nothing more than a subordinate position: 
above this, he places a certain wisdom of the perfect, which knows 
Christ no longer in the humble condition of a servant, but recognizes 
him in his exaltation, as the divine Word; although he acknowledges 
the former as a necessary preparation, to enable men to rise from the 
temporal to the eternal revelation of God, and, cleansed by faith in 


1 See part II. χρήζει αὐτοῦ ἡ ἐλευϑεροῦσϑαι δυναμένη 
2Τη Joann. T. XX. § 28, πᾶσα κτίσις. 
8 Τῇ Joann. T. I. § 22, where, as I suppose, #In Joann. T. I. § 22. 


ΓΝ 


instead of καϑαρίζει we should read καϑ᾽ ἃ 


550 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


the crucified, made holy by following the Son of God as he appeared 
in human nature, to become fitted for the spiritual communications of 
his divine essence. ‘‘ When thou canst understand the difference 
between the divine Word,” says Origen,! “as it is either proclaimed 
in the foolishness of preaching, or presented in the wisdom of the 
perfect, thou shalt perceive how it is, that the divine Word has for the 
beginners in Christianity the form of a servant; while he comes in the 
majesty of the Father to the perfect, who can say, We behold his 
glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth ; for to the perfect, the glory of the Word appears as He is, the 
only-begotten of the Father, and as He is, full of grace and truth; 
which he cannot comprehend, whose faith stands in the foolishness of 
preaching.” In another place,? he says: ““ ΤῸ them that live in the 
flesh, he became flesh; but to them who no longer walk after the flesh, 
he appears as the divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God, 
and who reveals to them the Father. hat stage of faith where one 
desires to know nothing save Christ crucified, he regarded as a subor- 
dinate one; from which however, through the sanctification there 
obtained, one might progressively advance to the higher, spiritual 
Christianity. With regard to this preparatory faith, he remarks: “ If 
one belong to that class of the Corinthians, among whom Paul was 
determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified ; 
if he have learned only of him who for our sakes became man; yet 
even through the man Jesus he may be formed into the man of God, 
die, in the imitation of his death, unto sin, and rise, in the imitation 
of his resurrection, to a godlike life.’ Thus the ¢ntellectualizing 
mysticism of Origen did not permit him rightly to understand the 
meaning and force of St. Paul’s determination not to know anything 
save Jesus the crucified. What the great apostle considered as the 
highest attainment, Origen regards as making a subordinate position, 
above which the Gnosticus is bound to rise. It is true, he stands in 
no real contradiction with Paul, when he asserts, under the name of 
the Gnosis, a wisdom of the perfect, which cannot be understood at 
any lower position that remains still too carnal. Yet there is this 
difference between what Origen has in view, and what is meant by St. 
Paul. According to the doctrine of the latter, it is in a practical way, 
by becoming more and more purified from that which resists the in- 
fluences of the Divine Spirit, from the selfish nature, by becoming 
ennobled through the spirit of love and humility, that one attains to 
that higher wisdom; while Origen, still too much fettered by his 
Platonic Jntellectualism, makes the progress to that higher wisdom 
depend especially on the stripping away of the sensuous and material 
elements in life and in contemplation, — on a direction of life and an 
effort after knowledge, aspiring to the superhuman. According to the 
doctrine of Paul, the fact of Christ’s appearance as the Son of God 
on earth, of his passion, and of his resurrection, is the central point 
on which the whole of Christianity turns, and so, consequently, that 


1In Matth. p. 290. 2 In Matth. p. 268. ὃ In Joann. T. I. § 11. 


SCHOOL. 551 


wisdom of the perfect which is grounded in the more profound under- 
standing of historical Christianity. According to Origen’s doctrine, 
the Gnosis, while it acknowledges and presupposes the importance of 
those facts in their bearing on the salvation of fallen beings, and 
searches into their deeper grounds, yet strives ultimately at this, — 
namely, to rise from the historical Christ to the spiritual essence of 
the Logos, as he is in himself, and so above this to the absolute itself, 
the 6», —to attain to the understanding of the life and conduct of the 
historical Christ, as a symbol of the ever-enduring, controllmg agency 
of the Divine Logos. From this spiritual revelation of the Logos, the 
Gnosticus has still more to learn than he can derive from the holy 
scriptures, however accurately understood ; for the latter contain, after 
all, but a few comparatively insignificant elements of the whole of the 
Gnosis, and a very brief introduction to the same.”! We should be 
careful to note here, however, that Origen, like Clement, confounding 
the provinces of a Christian system of faith and of Christian specu- 
lation, was looking in the holy scriptures for the solution of many 
problems which revelation generally was never intended to solve ; mat- 
ters with which the wisdom of the perfect, in the Pauline sense, had 
not the least concern. 

Yet we cannot fail, at the same time, to perceive in what Origen 
Says, concerning the different stages of Christian development, accord- 
ing as the Jewish principle either mixed in again or was vanquished 
by the Christian spirit, a fundamental truth, fertile of results in its 
relation to the study of history, which, suppressed at first by the do- 
minion of a narrow spirit in dogmatics and church life, was destined to 
make good its rightful claims, not till a long time after. And intimate- 
ly connected with this mode of contemplation was the magnanimous 
toleration which distinguished Origen as well as Clement; but which 
in the former, as the author of a firmly established system of doctrines, 
shines forth the more brightly, when we find him looking after and 
acknowledging the Christian spirit which presented itself to him with 
more or less of purity in all its various stages of development. He 
showed himself an enemy to that pride of understanding which could 
wantonly injure the Christian feelings of such as appeared to entertain 
more narrow views, or which could treat their opinions with haughty 
contempt. ‘As Paul,” says he, “‘ could not profit those who were Jews 
according to the flesh, unless — where there was good reason for so 
doig— he caused Timothy to be circumcised, shaved his own head, 
presented an offering, and, in a word, became a Jew to the Jews, in or- 
der that he might win the Jews; so he who would be profitable to many 
persons, cannot, by means of spiritual Christianity alone, educate and 
advance to a higher and better stage those who still remain in the 
school of sensuous Christianity: hence, they must combine spiritual 
Christianity with the Christianity of sense.? And whenever it becomes 


1 Οἶμαι τῆς ὕλης γνώσεως στοιχεῖά τινα, Cetv. In like manner, Clement, where he 
ἐλαχίστας καὶ βραχυτάτας εἶναι εἰσαγωγὰς speaks of the οἰκονομία of the Gnosticus, 
ὅλας γραφὰς, Kdv πάνυ νοηϑῶσιν ἀκριβῶς. Strom.1. VII. f.730. Comp. the ideas of 
In Joann. T. XIII. § 5. Philo, vol. I. p. 52, and onward. 

2 Πνευματικῶς καὶ σωματικῶς χριστιανί- 


552 THE ALEXANDRIAN > 


necessary to preach the gospel of sense, by virtue of which one is 
determined to know nothing among sensuous-minded men save Jesus 
and him crucified, this must be done. But when they show them- 
selves to be well-grounded Christians, bringing forth the fruits of the 
Spirit, when they have imbibed a love for the heavenly wisdom, then 
we should communicate to them the Word now once more exalted from 
its appearance in humanity to that which it was in the beginning with 
God.!”” So in expounding the words of Christ in Matthew 19: 14,2 
after having drawn from them the general doctrine, that one should 
become a child with children, in order to win over the children also to 
the kingdom of God; just as Christ himself, although in the form of 
God, yet became a child;—he proceeds in the following beautiful 
strain: ‘This should be rightly understood, so that we may not, out 
of a vain conceit of our own wisdom and superiority, as great ones in 
the church, despise the little ones and the children; but, remembering 
how it is said, that of such is the kingdom of heaven, so demean our- 
selves, that through our means the salvation of the children may be 
promoted. It is not enough that we do not stand in the way to pre- 
vent such little ones from being brought to the Saviour; we should 
fulfil his will, by becoming children with the children; that so when 
the children shall, through our means who become children, enter into 
bliss, we, as they who have humbled themselves, may be exalted of 
God.” Origen is here censuring those who, like the Gnostics, were 
wont to despise the more ordinary teachers, such as, wanting the ad- 
vantages of a high mental cultivation, presented the simple gospel m 
a rude, unpretending form; as though they were domg something un- 
worthy of so great a Saviour and Master.? ‘ Even after we have 
attained to the highest intuition of the word and of the truth, we shall 
still assuredly not altogether forget the sufferings of Christ; for to 
these were we indebted for our introduction to this higher life during 
the period of our earthly existence.” ἢ 

It is already evident, from what has been said, that, corresponding to 
these two different ways of apprehending Christianity, there would 
also be two different modes of interpreting the sacred writings; one 
having reference to the literal and historical, and the other to the 
higher spiritual sense. The highest problem in the interpretation of 
scripture, for Origen, was, to translate the gospel of sense into the 
gospel of the spirit;® as it was the highest aim of Christianity, to rise 
from the earthly appearance of the incarnate Word to spiritual fellow- 
ship with him, and to the contemplation of his divine essence. ‘Thus 
he looked upon all scripture as a letting-down of the infinitely exalted, 
heavenly spirit to the human form which is so incompetent to grasp it ; 
as a condescension of the divine teacher of humanity to man’s infirmi- 
ties and wants; the whole of scripture being, as it were, a humaniza- 


1 Τῇ Joann. T. I. § 9. καλίαν, προσφέροντα τὰ μωρὰ τοῦ κόσμου 
21Τη Matth. 1. ο. 374, 375. Ed. Huet. or καὶ τὰ ἐξουδενωμένα καὶ τὰ ἀγενῆ. 

T. XV. in Matth. § 7, ed. Lommatzsch, T. 4 Jn Joann. T. II. § 4. 

III. p. 340. 5 Τὸ μεταλαβεῖν τὸ αἰσϑητὸν εὐαγγέλιον 
8 Βλεπέτω οὗν τις τινὰ τῶν ἐπαγγελλο- εἰς τὸ πνευματικόν. 

μένων κατήχησιν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν καὶ διδασ- 


τ 


SCHOOL. 553 


tion of the Logos. Profound and pregnant ideas are those which 
Origen here expresses, — ideas which, seized and wrought over by 
sober, logical thought, would be prolific of results in their application 
hermeneutics, exegesis, the defence of revealed religion, and doc- 
inal theology; though Origen was hindered from carrying them out 
in this manner by the cleaving defect in his fundamental principle 
of theology. Thus, he says:! ““ All which is here called the word 
of God is a revelation of the incarnate and — so far as it concerns 
his divine essence — self-renouncing divine Word. Hence we see 
the Word of God on earth, since it became man under a human 
form; for, in the scriptures, the Word continually becomes flesh,” in 
order to dwell among us. But when.we have leaned on the bosom of 
the incarnate Word, and are able to follow him as he goes up into the 
high mountain, (Matt. 17,) then we shall say, we have seen his glory, — 
the transfiguration of scripture, for all who, in the living fellowship with 
Christ, and rising above the world with him, thus learn to understand 
its spirit.” He went upon the principle, that an analogy existed be- 
tween holy scripture, as the work of God, and the whole creation, as 
proceeding from the same almighty hand. Thus he says: ‘ We ought 
not to be surprised, if the superhuman character of the thought does 
not, to the unlearned, immediately become obvious in every text of 
scripture ; for even in the works of a providence which embraces the 
whole world, some things reveal themselves as such works of provi- 
dence in the clearest manner, whilst others are so obscure as to leave 
room for the admission of unbelief in a God who governs all with 
inexpressible wisdom and power. But as we do not quarrel with prov- 
idence on account of those things which we do not understand, if we 
are but truly convinced that such a providence exists; so neither can 
we doubt the divinity which pervades the whole body of the sacred 
scriptures, because our weakness 15 incompetent to trace, in each de- 
claration, that hidden glory of the doctrines, which is veiled under the 
simplicity of the expression; for we have the treasure in earthen 
vessels.”” He says in another place:* ‘“‘ Whoever has once assumed 
the position, that these writings are the word of God, the Creator of 
the world, must be convinced that the same kind of difficulties which 
must be encountered by those who attempt to explain the creation, are 
to be expected also in the case of the holy scriptures. There is a 
great deal in the scriptures, as well as in creation, which human nature 
discovers with difficulty, or not at all; and yet we are not warranted, 
on this account, to accuse the Creator of the universe, and find fault, 
for example, because we know not the reason why basilisks and other 
venomous animals were created; for here it is becoming the modesty 
of true piety, that, remembering the weakness of our race, and how 


1 See Philocal. c. 15. γραφῶν, διότι καὶ 6 κύριος οὐκ ὧν κοσμικός, 
2 Clement also remarks, that the charac- ὡς κοσμικός εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἧλϑεν. Strom. 
ter of the scriptures is parabolical, just as 1. VI. f. 677. 
the whole appearance of Christ is paraboli- 8 Philocal. c. 11, p. 10. 
cal,—the divine under an earthly veil. ‘4L.c¢.c. 2, p. 61. 
Παραβολικὸς γὰρ ὁ χαρακτὴρ ὑπάρχει τῶν 


VOL. I. 


554 THE ALEXANDRIAN 


impossible it is fully to comprehend the creative wisdom of God, we 
should leave the knowledge of such matters with God, who will here- 
after, when we shall be deemed worthy of it, reveal to us those things 
about which we have now piously doubted.” How full he was of the 
faith that a divine spirit breathes through the entire scriptures; how 
convinced that this truth can be received only in the exercise of an 
humble, believing temper of mind, is beautifully expressed in the 
following words of Origen:1! ‘ We are bound to believe, that not one 
tittle of holy scripture is lacking in the wisdom of God; for he who 
said to man, ‘ Thou shalt not appear before me empty,’ Exod. 34, will 
much less himself say anything that is empty; for the prophets re- 
ceive what they say, out of his fulness; all therefore breathes of this 
fulness; and there is nothing either in the prophets, in the law, or in 
the gospel, which does not flow out of this fulness. That breath is to 
be felt by those who have eyes to perceive the revelations of the 
divine fulness, ears to hear them, and a sense to inhale the savour 
which they diffuse. But whenever in reading the scriptures thou 
comest upon a thought which is, so to-speak, a stone of stumblmg and 
a rock of offence to thee, lay it to thy own account; for doubt not this 
stone of stumbling contains important meaning, and so that shall be 
fulfilled which is written: ‘ He that believeth shall not be brought to 
shame.’ Believe first, and thou shalt find, beneath that which thou 
accountest an offence, much that is profitable for holiness.” 

But however correct were these principles of Origen, yet, in their 
application, he was led wide astray from the spirit and aim of holy 
scripture, and of all divine revelation through the Word, by a false 
point of view; and this false point of view again was intimately con- 
nected with the wrong conception he had formed of the relation of the 
Gnosis to πίστις. In respect to both these particulars, he was led astray 
by the too great predominance which he gave to the speculative view 
of religion; by failing duly to distinguish between what belongs to a 
Christian creed and what belongs to a Christian philosophy; by not 
keeping sufficiently in view the essentially practical end of all divine © 
revelations, and of Christianity in particular. He did not refer every- 
thing to the great end bearing upon the whole of human nature — to 
redemption, regeneration, and the blessedness resulting therefrom ; but 
the practical end of reformation was, in his view, a subordinate one, 
designed especially for the great mass of believers, who were as yet 
incapable of anything higher and nobler. ‘To his apprehension, the 
speculative end was the highest; the aim above all others was, to com- 
municate the higher truths to the spiritual men who were competent to 
understand them,— to the Gnostici. These higher truths were sup- 
posed to relate chiefly to the following questions: ?—-‘‘ First, concerning 
God, what is the nature of his only-begotten Son, and in what sense 
is he the Son of God; for what reason did he condescend to enter into 
human nature ; what effect resulted from this act, and on what beings, 
and when does it reach them? Secondly, concerning the higher kinds 


1 Philocal. ὁ. 1, p. 51. 2 Philocal. δ, 1, p. 28. 





SCHOOL. | 555 


of rational bemgs who have fallen from the state of bliss, and of the 
causes of their fall; of the different kinds of souls, and whence these 
differences arise ? Thirdly, concerning the world, what is it, and why 
created ; whence the existence of so much evil on the earth, and 
whether it exists on the earth only, or is to be found also in other parts 
of the creation?” Regarding, as he did, the solution of these ques- 
tions to be the main thing, many parts of scripture, if he abode simply 
by the natural sense, must necessarily appear to him barren as to the 
most essential end. The whole history of earthly events, and all legis- 
lation with regard to mere earthly relations, he therefore explained as 
being the symbolical veil of a higher history of the spiritual world, and 
of higher laws relating to a spiritual kmgdom. Thus the higher and 
the subordinate ends of scripture were to be united; the revelation of 
the higher truths was to be veiled under a letter suited to the instruc- 
tion of the multitude. ‘The mass of genuine and simple believers,” 
says Origen, “ testify to the utility even of this inferior understanding 
ef the scriptures.” Intermediate between these two senses of scrip- 
ture, Origen supposed there was also another allegorical sense, suited 
to the capacity of those who had not yet attained to that loftier con- 
templation of the spirit; an application, not so elevated and profound, 
to general purposes of moral instruction and edification, of those pas- 
sages of scripture which relate to particular cases. Thus he refers to 
this class the passage 1 Cor. 9: 9, and most of the allegorical exposi- 
tions of scripture employed at that time for popular instruction. Thus 
the three-fold sense of scripture corresponded to the three parts of hu- 
man nature as it was contemplated by the theory of Origen; to the 
properly godlike in man, the spz7t, which tends to the eternal, and finds 
its appropriate life in the contemplation of things divine; to the sowl, 
which moves within the sphere of the finite and temporal; and to the 
body. As Origen agreed with Philo in the essential features of this 
view, so too he labored generally to deliver objective truth from the his- 
. torical letter given as an envelope of the spirit. Yet he found passa- 
ges where the letter seemed to him to be untenable ; either because he 
was destitute of correct principles of interpretation and of the neces- 
sary helps thereto, or because he did not understand how to separate 
in scripture the human element from the divine ;? or — which is con- 
nected with what has just been said — because, starting from exaggera- 
ted notions of inspiration, he could not suppose there were any contra- 
dictions in scripture even in unimportant matters ; — and must believe 
therefore that the only way of relieving the difficulty was by spiritual- 
izing the meaning.? And like Philo, he united to these views such 
reverence for the holy scriptures, as led him to say, that these things, 
so untenable according to the letter, — these mythical coverings of a 
higher sense, — are interspersed, as stones of stumbling, for the pur- 
pose of exciting men to deeper investigation.* 


1 Τὸ σωματικὸν τῶν γραφῶν, τὸ ἔνδυμα able; because in David he saw only the in- 
τῶν πνευματικῶν. spired of God, and not the sinful man. 

2 For example, he considered the story ὃ ᾿Αναγωγῆ εἰς TO νοητόν. 
of Uriah to be in its literal meaning unten- Δ4 Σκάνδαλα, προσκόμματα. 


556 THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 


These principles Origen applied, not to the Old Testament alone, but 
also and expressly to the New — expressly to the gospel history.? 
Many a difficulty, as he imagined, could be solved by supposing, that 
the apostles had represented what they had to say respecting a differ- 
ent agency of the divine Logos,” under the figurative dress of various 
sensible facts.? The difficulties which he would thus remove, were 
partly such as his own acute intellect, more acute than simple and 
healthy, had created ; and in part such as really existed, but which he 
could have solved in a better way, and without prejudice to the historical 
truth, by soberly comparing the different accounts, by distinguishing 
the divine from the human element in the sacred scriptures, and by 
separating the essential from the unessential. The application here of 
his own profound idea respecting the humanization of the divine Logos 
in the holy scriptures ; respecting the Word assuming, in the letter, 
the form of a servant; respecting the treasure contamed in earthly 
vessels; would have led him, had he been free from the fetters of 
his mystical intellectualism, to another mode of reconciling discrep- 
ancies. 

These principles of interpretation, it must be allowed, surrendered 
the historical facts in which Christianity is grounded, to all manner of 
subjective caprice; and Origen must have been aware of the danger 
arising from this source. He endeavored to guard against it, and never 
failed to insist that, in most cases, the letter and the spirit must both be 
adhered to, and that it was never right to give up the letter, but after 
the most careful examination. But what safe limits could be fixed in 
such a case ? 

We cannot deny, however, that, in the case of Origen himself, the 
lawless caprice growing out of these principles, which might have been 
so pernicious to historical Christianity, was restrained by the sincerely 
devout, believing temper of mind, fully penetrated with the historical 
truth of Christianity, by which he was actuated. Nor should we for- 


get that, in his case, truth and error were combined together in a man- . 


ner to be explained only from the personal character of the man, and 
his relations to a period agitated by so many various and conflicting in- 
fluences. He observed how earthly-minded Jews, clinging to the letter 
of the Old Testament, could not attain to the faith in the gospel; how 
earthly-minded Christians were, in the same way, led to form the 
rudest notions of God and of divine things; he saw how anti-Jewish 
Gnostics were, by this same way of regarding the Old Testament, be- 
trayed into the contrary error, refusing to acknowledge as the God of 
the gospel a being who appeared so material— which was the fact 
lying at the ground of their whole system of Dualism. Origen was 
persuaded that all these conflicting errors could be radically removed 


1 See the passages already cited from the ὅπου μῆ ἐνεδέχετο ἀμφοτέρως, προκρίνειν 


Philocalia;— also ο. 15, p. 139. TO πνευματικὸν τοῦ σωματικοῦ, σωζομένου 
2 From divers communications of the πολλάκις τοῦ ἀληϑοῦς πνευματικοῦ ἐν τῷ 
ἐπιδημία νοητὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. σωματικῷ, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, ψεύδει. In Jo- 


ὃ Προέκειτο αὐτοῖς, ὅπου μὲν ἐνεχώρει, ann, T. Χ. § 4, 
ἀληϑεύειν πνευματικῶς ἅμα καὶ σωματικῶς, 


DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINES. 557 


only by this spiritualizing method of interpretation.! It was by no 
means his intention, in this way, to degrade the divine in the sacred 
scriptures to the level of the human: on the contrary, he went too far 
to the other extreme, of deifying the human. 

Yet, beyond question, the Alexandrian tendency of mind, had it ex- 
perienced no opposition, had it been allowed to take its own course, 
unrestrained by that pious spirit which tempered it in the case of a 
Clement and an Origen, would have led to an Idealism, subversive of 
all the historical and objective truths in Christianity ; just as the mys- 
tical interpretation, much as it differed from the mythical in respect to 
its starting-point, and in the religious-philosophical and doctrinal princi- 
ples on which it proceeded, yet produced the same results with the 
latter, and might run into the same mythical system. But here, as ap- 
pears evident from the conflicts which the school of Origen had to 
undergo near the end of the present period, this tendency had to meet 
with a check and counterpoise in the Realism of the Western church ; 
while, in turn, the latter tendency felt the spiritualizing influence of the 
Alexandrian school. 

Having thus endeavored to present a general sketch of the different 
main directions of the theological spirit in their relation to each other, 
we shall now proceed to consider how far this original diversity went to 
modify the treatment of the several doctrines in detail ; which will pre- 
sent a test of the correctness of our general view, at the same time that 
it furnishes evidence of the fact, that both tendencies, notwithstanding 
their antagonism, would still meet and blend together in the fundamen- 
tal truths of Christianity. 


B. Development of the several Main Doctrines of Christianity. 


We should never forget that Christianity did not deliver to men iso- 
lated speculative cognitions of God and of divine things, nor furnish 
them with a ready-made doctrinal system in a form which was to stand ; 
but that it announced facts of a communication of God to mankind, 
᾿ by which man was placed in an entirely new relation to his Creator, 
from the recognition and appropriation of which must result an entirely 
new direction and shaping of the religious consciousness, and whereby 
all that had been previously contained in this consciousness must un- 
dergo a modification. The fact of the redemption of sinful man through 
Christ, constitutes the’ central point of Christianity. It was from the 
influence which the reception of this fact could not fail to exert on the 
inward life of man, that this new shaping of the religious consciousness 
developed itself; and hence proceeded, in the next place, the gradual 
regeneration in the habits of thinking, so far as they were connected, 
directly or indirectly, with religion. 

This influence extended itself also to the general sense of the divine 
existence — the consciousness of the God in whom we live, move, and 


1 After adducing all those errors, he says, εἶναι δοκεῖ ἢ ἡ γραφή κατὰ τὰ πνευματικὰ 
Philocal. c. 1, p. 17: Aitia δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς μὴ VEVONMEVN, GAN ὡς πρὸς ψιλὸν γράμμα 
προειρημένοις ψευδοδοξιῶν καὶ ἀσεβειῶν ἢ ἐξειλημμενη. 
ἰδιωτικῶν περὶ ϑεοῦ λόγων οὐκ ἄλλη τις 


47" 


ee 


558 DEVELOPMENT OF 


have our being. This, too, became, in believers, a more living, a more 
profound sentiment. They felt more strongly and vividly the all-per- 
vading presence of that God who made himself to be felt by them in 
nature, and whose existence to the spirit is undeniable. It was to this 
undeniable fact of consciousness, indeed, they appealed, in endeavor- 
ing to lead the Pagans away from the gods which they themselves, had 
made, to the acknowledgment of the only true God. This appears to 
us as the one common feature in the mode of expressing themselves, on 
this subject, which prevailed among the church fathers, amid all the 
differences of form between those whose education had led them 
through the Platonic philosophy, and such men as Tertullian, who —a 
stranger and an enemy to philosophical culture — witnessed, in an origi- 
nal manner, of that which had penetrated deeply into the vigorous but 
stern individuality of his character. Clement appeals to the principle, 
that all scientific proof supposes something which cannot be proved, 
which can only be seized by coming immediately in contact with the 
mind. ΤῸ that which is highest, simple, superior to matter, he says,! 
faith only is capable of rising. He contends, therefore, that there 
can be no knowledge of God, except so far as he has revealed himself 
toman. The knowledge of God cannot be arrived at by demonstra- 
tive science ; for this starts from the more original and better known ; 
but nothing has priority to the Eternal. It only remains, therefore, 
to arrive at the knowledge of the Unknown by divine grace, and by 
the revelation of his eternal Word. He then cites the address of Paul 
at Athens concerning the knowledge of the unknown God.? In another 
place he says: “‘ The great first Cause is exalted above space, time, 
name, and conception. Hence even Moses asks of God that he would 
reveal himself to him,? — plainly evincing that what God is, no man 
can teach or express, but that he only can make himself known by his 
own power.” ‘The same father recognizes in all men an efflux from 
God, a divine particle, which constrains them, in despite of them- 
selves, to acknowledge One Eternal God. What was taught in the 
philosophical schools concerning the recognition of an unconditioned 
first truth, presupposed by all demonstrative science, and grounded in 
the immediate consciousness of the spirit, was by him transferred, it is 
true, at once, and without supposing any middle step, to an immediate 
consciousness of the living God, derived from another source than the 
exercise of the thinking mind — from God, bearing witness of himself 
by his own selfmanifestation. In place of the undeniable Absolute of 
speculative reason, he substituted the God known in the universal con- 
sciousness of mankind without any mediation.° 


1 Strom. 1. 11. f. 364. 

2L.c. 1. V. ἢ. 588. 

LL. ch V.f. 582. 

4’Aroppora Beinn. Protrept. p. 45. 

5 Ei δέ τις λέγοι τὴν ἐπιστήμην ἀποδεικ- 
τικὴν εἶναι μετὰ λόγου, ἀκουσάτω, ὅτι καὶ 
αἱ ἀρχαὶ ἀναπόδεικτοι, and after remarking 
that neither τέχνη nor φρόνησις can arrive 
at these principles, he concludes: Πίστει 
οὖν ἐφικέσϑαι μόνῃ olovte τῆς τῶν ὅλων 


ἀρχῆς. Strom. |. I. f. 364, and 1. V. f. 588: 
Λείπεται δὴ ϑείᾳ χάριτι καὶ μόνῳ τῷ παρ᾽ 
αὐτοῦ λόγῳ τὸ ἀγνωστὸν νοεῖν. Compare 
Aristot. Ethic. Magn. I. p. 1197, ed. Bekker: 
Ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἐπιστήμη τῶν pet ἀποδείξεων 
ὄντων ἐστίν, ai 0’ ἀρχαὶ ἀναπόδεικτοι, dor’ 
οὐκ ἂν εἴη περὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἡ ἐπιστήμη, ἀλλ᾽ 
ὁ νοῦς. Of which, or some similar passage, 
what Clement says is a copy. 


CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 559 


As Origin places the idea of one God, according to the language of 
philosophy, in the same class with the κοινὰς ἐννοίας, (the ideas common to 
the consciousness of all mankind,)! so he considers the sentiment of 
God in man’s nature to be a mark of its relationship to the Divine Be- 
ing. Theophilus of Antioch recognizes a revelation of God in all the 
works of creation; but at the same time he supposes a recipiency to be 
necessary on the part of man’s moral and religious nature, in order to 
perceive this revelation. Where the one is wanting, the other becomes 
unintelligible to man. ΤῸ the common question of sensual-minded Pa- 
gans, “* Where is your God ? show him to us” —he replied, Show me 
thy man, and I will show thee my God. Show me that the eyes of thy 
soul see, that the ears of thy heart hear. All have eyes to see the 
sun, but the blind cannot see it. As the blurred mirror is incapable 
of receiving an image, so the impure soul is incapable of receiving the 
image of God. ‘True, God has created all things for the purpose of 
making himself known through his works; just as the soul, though in- 
visible, makes itself known by what it does. All life reveals Him; 
His breath quickens all; without it, all would sink back to nothing: but 
the darkness of the soul itself is the reason why it does not perceive this 
revelation.”” He therefore says to man: ‘‘ Submit thyself to the phy- 
sician, who can heal the eyes of thy soul; submit thyself to God.’ 

While Clement, who had been conducted to Christianity through the 
Platonic philosophy, would fain discover something akin to the Chris- 
tian consciousness of God in the sayings of the ancient philosophers, 
but suffered himself also to be misled by this effort to interchange coins 
of very different value; Tertullian, on the other hand, the friend of 
nature, the foe of art and of scholastic wisdom, was secure against all 
such danger. He makes his appeal rather to the spontaneous testi- 
mony of souls, not trained in the schools, but simple, rude, and uncul- 
tivated.? While others rummaged the stores of ancient learning, and 
even spurious writings, to collect testimonies of the truth presupposed 
by Christianity in the religious consciousness of mankind, Tertullian 
contented himself with pointing to an obvious testimony, accessible to 
all, and of indisputable genuineness, — those sallies of the soul (erup- 
tiones animze) which are a tacit pledge of the inborn consciousness.* 
Marcion was the only one who, led astray by a misconceived truth, 
seized on but one particular side, (see above,) and by a direction of the 
Christian feelings not well understood and pushed to an undue ex- 
treme, denied that any testimony concerning the God of the gospel was 
to be ‘found in the works of creation, or in the common consciousness 
of mankind. The more emphatically, therefore, does Tertullian dwell 
on this testimony.° “ Never,” says he, “ will God be hidden, never will 
God be wanting to mankind ; always will he be recognized, always per- 
ceived, nay, even seen when ‘he wills it. God has for a witness of him- 
self all that we are, and all that is around us. He proves himself to 
be God, and the one only God, by the very fact that He is known to 


1C. Cels. lib. I. ο. 4. 4 See place referred to in the last note. 
2 Ad Autolye. lib, 1. 6. 2. ὅς, Marcion, lib. I. c. 10; comp. c. 18 
8 De testimonio animz. See vol. I.p.177. and 19. 


* 


560 DEVELOPMENT OF 


all; for the existence of any other would first have to be demonstrated. 
The consciousness of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same, 
and differing in no respect, in Exypt, in Syria, and in Pontus: for the 
God of the Jews is the one whom men’s souls call their God.” 

In respect, however, to the development of the idea of God, it 
should be remarked, that it was only by degrees, and after overcoming 
a great number of obstacles, that Christianity succeeded by its spiritu- 
alizing and ennobling influence to remove the crass and sensual ele- 
ments in which that idea had become smothered. When it proclaimed 
“God is a Spirit,” it still required a new form of thought, springing 
from the regeneration of the power of thought itself, to develope therein 
what this idea involves, to enable men to understand what spirit is. By 
men whose habits of thought were entirely wedded to forms of sense, 
what was termed πνεῦμα could be conceived no otherwise than as a spe- 
cies of matter, though matter of a more attenuated, ethereal kind; and 
fancy, overruling the understanding, invented numberless ways of refin- 
ing and subtilizing this notion.! Accordingly no single influence could 
effect much here ; a counteracting influence was necessary, that should 
come from the whole general tendency of thought. Where this general 
spiritualization of the habits of thought had not yet taken place, the 
most profound and fervid religious feeling, which strove spontaneously 
to hold fast every thing in its reality, and to avoid all subtilization, 
would from its very depth and earnestness become the more easily 
blended with the sensuous element; as we may see illustrated in Ter- 
tullian’s case, who found it impossible to conceive any thing to be real; 
which was not also, some way or other, corporeal.” 

The influences which at this time contributed to spiritualize men’s 
conceptions of the idea of God were, on the one hand, a sober and 
chaste practical bent of the Christian mind, springing immediately 
from Christianity, and which inclined the soul to elevate itself to God 
by the heart, rather than by speculation and fancy, and which, from 
the depth of the Christian consciousness, gave them assurance that the 
imagery of divine things was only imagery, and a feeble expression of 
that which by divine communication becomes the portion of each believ- 
ing soul in its own inner life;—and, on the other hand, the scientifi- 
cally cultivated faculty of thought, exercised in endeavoring to master 
the contents of Christian doctrine, as was seen in the case of Clement, 
Origen, and the Alexandrian school generally. The former of these 
tendencies we meet with in such men as Irenzeus and Novatian. Ire- 
nzeus says: “ Whatever we predicate of God, is only by way of compar- 
ison. ‘These attributes are but the images which love conceives, and 
into which feeling introduces something else, which is still greater than 
any thing that lies in these images considered by themselves.” And 
Novatian remarks, of God’s essence: * “ It is that which Himself only 
knows, which every human soul feels, although it cannot express.’ ὅ The 


1 See Orig. in Joann. T. XIII. ¢. 21. lectionem, sentitur supra hee secundum 
3 Tertullian. de carne Christi,¢c. 11: Nihil magnitudinem. Lib. II. ¢. 18, § 4. 
incorporale, nisi quod non est. Ady. Prax- 4 See cap. 6 and 8. 
eam, c. 7: Spiritus corpus sui generis. ® Quod mens omnis humana sentit, etsi 


8 Dicitur quidem secundum “hee per di- mon exprimit. 


> 


CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 561 


same father observes, that although Christ — owing to the necessary 
progress of the human mind in religious development — employed fewer 
anthropomorphical images than the Old Testament, yet even he could 
speak of that Being who is exalted above all human conceptions and 
language only in such images as still fall short of the reality itself. 

From Anthropomorphism we distinguish Anthropopathism, employing 
both terms in the sense which seems chiefly authorized by their etymol- 
ogy and their historical use. ‘The latter, so far as it denotes a morbid 
exercise of the mind, consists in ascribing to the Absolute Spirit the 
same limitations and defects which are found cleaving to the human 
spirit. But there is one very important respect in which this anthro- 
popathism differs widely from anthropomorphism. For at the root of 
the former lies an undeniable and inner necessity; since man, being 
created in the image of God, being a spirit in affinity with the Father 
of spirits, is constrained and warranted to frame to himself the idea of 
God after this analogy. There is, therefore, a true as well as a false 
Anthropopathism ; and a correct as well as an erroneous avoidance of it, 
according as this analogy is rightly or improperly used. We see all 
these tendencies manifesting themselves in the period before us. Both 
among Jews and among Pagans there was opposed — as we observed 
in the Introduction— to the crass and material humanization of the 
idea of God, an over-refining of that idea by the setting aside of all 
human analogies, which proceeded especially from the Platonic school. 
As Christianity presented the complete image of God in Christ, and 
restored it once more in human nature, so must Christianity purify in an- 
thropopathism the true from the false, aiming not at its removal, but its 
transfiguration — which could be effected, however, only by a reconcilia- 
tion of antagonisms in those existing tendencies of mind which were 
concerned also in the development of the Christian idea of God. 

While Marcion opposed to the ruder conceptions of God’s anger and 
vindictive justice, the one-sided notion of a love which excluded justice 
altogether; the religious element in those conceptions which he was for 
banishing entirely from the system of faith, found a powerful advocate 
in that enemy to all spiritualizing subtilty, Tertullian. He supposes he 
can point out an inconsistency in Marcion, inasmuch as redemption and 
the forgiveness of sin, which the latter acknowledged to be alone the 
work of his God, yet presupposed the existence of guilt in the eye of 
God as a holy Bemg.! He maintained, on the contrary, that there 
was ἃ necessary connection between God’s goodness and his justice. 
The latter he regarded as the principle of order, which gives each thing 
its due — the principle which assigns to each thing its place and rela- 
tion in the created universe — the justitia architectonica, as it was af- 
terwards called — so that justice and moral evil were not necessarily 
correlative notions, but the notion of a vindictive justice in relation to 
moral evil presupposed that more general notion of justice.? He insists 

1 Sed et peccata dimittere an ejus possit | ? Ne justitiam de causa mali obfusces. — 
esse, qui negetur tenere ; et an ejus sit absol- Omnia ut bonitas concepit, ita justitia dis- 
vere, cujus non sit etiam damnare; etan tinxit. L.c, 1. Ic. 12 et 13. 


congruat eum ignoscere, in quem nihil sit 
admissum. c. Marcion,1.IV.c¢ 10. 


562 DEVELOPMENT OF 

on the necessity, grounded in the very nature of the human mind itself, 
of the anthropopathic form of conception, which has its truth in the 
fact that man was created in the image of God. Hence he has, in 
common with God, all the attributes and agencies pertaining to the 
essence of spirit, — only with this difference, that everything which in 
man is imperfect, must be conceived in God as perfect. And this, he 
maintained, held good as well of those attributes which alone Marcion 
would ascribe to God — goodness and love —as of those which he 
wholly rejected.! Proceeding on the assumption that Christianity 
aimed at a transfigured, spiritualized anthropopathism, growing out of 
the restoration of God’s image in man, he insisted that mstead of trans- 
ferring every quality to the Divine Being in the same imperfection m 
which it was found existing im man, the endeavor should be rather to 
transfigure everything in man to the true image of God, to make man 
truly godlike. He sees in the entire revelation of God a continual 
condescension and humanization—the end and goal of which is the 
incarnation of the Son of God. ‘‘ Whatever you may bring together 
that is low, weak and unworthy of God, to degrade the Creator, to all 
this I shall give you one simple and certain answer. God can enter 
into no sort of contact with man, except by taking to himself human 
passions and modes of feeling, whereby he lets himself down and mod- 
erates the transcendent excellence of his majesty, which human weak- 
ness could not endure ;— an act, in itself, indeed, not worthy of God, 
but necessary for man, and for this reason still worthy of God ; since 
nothing is so worthy of him as that which conduces to man’s salvation.® 
God conducted with man as with his equal, that so man might conduct 
with God as with his equal. God appeared in lowliness, that man 
might thus be exalted to the highest point of dignity. If thou art 
ashamed of such a God, I do not see how thou canst honestly believe 
in a God who was crucified.” ‘To be sure, this last charge of incon- 
sistency did not touch Marcion’s case, because the same principle which 
made him opposed to the anthropopathie God of the Old Testament, 
made him opposed also to the doctrine of Christ crucified. Tertullian 
argues further, from the nature of a graduated progress in revelation, 
that God’s vindictive justice must predominate, before his love could 
prevail — that the legal principle of the Old Testament must necessa- 
rily thus distinguish itself from the New Testament principle of redeem- 
ing love.* 


1 Et hee ergo imago censenda est Dei in 
homine, quod eosdem motus et sensus ha- 
beat humanus animus, quos et Deus, licet 
non tales, quales Deus; pro substantia enim 
et status eorum et exitus distant. Denique 
contrarios eorum sensus, lenitatem dico, 
patientiam, misericordiam 1 Ipsamque matri- 
cem earum bonitatem, cur divina preesumi- 
tis? Nec tamen perfecte ea obtinemus, 
que solus Deus perfectus. c. Marcion, |. IL. 
Cc. i 

2 Satis perversum est, ut in Deo potius 
humana constituas, quam in homine divina, 


et hominis imagine Deum imbuas potius, 
quam Dei hominem. I. c. 

8 Conversabatur Deus, ut homo divina 
agere doceretur ; ex equo agebat Deus cum 
homine, ut homo ex xquo agere cum Deo 
posset. Deus pusillus inventus est, ut ho- 
mo maximus fieret. 10. 6. ¢. 27. 

4 Ut bonitatem suam voluerit offendere, 


in quibus preemiserat severitatem, quia nec . 


mirum erat diversitas temporalis, δὶ postea 
Deus mitior pro rebus edomitis, qui retro 
austerior pro indomitis. ο. Marcion, 1. II. 
6, 29. 


CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 563 


As to the Alexandrian church teachers, their philosophical education 
led them to try to exclude all material anthropopathism from the Chris- 
tian system of faith; but in so doing it might easily happen, that they 
would incline too strongly to the opposite extreme, and draw the doc- 
trine of the divine attributes too much over to the subjective side. As 
an illustration, we may take the following words of Origen, where, not- 
withstanding all that is so truly and beautifully said concerning the 
divine plan for the education of mankind, yet he betrays the inclination 
to give too subjective a turn to the notion of the divine anger, and fails 
of understanding the objective truth which it contains so clearly as does 
Tertullian. Availing himself of Philo’s doctrme concerning God repre- 
sented as man, and represented not as man,! he says : 2 ‘‘ When the holy 
scriptures speak of God, in his divine majesty as God, and when they 
do not present the divine agency as interwoven with human circum- 
stances and relations, they say, He is not like man, for his greatness 1s 
unsearchable, Ps. 145: 3: The Lord is a great God, a great King 
above all gods, Ps. 95: 2. But when the divine agency is represented 
as interwoven with human circumstances and relations, God assumes 
the feelings, the manner and language of men, just as we, conversing 
with a child two years old, accommodate ourselves to the child’s lan- 
guage; since, if we preserved the dignity of riper years, and conversed 
with children without letting ourselves down to their language, they 
could not understand us. So conceive it in relation to God, when he 
lets himself down to the human race, and especially to that part of 
the race who are still at the age of infancy. Observe how we, 
grown-up men, in our intercourse with children, alter even the names 
of things; how we call bread by one particular name, and drink by 
another, employing a language which belongs not to those of mature 
age but to children. Should some one hear us so conversing with chil- 
dren, would he say, This old man has lost his understanding? And 
so God speaks also as with children. ‘Behold I, says our Saviour, 
‘and the children which God hath given me,’ Hebr. 2: 138. When 
thou hearest of the wrath of God, believe note that this wrath is a pas- 
sion of God. It is a condescension of language, aiming at the conver- 
sion and improvement of the child; for we ourselves assume an angry 
look to our children, not in accordance with the feelings of our heart, 
but with a feigned expression of countenance. If we expressed the 
friendly feeling of the soul towards the child on our countenance, and 
let our love be seen, without altering our looks as the good of the child 
required, we should spoil him. So God is described to us as angry, in 
order to our conversion and improvement, when in truth he is not angry. 
But thou wilt suffer the wrath of God, if thou art punished by his so 
called wrath, when thy own wickedness shall draw down upon thee 
sufferings hard to endure.” ‘Thus Origen expressed himself in a ser- 
mon ; but on another occasion, in his commentary on Matthew, where 
he brings out the same theory, he observes:? “ 70 such as would not 


1 See vol. I. p. 57. 8 Ed. Huet. f. 378. T. XV. §1. 
2 Homil. XVIIL in Jeremiam, § 6. 


564 THE ALEXANDRIANS. 


be likely to be harmed thereby, we might say much of God’s goodness, 
and of the overflowing fulness of his grace, which, not without good 
reason, he has concealed from those who fear him. 

Here too the Alexandrians took the middle ground between the 
Gnostics and the other church teachers. While the latter ascribed to 
God the attribute of absolute, punitive justice, and the former opposed 
the whole notion of justice as mcompatible with the essential being 
of the infinitely perfect God, opposing the attribute of justice to that of 
goodness; the Alexandrians, on the other hand, represented the notion 
of justice, which they endeavored to defend against the Gnostics as an 
attribute belonging to the divine perfections,' as wholly merged in the 
notion of a divine love, disciplining rational beings who had fallen, ac- 
cording to their various moral characters and wants.2 Accordingly 
they would say, that the distinction which the Gnostics made between 
the just and the good God might be employed in a certain true sense ; 
as for example when Christ (the divine Logos) —the educator and 
purifier of fallen beings, whose discipline is aimed to render all capable of 
being made recipients of the divine goodness, and thus rendered blessed 
— is distinctively called the just one.®? Thus, according to this scheme, 
the notion of divine justice merged in that of disciplinary love — of the 
wisdom of love — loses its own selfsubsistence. And the same is true 
also of the idea of punishment, which is regarded simply as a means to 
an outward end, as a purifying process ordained by divme love, without 
any reference to the idea of punishment in its relation to the moral order 
of the universe, and to the way in which it is to subserve that end. 

Already, in the history of the heresies, we have spoken of the close 
connection between the doctrine of God, as the absolutely free Creator 
of the universe, and the whole peculiar essence of Christianity ; and of 
the strong antithesis which this doctrine must have presented to the 
existing modes of thought which had been derived from antiquity. The 
Apostle Paul sums up the Christian Theism, as the belief in One God, 
from whom, by whom, and to whom, all things exist; and the threefold 
relation here expressed of all existing things to God, denotes, at the 
same time, the close connection between the Christian doctrines of crea- 
tion, redemption, and sanctification, as well as the close connection be- 
tween the doctrine of creation and the ethical element ; — for the phrase 
** to him,”’ which assigns to the Christian system of morals its province and 
its fundamental principle, presupposes the “‘ from him ;”’ and the phrase 
“ὁ by him ”’ denotes the synthesis or mediation of them both. Hence, as we 
saw in the history of the Gnostic sects, the corruptions of the Christian 
doctrine of the creation which proceeded from the reaction of the spirit 
of the ancient world, must superinduce corruptions also of the doctrine 


1See Orig. Comment. in Exod.; ed. where he treats of the Gnostic distinction 
Lommatzsch, T. VIII. p. 300. between the ϑεὸς ἀγαϑός and the δημιουργὸς 

2 A δικαιοσύνη σωτήριος. δίκαιος : (τοῦτο δὲ) οἷμαι mer’ ἐξετάσεως ἀκρι- 

8 Clem. Ῥεαάασορ. lib. I. 6 118: Kad’ ὃ βοῦς βασανισϑὲν δύνασϑαι λέγεσϑαι ἐπὶ τοῦ 
μὲν πατὴρ νοεῖται ἀγαϑὸς ὧν, αὐτὸ μόνον ὃ πατρὸὺς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ, τοῦ μὲν υἱοῦ τυγχάνον- 
ἔστι κέκληται ἀγαϑὸς, Ka ὃ δὲ υἱὸς ὧν ὁ Ad- τος δικαιοσύνης͵ τοῦ δὲ πατρὸς τοὺς ἐν τῇ 
γος αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ πατρί ἐστι, δίκαιος mpocayo- δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ υἱοῦ παιδευϑέντας μετὰ τὴν 
peverat,—and Orig. in Joann. T. I. § 40, Χριστοῦ βασιλείαν εὐεργετοῦντος. 


HERMOGENES. 565 
of redemption and of the system of morals. Accordingly, in the New 
Testament, we read of God as the positive original ground of all exist- 
ence ; of a God who has revealed himself in creation, — not of a creation 
out of nothing. In the important passage, Hebrews 11: 3, that act of 
the spirit denoted under the name of faith— whereby the spirit rises 
above the whole linked chain of causes and effects in the phenomenal 
world to an almighty creative word, as the ground of all existence — is 
opposed to the contemplation of the world by the understanding that 
judges by sense, and that acknowledges nothmg higher than the con- 
nected chain of things in the world of appearance.! 

But in opposition to the hypothesis of an original matter, as the con- 
dition of the creation, the positive element of this faith was negatively 
defined in this way, namely, that God created all things out of nothing.? 
This definition of the doctrine was a stone of stumbling, not only to the 
Gnostics, but to all who were still fettered by the cosmo-plastic theories 
of antiquity, — or in whom the speculative interest exceeded the reli- 
gious, and who would set no limits to the former. ‘To this class be- 
longed Hermogenes, a painter at Carthage, who lived near the close of 
the second and the beginning of the third century. He differed essen- 
tially from the Gnostics in the decidedly Western bent of his mind; the 
speculative tendency of the Greeks predominating in his case over 
the Oriental intuition. And hence his system, which did not, like the 
Gnostic systems, seize such powerful hold of the imagination, obtained a 
much smaller number of followers. We hear of no sect called the Her- 
mogeneans. Neither was it his wish, like the Gnostics, to set up a dis- 
tinct system of esoteric religious doctrines. It was on a single point 
only — a point, however, which beyond question would have an impor- 
tant influence on the whole system of religion — that he departed from 
the received doctrines of the church. It was the doctrine of the Greek 
philosophy concerning the ὕλη, which he received into his system, and 
the point of union for it was furnished him by the manner in which this 
idea had already been appropriated by the Apologetic writers ;— 
although it may be shown, that they were far removed from Dualism, 
and adopted the Platonic notion of the ὕλη merely in a formal way, 
making it an entirely different thing in the coherence of their system. 

He was probably one of the zealous antagonists of Montanism, which 
was now making progress in North Africa. The artist would find as 
little to sympathize with in the Montanists, as the latter would find in 
the artist. It is a mark of the more free, artist-like turn of mind which 
he opposed to the stern Pietism of the Montanists, that he could see 
nothing which ought to give offence in employing his art on the inven- 
tions of the pagan mythology.? This indicates an objectiveness in the 


1The negative of the proposition: ἐκ 
φαινομένων τὰ βλεπόμενα γεγονέναι. 
2 The κτίσις ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, as in Her- 


as. 

8 The obscure words of Tertullian, from 
which this account is derived, run as fol- 
lows: Pingit illicite, nubit assidue, legem 
Dei in libidinem defendit, in artem contem- 

VOL. I. 48 


nit. The first part of the sentence might 
be understood to mean that Tertullian re- 
garded the art of painting itself as a pagan 
and sinful occupation ; but even Tertullian’s 
Montanistic hatred of art could hardly be 
supposed to go to such an extreme as this, 
and there is no evidence that it did in his 
writings. Neither do the words, “he de- 


566 DOCTRINE OF CREATION. 
habits of thought, which, in the antagonism then existing between Chris- 
tianity and Paganism, could hardly consist with a healthy and earnest 
tone of Christian feeling. We mark in him the predominance partly 
of a speculative and partly of an artistic tendency over the religious 
element of his character. . 

Hermogenes combated the emanation-theory of the Gnostics, be- 
cause it transferred to the Divine Being the notions of sense, and because 
the idea of God’s holiness could not be reconciled with the sinfulness of 
the beings which were supposed to have emanated from Him. But he 
combated also the doctrine of the creation out of nothing; because, if 
the world had no other cause than the will of God, it must have corres- 
ponded to the essence of a perfect and holy Being, and must therefore 
have been a perfect and holy world: nothing imperfect and evil would 
have found its way into it; for in a world having its ground only in 
God, how could there be any thing foreign from the essential character 
of God? Hermogenes was not less disinclined than were the Gnostics 
themselves, to recognize the important part which Christian Theism 
attributes to the free agency of the creature, in the development of the 
universe. In respect to moral evil, he was quite as difficult as were 
the Gnostics to be put by with the distinction between positive will and 
simple permission, on the part of the Divine Being. At the same time, 
however, the strength of the moral interest by which he was governed 
shows itself, when we find him rejecting the ground on which many 
attempted to explain the origin of evil, viz.: that it was a necessary 
foil, for the purpose of exhibiting moral good im its true light by the 
means of contrast. He probably believed, that by such a Z’heodveee, 
the self-subsistence of the idea of goodness would be weakened, and 
the existence of evil, if regarded as necessary for the harmony of the 
universe, justified. And here, indeed, we do certainly recognize in 
him the victory of the Christian principle over that of the ancient 
world; but, at the same time, Hermogenes fell into the very error he 
wished to avoid, by persisting to trace the origin of evil to a natural 
necessity. 

The imperfection and evil which are in the world have their ground, 
according to his theory, in the fact that God’s creation is condi- 
tioned by an inorganic matter which has existed from eternity. From 
all eternity, there have existed two principles, the alone active, plastic 
principle, God; and the simply passive, in itself undetermined, form- 
less principle, matter. The latter is a boundless mass, in constant cha- 


otic motion, where all antagonisms 


spised the law in its relation to art,” favor 
the above sense ; for we can imagine no pas- 
sage of scripture which Tertullian could in- 
terpret as forbidding the art of painting gen- 
erally. But it is probable that Tertullian 
meant by lex Dei the Old Testament, par- 
ticularly the denunciations against the mak- 
ers of idols, and that the sense is: He 
(Hermogenes) despises the authority of 
the Old Testament by the way in which he 
employs art; while, on the other hand, he 


meet in an undeveloped state, and 


would still uphold its authority for the pur- 
pose of defending repeated marriages (nubit 
assidue) against the Montanists, who on 
this point declared that the authority of the 
Old Testament had been annulled by Chris- 
tianity, and by the new revelations of the 
Paraclete. 

1 Tertullian adv. Hermog. ec. 15: Expug- 
nat quorundam argumentationes, dicentium 
mala necessaria fuisse ad illuminationem 
bonorum ex contrariis intelligendorum. 


HERMOGENES.: 567 


flow into each other—a mass full of wild impulses, without law or 
order, like water in a cauldron boiling over on all sides! It was not 
by a single act that this endless chaos, involved in such boundless con- 
fusion, could be.seized at any one point, brought to a pause, and com- 
pelled to subject itself to form and order. It was only through the 
relation of his own essence to the essence of matter that God could 
and must exert an influence over it. As the magnet attracts the iron 
by an inherent necessity, as beauty exerts a natural power of attrac- 
tion on whatever approaches it,” so God, by his bare appearance, by the 
transcendent power of his divine essence, exerts a formative influence 
on matter. According to these principles, he could not, if logically 
consistent, fix on any beginning for the creation; and in fact he seems 
not to have supposed any such beginning — which is implied also in the 
argument he brings in support of his doctrine; namely, that if sove- 
reignty belongs to the number of the divine attributes, then God must 
always have matter over which to exercise this sovereignty. Accord- 
ingly he held to an eternal exercise of the sovereignty of God over 
matter; which sovereignty, according to his system, consists principally 
in this victorious formative power. From what has been said, it follows 
that, according to this system, we are to conceive of the chaos, not as 
though it ever had any independent subsistence by itself, and as though 
the efficiency of this divine formative power had begun at some deter- 
minate moment; but as having a subsistence only in connection with 
this imparted organization, so that the two can never be separated ex- 
cept in conception. It was to the resistance which this endless matter, 
capable of being reduced to form in all its several parts only by 
degrees, presented to the formative power of God, that he traced the 
origin of all imperfection and evil. Thus the ancient chaos reveals 
itself in whatever is hateful m nature, and whatever is morally evil in 
the spiritual world. 

In holding the doctrine of a progressive formation of matter in con- 
nection with the doctrine of an eternal creation, Hermogenes was guilty 
of an inconsistency ; since it is impossible to conceive of a progressive 
development which has no beginning. He fell into a still stranger in- 
consistency if it is true, as Theodoretus reports, that he supposed the 
development tended toafinal end. For, according to this, he held, like 
the Manicheans, that all evil would finally resolve itself again into the 
matter from which it had proceeded, and consequently that there would 
be a separation of that part of matter which was susceptible of organi- 
zation, from that other part which obstinately resisted it.4 Here the 
teleological and moral element which he had derived from Christian- 


1J%nconditus et confusus et turbulentus * Theodoretus, to be sure, does not say 
fuit motus, sicut ollz undique ebullientis. this expressly; but such a doctrine seems 
2 We here perceive the painter. to be necessarily implied in that which, ac- 


8 Non pertransiens materiam facit Deus cording to his account, Hermogenes main- 
mundum, sed solummodo adparens et ad- tained. The passage from Theodoretus (in 
propinquans ei, sicut facit qui decor,solum- Heret. fab. I. 19) is as follows: Τὸν dé διά- 
modo adparens (vulnerans animum) et βολον καὶ τοὺς δαίμονας εἰς τὴν ὕλην dva- 
magnes lapis solummodo adpropinquans. χϑήσεσϑαι. 


568 DOCTRINE OF CREATION. 
ity, —an element not easily combining with the heathen notion of sin 
as a natural evil,—rendered him inconsistent with himself. 

Irenzus and Tertullian maintained —the one in opposition to the 
Gnostics, the other to Hermogenes — the simple Christian doctrine of 
the creation, without indulging in any speculations on the subject. 

From these church teachers Origen differed on this point, as on many 
others ;—— having a peculiar system of his own, the main features of 
which we must here present, so far as they are connected with the doc- 
trine of the creation. In conformity with the general character of his 
Gnosis, he built on the foundation of the system of doctrine generally 
received in the whole church, and supposed that his speculative inqui- 
ries, extending beyond the limits of this system, might still be in per- 
fect consistency with the same. He declared himself in favor of the 
doctrine of a creation from nothing, so far as that doctrine expressed, 
that the free act of God’s almighty power was not conditioned by a 
preéxistent matter ; and this he did, not by way of accommodation, but 
out of honest conviction.2, He moreover acknowledged that the spe- 
cific existing world had a specific beginning; but the question as to 
what was before it, seemed to him one which scripture and the faith of 
the church left open for the free range of speculation. It was here, 
then, that he supposed he found those reasons against a beginning of 
creation generally, which must ever strike the reflecting mind which 
cannot rest satisfied with simple faith in that which is incomprehensible. 
How is it conceivable, that if to create is agreeable to the divine es- 
sence, what is thus agreeable to the divine essence should ever be want- 
ing? Why should not those attributes belonging to the essence of the 
Divine Being, his almighty power and goodness, be ever active? <A 
transition from the state of inactivity to the act of creation is imcon- 
ceivable without a change, which is incompatible with the being of God. 

Origen was opposed also to the doctrine of emanation; since by this 
theory the distance between the Creator and the creature was annihi- 
lated ; a unity of essence seemed to be supposed between the two ; ὃ 
representations of mere sense were transferred to the Almighty, and 
he was made subject to a kind of natural necessity.* All communica- 
tion of life from God, he regarded not as the result of any natural pro- 
cess of development, but as an act of the divine will. But for reasons 
which have been mentioned already, he believed it necessary to sup- 


1 Theodoretus also ascribes to Hermoge- 
nes the doctrine, that Christ put off his 
body in the sun. It may be doubted wheth- 
er Theodoretus has not here confounded 
the doctrine of Hermogenes with something 
else that resembled it;— at any rate, it is 
doubtful how his words are to be under- 
stood. Perhaps Hermogenes taught that 
Christ, in ascending to the heavenly state 
of existence, left behind him in the sun the 
outward garb he had assumed in the mate- 
rial world. Yet so fantastic an opinion can 
hardly be ascribed to Hermogenes; and, in 
default of authentic documents, we must 
leave the matter in the dark. Some inter- 


pretation of Ps. 19: 4, which was under- 
stood to apply to the Messiah, may have 
given rise to this opinion. 

2 See Preefat. libb. wep? ἀρχῶν, f. 4; ibid. 
1. Ic. 1, ὁ 4; 1 IDL. ¢. 5.—Commentar. 
Genes. init. 

8 Where Origen has reference to the 
Gnostic doctrine of the ὁμοούσιον between 
the spiritual natures and the ἀγέννητος φύ- 
σις. In Joann. T. XIII. § 25. 

4 Δόγματα ἀνϑρώπων, pnd ὄναρ φύσιν 
ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον πεφαντασμένων οὗσαν 
κυρίως οὐσίαν. In Joann. T. XX. § 16. 
II. apy. lib. I. ο. 2, § 6. 


ORIGEN. METHODIUS. 569 
pose, in connection with the glory of God, an eradiation of it in a 
world of spiritual beings, affining to himself, and subsisting in absolute 
dependence on him.!_ He maintained the idea of a continual becoming 
of this spiritual creation? —a relation of cause and effect without tem- 
poral beginning — the Platonic idea of an endless becoming, symboliz- 
ing the eternity of the divine existence.? What Origen says in another 
connection, respecting an activity of God not to be conceived under the 
dimensions of time, and an’ eternal becoming, we might apply also, in 
his own sense, to the relation of the spiritual world, — akin to God and 
deriving its essence from him, — to God as its original source.* He had 
respect, in his system, to those difficulties which present themselves, 
on one particular side, to the mind hampered and confined by the limi- 
tations of time, when striving to conceive a beginning of the creation; 
— but not to the difficulties which arise also on the other side, when it 
is attempted to carry out the idea of a becoming, without a beginning of 
created existence. 

The bishop Methodius, who attacked this doctrine of Origen in his 
work ‘“ On the Creatures,” was vastly his inferior in the genius for 
speculation.» He had not even power enough of speculative intuition 
to comprehend Origen’s ideas ; and what he could not comprehend, he 
represents as being senseless and atheistic. Comparing the relation of 
God to created things with the relation of a human architect to his 
work, he brings against the system of Origen objections which are alto- 
gether irrelevant. How incompetent he was to understand the great 
man whom in his ignorant zeal he nicknames a centaur, is shown by one 
of his objections against the argument of Origen; namely, that if the 
transition from inactivity to the act of creation supposed a change in 
God, so also the transition from the act of creation to the cessation of 
that act would imply a like change in him. But God must have ceased 
from creating the world, when the world was finished, and then there 
would consequently be a change in him. But Origin, arguing from his 
own position, might reply to this, that we are not to conceive of God’s 
activity in creation as ceasing at a certain point of time, —as an action 
begun at a specific time, and then brought toanend. He might retort 
the objection of Methodius, and say that, by the comparison which the 
latter introduced, a self-subsistence is attributed to the creature which 
does not belong to it—as though its existence were not every moment 
conditioned by, and grounded in, the same creative power of God, ex- 
erted for its preservation. More to the poit, though aimed against an 
unbefitting expression rather than against the idea of Origen, was the 
objection, that the notion of God’s perfection involves the necessity of 


Comp. Plotin. TIL 


ἰοῦσα αἰώνιος εἰκών. 


1 The μερικὰ ἀπαυγάσματα τῆς δόξης τοῦ 
ΐ Ennead. 7. 


ϑεοῦ. in the λογικὴ κτίσις. In Joann. T. 


XXXII. § 18. 

2 According to Methodius, a γενητὸν ἀεὶ 
γενέσεως ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἔχον, an ἀνάρχως κρατεῖν 
τοῦ τεχνήματος. 

8 Plato in the Timzus, εἰκὼν κινητὴ αἴω- 
νος, μένοντος αἴωνος ἔν ἑνὶ κατ’ ἀριϑμὸν 


48" 


4 Ὅσον ἐστὶ τὸ φῶς ποιητικὸν τοῦ ἀπαυγά- 
σματος, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον γεννῶται τὸ ἀπαύγασμα 
τῆς δόξης. In Jerem. Hom. IX. § 3. 

5 Extracts from the work of Methodius 
in Photius. Cod. 235. 


570 DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE. 
its bemg self-grounded, dependant on nothing else, conditioned by 
nothing else.t 

In connection with Origen’s doctrine of the creation, must be taken 
his peculiar way of conceiving the doctrine of God’s almighty power. 
When he says, We ought not to conceive of the divine Omnipotence, 
if we would apprehend it in its true glory, as infinite power, without 
any farther modification,” the proposition has a meaning which, in one 
respect, is altogether true. The conception of the divine Omnipotence, 
as contradistinguished from the principle of Nature-religion, according 
to which the gods themselves were conceived as being subjected to a 
higher necessity, was, in fact, something entirely new, and hence pos- 
sessed so much the greater significance for the Christian consciousness, 
in expressing its opposition to the earlier views. It was the usual 
answer which uneducated Christians, and those who were incapable of 
assigning any more distinct reason for the faith that was in them, gave, 
when urged with objections against that doctrine, that with God all 
things are possible, even those things which to men seem impossible. 
By this antithesis, however, of a supernatural Theism to the ancient 
Naturalism, many were led into the error at least of so expressing them- 
selves, as if, under the idea of Omnipotence, they conceived of an infi- 
nite, arbitrary will, — whereby they laid open to those who attacked 
Christianity from the position of Paganism, many weak points, of which 
such men as Celsus were not slow to take advantage.? Now, in opposi- 
tion to the notion of such an unlimited arbitrary will, Origen placed 
the idea of Omnipotence as an attribute not thus indeterminate, but 
standing connected with the essential being of God, as God, and with 
the other divine attributes, rightly defined. “‘ God can do anything,” 
says he, ‘‘ which does not contradict his essential bemg as God, his 
goodness and wisdom — anything by which he would not deny his own 
character as God, as a being of infinite goodness and wisdom.” 4 If 
by that which is contrary to nature® is meant what is bad, irrational, 
self-contradictory, the notion of the divine Omnipotence cannot be ex- 
tended to such things. But the case becomes different, when nature is 
understood according to its ordinary meaning, as the common course 
of nature.6 The laws of nature, thus understood, are valid only for 
one particular point of view; and there may be something, therefore, 
considered from this particular point of view, above nature, which, in 
the other sense of the word, is not contrary to nature. In its relation 
to a higher, divine life, which is in its essence supernatural, the mira- 
cle, regarded as an individual effect of this higher power introduced 
into humanity, may be something in harmony with nature.’ Many 


1 Τὸ αὐτὸ δ ἑαυτὸ ἑαυτοῦ πλῆρωμα bv 
καὶ αὐτὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ μένον, τέλειον εἶναι τοῦτο 
μόνον δοξαστέον. 

2 Πεπερασμένην γὰρ εἷναι καὶ τὴν δύναμιν 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ λεκτέον καὶ μὴ προφάσει εὐφημίας 
τὴν περιγραφὴν αὐτῆς περιαιρετέον. 1]. ἀρχ. 
Lil. ¢.9 


® See Orig. c. Cels. 1. V. c. 14. 
4 Δύναται πάντα ὁ ϑεὸς, ἅπερ δυνώμενος 
τοῦ ϑεὸς εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ἀγαϑὸς εἷναι καὶ σο- 


φὸς εἶναι οὐκ ἐξίσταται. 
and |. Υ. ¢, 23. 

5 Td παρὰ φύσιν. 

6 Ἢ κοινοτέρα νοουμένη φύσις. 

Ἰ Ἔστι τινὰ ὑπὲρ τὴν φύσιν (τὴν κοινοτέ- 
ραν) νοουμένην, ἃ ποιῆσαι ἄν ποτε ϑεὸς, ὑπὲρ 
τὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην φύσιν ἀναβιβάζων τὸν ἄν- 
ϑρωπον, καὶ ποιῶν αὐτὸν μεταβώλλειν ἐπὲ 
φύσιν κρείττονα καὶ ϑειοτέραν. 


ce. Cels. 1. III. c. 70, 


ORIGEN. 571 
things may take place according to the divine reason and the divine 
will, which, on this very account, although they may be miraculous, or 
may seem to be so to many, are still not contrary to nature.! 

But the position of Origen, that the divine Omnipotence must not be 
conceived as an undefined, indeterminate power, has also another mean- 
ing, in which, as in many other instances, we find him mixing up ele- 
ments of Platonism with Christianity. The doctrine of the Neo-Pla- 
tonic school,? that no consciousness can grasp an infinite series, passed 
with him for a demonstrated truth; and hence he inferred, that God 
could not create an infinite, but only a determinate, number of rational 
beings ; — because otherwise they could not have been grasped by any 
consciousness, and a providence, reaching to every individual thing, 
could have no existence.’ It will be seen of what importance this 
single point was, in its bearing on the whole system of Origen. With 
this was connected in his mind the peculiar shaping of his doctrine of 
an eternal creation, namely, that there was no such thing as a multipli- 
cation of the number of created spirits; that all manifoldness was to be 
derived, not from the production of new beings, but only from the 
changes undergone by those already brought into existence by the eter- 
nal creation ; that there were no new creations, but only metamorpho- 
ses of the original ones. 

Although Origen in other respects agrees, in many of his results, 
with those who teach that everything possible must also be actual, and 
who represent the divine Omnipotence as wholly expending itself in 
events that actually transpire, yet this principle was never expressed 
by him, and it is one altogether foreign from his whole philosophical 
and dogmatical bent ;*— as indeed it is usually found united with a 
certain doctrine of determination, to which Origen’s views stood directly 
opposed. | 

Even here where he errs, we cannot fail to perceive the religious in- 
terest which was uppermost in the feelings of the great teacher. He 
supposes it impossible, without this doctrine, to place beyond dispute 
the necessity of acknowledging a personal God, embracing in his con- 
sciousness everything that exists — a truth which he considered it of 
vital importance to hold fast, in opposition to the Neo-Platonic theory, 
which assumed an impersonal ὄν, pure being without consciousness, as 
the highest and absolute being, while it only supposed an immanent 
πρόνοια. : 

We now proceed to the doctrine in which Theism, taken in its con- 


te! Cels. 1. V.c.. 23. 

2 See e. g. Plutarch. de defectu oraculor. 
c. 24. 

8TH γὰρ φύσει τὸ ἄπειρον ἀπερίληπτον" 
πεποίηκε τοίνυν τοσαῦτα, ὧν ἐδύνατο περι- 
ὁράξασϑαι καὶ συγκρατεῖν ὑπὸ τὴν αὐτοῦ 
πρόνοιαν. Il. ἀρχ. |. 11. ο. 9. Ἀπειρα τῇ 
φύσει οὐχ οἱἰόντε περιλαμβέώνεσϑαι τῇ περα- 
τοῦν πεφυκυίᾳ τὰ γνωσκόμενα γνώσει. In 
Matth. T. XIII. § 1; ed. Lommatzsch, T. 
ἘΠῚ 210. 

* The opposite is expressed in the words 


of Origen: Οὐκ ἐμποδίζεται, τὸ εἷναι τὰ πολ- 
λὰ δυνατὸν, ἑνὸς ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν ὄντος τοῦ 
ἐσομένου. In ep. δα Rom. lib. 1. ; ed. Lom- 
matzsch, T. V. p. 251. 

5 The true opposite of the Neo-Platonic ὄν 
is expressed in what he says of God the 
Father: Αὐτὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ δοξαζόμενον, ὅτε ἐν 
τῇ ἑαυτοῦ γινόμενος περιωπῇ ἐπὶ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ 
γνώσει καὶ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ϑεωρίᾳ εὐφραίνεται ἄφα- 
τόν τινα χαρών. In Joann. T. XXII. § 18; 
ed. Lommatzsch, T. 11. p. 470. 


572 DOCTRINE OF 


nection with the proper and fundamental essence of Christianity, or 
with the doctrine of redemption, finds its ultimate completion, the doc- 
trine of the Trinity. This doctrine does not strictly belong to the fun- 
damental articles of the Christian faith; as appears sufficiently evident 
from the fact, that it is expressly held forth in no one particular pas- 
sage of the New Testament ; —- for the only one in which this is done, 
the passage relating to the three that bear record, (1 John 5,) is un- 
doubtedly spurious, and in its ungenuine shape testifies to the fact, how 
foreign such a collocation is from the style of the New-Testament 
scriptures. We find in the New Testament no other fundamental arti- 
cle besides that of which the Apostle Paul says, that other foundation 
can no man lay than that is laid, the annunciation of Jesus as the Mes- 
siah; and Christ himself designates as the foundation of his religion, 
the faith in the only true God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, 
(John 17: 3.) What Paul styles distinctively the mystery, relates in 
no one instance to what belongs to the hidden depths of the divine 
essence, but to the divine purpose of salvation which found its accom- 
plishment in a fact. But that doctrine presupposes, in order to its be- 
ing understood in its real significancy for the Christian consciousness, 
this fundamental article of the Christian faith; and we recognize therein 
the essential contents of Christianity, summed up in brief, as may be 
gathered from the determinate form which is given to Theism by its 
connection with this fundamental article. It is this doctrine, by which 
God becomes known as the original Fountain of all existence ; as he 
by whom the rational creation, that had become estranged from him, is 
brought back to the fellowship with him; and as he in the fellowship 
with whom it from thenceforth subsists: — the threefold relation! in 
which God stands to mankind, as primal ground, mediator and end, — 
Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,— in which threefold relation the 
whole Christian knowledge of God is completely announced. Accord- 
ingly all is herein embraced by the Apostle Paul, when he names the 
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and works through all and 
in all, (Ephes. 4: 6;) or Him from whom are all things, through 
whom are all things, and to whom are all things ;— when, in pro- 
nouncing the benediction, he sums up all in the formula: the grace of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the 
Holy Spirit. God, as the living God, the God of mankind, and the 
God of the church, can be truly known in this way only. This shape 
of Theism presents the perfect mean between the wholly extra-mundane 
God of Deism, and the God brought down to, and confounded with, the 
world, of Pantheism. As this mode of the knowledge of God belongs 
to the peculiar essence of Theism and the Theocracy, it follows, that 
its ground-work must be given with the ground-work of the latter in the 
Old Testament — the doctrine of God whose agency is in the world 
through his Word and with his Spirit: and hence it was no accident, to 
be explained by the supervention of outward influences merely, that 


1 In the παλαίος λόγος : Ὁ Sede ἀρχὴν te ἔχων. Plato legg. IV. Ed. Bip. vol. VIII. 
8 


καὶ τελευτὴν καὶ μεσὰ τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων ΡῬ. 185. 


THE TRINITY.’ 573 


such a shaping of the consciousness of God grew out of the germs 
already contained in the Old Testament ;— a truth which has not been 
duly attended to, by those who, in their account of the progressive de- 
velopment of doctrines, have been inclined to explain too many things 
by a reference to outward causes. 

We must take care not to be deceived by false analogies, in compar- 
ing this doctrine with apparently kindred dogmas of other religions, or 
with mere speculative theories. Its connection, already pointed out, 
with the fundamental consciousness of Christianity, must furnish, in this 
case, the right standard of comparison. Aside from this, the three- 
fold designation of the Supreme Essence, or the hypothesis of a three- 
fold gradation in the principles of existence, can furnish only a delusive 
analogy, where perhaps there may be lying at bottom some theory most 
directly opposed to the Christian view of the world ;—as the case is, 
indeed, with regard-to the Indian Trimurti, which stands connected 
with a thoroughly pantheistic scheme, wholly at war with the theistic 
and theological principle of Christianity, — the doctrine, namely, of a 
divine essence, which manifests itself in a constant repetition of the 
same process of rising and vanishing worlds. And even within the 
Christian church itself, systems, consisting of a pantheistic deification 
of reason and of the world, have employed this doctrine, wrested from 
its original connection, and made to bear a sense at variance with its 
true import, for the purpose of giving currency to some scheme under 
a Christian garb, which in essence was wholly opposed to Christianity. 

The doctrine of the Trinity, however, in its practical or economical 
import, does not preclude the reference to an inner and objective 
relation within the essence of the divine nature itself; since indeed in 
the revelation of God in his works, his essence is presented to us, 
though to our faculties of knowledge it appears at first, as it were in a 
glass, darkly, as an enigma to be solved — and since, from the contem- 
plation of God’s self-manifestation in his works, we are constrained to 
form our conception of the divine attributes according to the analogy 
of our own mind. Only we are not to forget that the practical or eco- 
nomical Triad, which starts from God revealed in Christ, or from the 
position of the Apostle Paul, that God was in Christ reconciling the 
world to himself, must ever be considered as the ground-work of the 
whole, — the original élement from which the speculative or ontologi- 
cal view is derived ; —a position which we shall find substantiated in 
tracing, as we now propose to do, the historical development of this 
doctrine in these first centuries. This economico-practical doctrine of 
the Trinity constituted from the beginning the fundamental conscious- 
ness of the Catholic church, while forming itself in its conflict with the 
opposite theories of the heretical sects. It is that which forms the 
basis of the true unity of the church and the identity of the Christian 
consciousness in all ages. But the intellectual process of development, 
by means of which the economico-practical doctrine of the Trinity was 
reduced to the ontological, was a gradual one, and must necessarily 
run through manifold opposite forms, until it issued at last in some 


574 DOCTRINE OF 


mode of apprehension, satisfying the demand of unity in the Christian 
consciousness, and in the activity of the dialectic reason. 

It is already evident, from what has been said, that the development 
of this doctrine must start from the reference to the person of Christ ; 
and the original element here, which preceded all speculation, is the 
image which Christ himself left on the consciousness of those who re- 
ceived the immediate impression of his life, and were appointed to be 
witnesses of it. The doctrine of the divine essence dwelling in Christ 
grew first out of the intuition of the divine glory manifested in his life, 
— as it was expressed by the Apostle John, — “ We beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father ;”’ and out of the dis- 
courses, in which, from his own self-consciousness, without any connec- 
tion whatever with the existing ideas of the period, but rather in oppo- 
sition to those ideas, he expressed himself with regard to his relation to 
his heavenly Father. It is the entuztive view of his person, which lies 
at the basis of the representation of it, even where it appears less 
strongly developed, in the three first gospels, and which beams forth 
with peculiar lustre in many individual traits, Matth. 11: 27;—12: 
6, 42; — 16: 16, (compared with Christ’s manner of approving what 
was here expressed ;) and when he employs the 110th Psalm, for the 
purpose of leading those whom he addressed to the recognition of him 
who was greater than the Son of David. The doctrine concerning 
Christ as taught by the Apostle Paul, proves that the view of Christ’s 
person as it is presented through all the writings of John, was not one 
of later origin. Moreover, if we leave out the minor epistles of Paul, 
the genuineness of which several writers in modern times have, without 
any sufficient grounds, been pleased to call in doubt, and which form, 
notwithstanding, the necessary point of termination in the development 
of the Pauline theology; if, I say, we leave these aside, the same thing 
is implied in the designation: Him by whom are all things, (1 Corinth. 
8:6.) In the Jewish theology, which prepared the way for Christian- 
ity, we may distinguish two different tendencies; first, in the idea of 
the theocratic king, who was to realize the idea of the Theocracy — who 
should concentrate in himself all the rays of the divine Majesty; and 
from this necessarily proceeded the intuition of a person transcending 
the finite human nature, the image of the Son of God, as it beamed 
forth transfigured in the consciousness of inspired prophets ; — and 
next, the limited apprehension of the Messiah’s person, connected with 
the limited apprehension of his work, in the common Jewish conscious- 
ness. We have observed in the history of the Judaizing and Gnostic 
sects, how both these modes of apprehension proceeded to develope 
themselves into opposite theories, each wholly excluding the other. As 
to the above-mentioned prophetic element, we find it once more taken 
up, and still farther prosecuted, in the doctrine concerning Christ, 
taught by the Apostles Paul and John. ‘That being by whom the 
human race, when estranged from God, was to be brought back to fel- 
lowship with him, appears as the one through whom the procession of 
all existence from God had been mediated from the beginning, — as 
the one who, being the original self-manifestation of the hidden divine 


THE TRINITY. STO 


Essence, always formed the transition link between God and the crea- 
tion. The same was the first-born of every creature, and the first-born 
of the new creation of humanity, restored to the image of God in the 
transfigured human nature which he exhibited after his resurrection. 
The same was the image of God before all existence, and the image of 
God in humanity ; the divine fountain of light and of life, from whom 
all spirits were from the beginning to draw their supplies, and he 
who appeared as such in humanity, for the purpose of revealing in it, 
and of imparting to it divine life — the original Word of God, the first 
act of the divine self-manifestation, (of God’s self-affirmation,) which 
humanized itself, in order that everything pertaining to humanity might 
become godlike. 

The title “Word of God,’ employed to designate this idea, the 
Apostle John could have arrived at within himself, independent of 
any outward tradition; and he would not have appropriated to his own 
purpose this title, which had been previously current in certain circles, 
had it not offered itself to him, as the befitting form of expression for 
that which filled his own soul. But this word itself is certainly not 
derived, any more than the idea originally expressed in it, from the 
Platonic philosophy, which could furnish no occasion whatever for the 
choice of this particular expression.!. But it is the translation of the 
Old-Testament term 721; and it was this Old-Testament conception, 
moreover, which led to the New-Testament idea of the Logos. An 
intermediate step? is formed by what is said in the epistle to the He- 
brews concerning a divine Word ; and thus we find in the latest epistles 
of Paul, from the first epistle to the Corinthians and onward, in the 
epistle to the Hebrews, and in the gospel of John, a well-connected 
series of links in the progressive development of the apostolic doctrine. 

If this idea of the Logos was not placed m connection with Christ- 
lanity by the authority of an apostolic type of doctrine, but if it must 
be considered as merely the product of a fusion of Platonism, or of 
the Alexandrian-Jewish theology with the Christian doctrine ; its wide 
diffusion, of which church fathers of the most opposite tendencies bear 
witness, could hardly be accounted for. If it could so commend itself 
to the teachers with whom the Platonic element of culture predomi- 
nated, still the others, by whom every thing derived from that quarter 
was suspected, must, for this very reason, have been prejudiced against 
it. As the defenders of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, in the begin- 
ning of the second century,* could appeal, in evidence of the fact that 
this was the ancient doctrine of the church, to the oldest church- 
teachers and to the ancient Christian hymns, so this evidence is in fact 
confirmed by the report of Pliny, already cited on another occasion.+* 

But while, in the tradition of the church, the Logos-idea was taught 
and transmitted in the form which most perfectly harmonized with the 
habits of thought that had resulted from the previous stage of spirit- 


1 The Platonic philosophy led rather to Commentary, has made some excellent re- 
the employment of the term νοῦς as a de- marks. 
signation of the mediating principle. 8 Euseb. 1. V. c. 28. 

2 Respecting which, Bleek, inhis masterly 4 See vol. I. p. 97. 


576 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
ual culture; namely, as the idea of a spirit, first begotten of God and 
subordinate to him; there was, besides this, another view of the doc- 
trine concerning the Trinity, which may be designated, after the cus- 
tomary language of this period, as that of the Monarchians. Although 
opposite tendencies are to be found among the followers of this sect, 
and they were drawn into still more violent disputes with each other, 
than they ever engaged in against the subordination-theory of the 
church ; yet they were agreed with regard to everything expressed by 
the term Monarchianism. They felt a common interest in preserving 
the unity of the consciousness of God, which made them unwilling to 
acknowledge any other divine being besides one God, the Father. 
Hither they disclaimed all knowledge of the Logos-doctrine generally, 
or they understood by the Logos simply a divine energy, the divine 
wisdom or reason, which illuminates the souls of the pious ;—in this 
respect falling in with a certain modification of the Logosidea which 
was adopted by one class of Jewish theologians.1 Now it may appear 
singular, that precisely at this period, — when a Christian conscious- 
ness was struggling to form itself in the midst of Paganism, and sur- 
rounded by its influences, — such a strictly monotheistic interest could 
arise, and the hypostatical Logos-doctrine create scruples in this par- 
ticular quarter. But when we consider how the case really was with 
Christians of this age; when we call to mind, that their Christian 
consciousness developed itself in direct opposition to their previous 
Pagan mode of thinking, that the doctrine of the divine unity had 
been deeply impressed on their minds by the earliest catechetical 
instruction which they received, and that the Logos-idea did not origi- 
nally belong to the primitive, simple confession of faith at baptism, 
(as in fact it does not occur in the so-called Apostolic Creed ;) it may 
easily be explained how it should happen, that when afterwards this 
doctrine came to be set before them, they would believe it contained 
something in contradiction to the principle of the μοναρχία, which they 
had been first taught.? 

Among these Monarchians, who were agreed in combating the doc- 
trine of a hypostatical Logos, two classes are still to be distinguished ; 
since, with some of them, the monarchian interest of the common re- 
ligious faith, or of reason, predominated, the interest immediately con- 
nected with the person of Christ, the interest of Christian piety in the 
proper sense, being a quite subordinate matter ; while, in the case of 
others, both these interests were combined, and both codperated with 
equal power; and in close connection with this difference was another, 
that while with the one class the dialectic, critical faculty of the 
understanding was supreme, with the other it was the practical element 
and Christian feeling which predominated. ‘The former were of the 


1 Already mentioned. 

2 Orig. in Joann. T. II. § 2: Td πολλοὺς 
φιλοϑέους εἶναι εὐχομένους ταράσσον, εὐλα- 
βουμένους δύο ἀναγορεῦσαι ϑεούς. 

8 This is confirmed by Tertullian, adv. 
Praxeam, c. 3: Simplices quique, ne dixe- 
rim imprudentes et idiot, qua major sem- 


per credentium pars est, quoniam et ipsa re- 
gua fidei a pluribus Diis seculi ad unicum 
et verum Deum transfert, expavescunt ad 
οἰκονομίαν, (the trinity to be connected with 
the unity.) Monarchiam, inquiunt, tene 
mus. 
4 Origin clearly distinguishes these two 


THE MONARCHIANS. δ᾽ 
opinion that in the church system the distance was not sufficiently 
marked between Christ and the only true God. They denied that 
Christ was divine in every sense, and would only admit that he was 
divine in a certain sense. They taught, namely, that Jesus was a man 
like all other men; but that from the first he was actuated and guided 
by that power of God, the divine reason or wisdom, bestowed on him in 
larger measure than on any other messenger or prophet of God; and 
that it was precisely on this account he was to be called the Son of 
God. They differed from the Ebionites, properly so called, in this, 
that they did not believe, with them, such a union of Christ with God 
had first taken place at a determinate moment of his life, but regarded 
it as lying at the basis of his entire development; since in fact they 
acknowledged his miraculous conception. 

But the second class consisted of those whom not merely the inter- 
est for Monotheism or Monarchianism, in which a Jew also might 
participate, but the interest at the same time for the faith in the true 
deity of Christ, made opponents of the hypostatical Logos-doctrine in 
the form in which it was then understood. The common notion of the 
Logos, that he had become man in Christ, as a being personally distinct 
from, and subordinate to, God the Father, although most intimately 
related to him, appeared to them to be too inadequate a representation 
of Christ. The idea of such a distinction between him and the Su- 
preme God was revolting to their faith in Christ: he was for them the 
only true and supreme God himself, who had revealed himself here 
in humanity so as he had done nowhere else, had appeared in a human 
body. They regarded the names Father and Son as only two different 
modes of designating the same subject, the one God, who, with refer- 
ence to the relations in which he had previously stood to the world, is 
called by the name of the Father; as with reference to his appearance 
in humanity, he is called the Son.t They would have in Christ only 
the one, undivided God;—the feéling which was uppermost with 
them, would admit here of no distinction or division. While the first 
class of Monarchians recognized nothing in Christ but the man, and 
banished the divine element out of view ; the others saw in him noth- 
ing but the God, and the human element was, on the other hand, 
wholly suppressed or overlooked. ‘The tendency of their views was to 
make of the human appearance simply a transient, removable veil, 
serving for the manifestation of God in humanity. Yet we are igno- 
rant as to the particular way in which they developed their thoughts 
on this point. The more profound pious feeling among the laity who 
were without education, seems to have inclined them rather to the last- 


classes; in Joann. T. II. § 2: Ἤτοι dpvov- 
μένους ἰδιότητα υἱοῦ ἑτέραν παρὰ THY τοῦ 
πατρὸς, ὁμολογοῦντας ϑεὸν εἷναι τὸν μέχρι 
ὀνόματος παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς υἱὸν προςαγορευόμενον, 
(they acknowledge the divinity of Christ, 
but deny him a personality distinct trom 
the Father, and call him the Son in name 
only,— they do not consider him as such 
in truth, inasmuch as they identify him 


VOL. I. 


with the Father; these are the Patripas- 
sians:) ἢ ἀρνουμένους τὴν ϑεότητα τοῦ υἱοῦ, 
τιϑέντας δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ οὐσίαν 
κατὰ περιγραφὴν, (an individual existence, 
natura certis finibus circumscripta,) τυγχά- 
vovoav ἑτέραν τοῦ πατρός, (the other class.) 
Toe ΒΚ 21% ΠΟΘΙ Vite 
c. 12. 
1 Two ἐπίνοιαι ἑνὸς ὑποκειμένου. 


578 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

mentioned view; and if, as appears evident from the passages cited 
from Tertullian and Origen, this view had many adherents even as 
late as into. the third century, yet this cannot be regarded as any 
evidence whatever against the antiquity of the Logos-doctrine, as if 
the latter had first made its appearance in the conflict with some mode 
of apprehension far older than itself; but it might easily be the case, 
that, while the Logos-doctrine was becoming moulded into shape in 
theology, the view just mentioned sprung up out of the popular con- 
sciousness. It was the reaction of the Christian consciousness among 
the laity, against the doctrine of the Logos, as it became more precisely 
defined in a subordination-system.! This is the class, of whom Origen 
says, that under the show of aiming to honor Christ, they teach what 
is untrue of him.? It is such whom he has in mind, when he describes, 
as belonging to a subordinate position, those whose God is the Logos, 
— who imagined that in him they possessed the whole essence of God, 
and who held him to be the Father himself. And it is the same class, 
perhaps, of whom he says, that they knew nothing but Jesus the 
crucified ; that they imagined they possessed in him who became flesh 
the entire Logos ; that they knew Christ only according to the flesh ; 
and as such he describes the great body of believers, over against 
whom he was accustomed to place the genuine Gnostics.4 Just as 
Philo distinguishes those who elevate themselves to the Absolute, and 
those who imagine they have all in the Logos, considering the latter as 
the Supreme God himself; and as the Gnostics distinguish those who 
elevate themselves to the Supreme God, and those who held the Dem- 
urge to be the Supreme God himself; so Origen distinguishes those 
who elevate themselves to God the Father himself, and those who 
never proceeded beyond the Son, and held him to be the Father 
himself.° These latter were usually denominated Patripassians,®° — ἃ 


1 Instead of being able, with Dr. Baur, 
(whose positions we have not neglected to 
consider in the statement above given,) to 
regard the Logos-doctrine as an attempt to 
strike the mean between the two classes of 
the Monarchians, and to account hence for 
its spread; we must on the contrary main- 
tain, that it was precisely the antithesis of 
the Logos-doctrine in the form of subordin- 
ation, which called forth Patripassianism. 
We discern in this last tendency the same 
interest, expressing itself in a purely prac- 
tical way, without dialectic reasoning, which 
afterwards sought its satisfaction by means 
of dialectic reasoning, in the matured no- 
tion of the Homoiision. 

2 In Matth. T. XVII. § 14: Οὐ νομιστέον 
εἶναι ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τοὺς τὰ ψεύδη φρονοῦντας 
περὶ αὐτοῦ, φαντασίᾳ τοῦ δοξάζειν αὐτὸν, 
brat εἰσιν οἱ συγχέοντες πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ 
ἔννοιαν καὶ τῇ ὑποστάσει ἕνα διδόντες εἶναι 
τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν, τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ καὶ 
τοῖς ὀνόμασι διαιροῦντες τὸ ἕν ὑποκείμενον. 
He distinguishes such from heretics. 

8'O λόγος τάχα τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ἱστάντων τὸ 
πᾶν καὶ τῶν πατέρα αὐτὸν νομιζόντων ἐστὶ 
ϑεός. In Joann. T. II. § 8. 

4. c.: Of μηδὲν εἰδότες, εἰ μὴ ᾿Ιησοῦν 


Χριστὸν καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον, τὸν γενό- 
μενον σάρκα λόγον τὸ πᾶν νομίσαντες εἶναι 
τοῦ λόγον, Χριστὸν κατὰ σώρκα μόνον γινώ- 
okovot τοιοῦτον δέ ἐστι τὸ πλῆϑος τῶν πε- 
πιστευκέναι νομιζομένων. Yet we should 
not omit to notice, that in the above-cited 
passage, Matth. T. XVII. § 14, Origen dis- 
tincuishes those who, out of a mistaken 
wish to honor Christ, identify him with the 
Father, from the great mass of orthodox 
believers, who, though they do not consider 
Christ as a mere prophet, yet are far from 
having a sufficiently high conception of 
him, are unable to form to themselves any 
clear conception of his character. Οἱ ὄχλοι, 
κἀν μὴ τῇ λέξει ὡς προφῆτην αὐτὸν ἔχωσι, 6, 
τι ποτ᾽ ἂν ἔχωσιν αὐτὸν, πολλῷ ἔλαττον ἔχου- 
σιν αὐτὸν οὗ ἐστιν, οὐδὲν τρανοῦντες περὶ 
αὐτοῦ. 

5 Οἱ μὲν ϑεὸν ἔχουσι τὸν τῶν ὅλων ϑεὸν, 
οἱ δὲ παρὰ τούτους δεύτεροι ἱστάμενοι ἐπὶ 
τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ, τὸν Χριστὸν αὐτοῦ. LL. c. 

6. Qui unam eandemque subsistentiam 
Patris ac Filii asseverant, unam personam 
duobus nominibus subjacentem, qui latine 
Patripassiani appellantur. Orig. fragment. 
Commentar. in ep. ad Titum. 


THE MONARCHIANS. 579 


name which would be applied to them, however, only by those who 
maintained the subordination-theory of the church;+ and on the 
ground that they saw it must tend to impair the superior dignity of 
the Father, if that was transferred to him which could only be pre- 
dicated of the Logos,? who came into all manner of contact with the 
creature. 

We shall now proceed to consider more in detail the several phases 
of Monarchianism. 

As it regards the firstnamed class, we find the earliest traces of it 
in the Roman church; and since it has been found that Monarchians 
of the third century appeal to the agreement of the older Roman bish- 
ops with their views, modern inquirers have been led to infer from this 
circumstance, that the Monarchian tenet was in this church originally 
the prevailing one, while the doctrine of the Logos was unknown to it: 
and this was connected with another position, namely, that the Roman 
church had its origin in a Jewishelement. But if this last position is 
an erroneous one, and the Pauline, Gentile-Christian element must be 
regarded much rather as the original one in this case, (as we think we 
have shown it must be, in another place,*) one of the principal argu- 
ments for such a supposition falls at once to the ground. Moreover, on 
such a supposition, it would be least of all possible to account for the 
favorable reception which the Patripassians met with at Rome; for it 
is evident, that there was nothing which so contradicted the fundamen- 
tal principle of the Jewish Christians, nothing so far alien from Ebion- 
itism, as thes theory concerning the person of Christ. We have seen, 
in fact, that the two classes of the Monarchians stand in well-defined 
opposition to each other. Hence both cannot at one and the same time 
have been dominant in this church, cannot have sprung out of its origi- 
nal element; although one side might doubtless, by its extreme positions, 
have called forth the other. Now, if Patripassianism was the predomi- 
nant doctrine, this would least of all have presented any foothold for 
the other classes of the Monarchians. These could expect nothing 
after this, but to meet with the warmest resistance. But if that ten- 
dency of Monarchianism which was more nearly akin to Ebionitism had 
its ground in the original doctrine of this church, the favorable recep- 
tion which a Patripassian teacher met with here, could not be accounted 
for. The intimate connection, moreover, of Irenzeus with the Roman 
church,* to the doctrinal tradition of which he especially appeals, testi- 
fies against the existence of such a Monarchian tendency opposed to 
the Logos-doctrine in this church. And it is by no means clear, that 
those Monarchians were at home in Rome: they came from some other 
quarter to the capital of the world, where was a confluence of the most 
heterogeneous elements from all directions. The Monarchians of the 
first class did in fact, from the first, meet even here with a very unfa- 


1Jna different sense from what was in- 2 See the words of Tertullian, cited above : 
tended, when, at a later period, those who Pater philosophorum Deus. 
were accused of not duly distinguishing the 8 See my Apostol. Zeitalter, vol. I. p. 384. 
divine and the human in Christ were de- 4. See vol. I. p. 204. 
nominated Theopaschites. 


580 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
vorable reception. But as to the circumstance of their appealing to 
their agreement with the more ancient doctrine of the Roman church, 
this just as little proves that the original doctrine of the Roman church 
really favored them, as their appeal which they also made to the scrip- 
tures of the New Testament proves that the latter favored them.1 The 
true state of the case probably was, then, that they simply took advan- 
tage of the more crude and undigested form of the doctrine in the 
Roman church to introduce their own. 

The founder of this Monarchian party in Rome appears to have been 
a certain Theodotus, a leather-dresser (σκυτεύς) from Byzantium? It 
is evident, from the way in which he interpreted the language of the 
angel, (Luke 1: 31,)° that although he acknowledged nothing of an 
indwelling divine nature in Christ, he yet supposed that Christ had 
grown up from the beginning under the special influence of the divine 
Spirit. The language was not, he said, the Spirit of God shall enter 
into thee; therefore the fact here denoted was not an incarnation of 
the divine Spirit,t but only a descent of the divine Spirit on Mary. 
Whence too it appears that he by no means denied the supernatural 
character of Christ’s nativity; of which therefore he is unjustly ac- 
cused by Epiphanius. The Roman bishop, Victor, is said to have 
excommunicated him from the church, whether this took place at the end 
of the second or at the beginning of the third century; yet his party 
continued to propagate itself, independently of the dominant church, 
and endeavored to get into notice by contriving to elect for its bishop 
Natalis, a venerated confessor. The latter seems, however, to have in- 
troduced a schism into his own breast, by departing from a conviction 
which had once given him strength for conflict and suffermg. The dis- 
quiet of his heart manifested itself in frightful dreams and visions; and 
in the end he penitently returned back to the Catholic church.® 

There arose, independently of this Theodotus, another Monarchian 
sect in Rome, whose founder is called Artemon. Τὺ is certain that the 
party which derived its origi from this man did not acknowledge Theo- 
dotus as belonging to them; and if they supposed they could appeal to 
their agreement in doctrine with the Roman bishop Victor, who had 
excommunicated Theodotus, they must either have assumed that their 
doctrine differed from that of Theodotus, or that the latter had been 
excommunicated for other reasons than his erroneous doctrines. The 
latter may be supposed, if the somewhat highly colored and, as we 
must admit, not sufficiently well-supported account,® that Theodotus 


1 Although we may -be inclined to sup- 
pose that the Artemonites did not receive 
the gospel of John, yet we must admit that 
they acknowledged the epistles of Paul. 

2 The latter is reported by Epiphanius 
and Theodoretus. 

8 His words, cited by Epiphanius heres. 
54, are: Kai αὐτὸ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἔφη τῇ Ma- 
ρίᾳ πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπελεύσεται ἐπὶ σὲ, καὶ 
οὐκ εἶπε' πνεῦμα κυρίου γενήσεται ἐν σοΐ. 

4 Whether it was, that by this divine 
Spirit he understood the Logos, or whether 


he disclaimed all knowledge of such a be- 
ing. We should not forget here, that these 
words were in fact referred, at that time, to 
the incarnation of the Logos. See Justin 
M. Apolog. II. ed. Colon. f. 75: Td πνεῦμα 
καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τὴν παρὰ ϑεοῦ οὐδὲν ἄλλο 
νοῆσαι ϑέμις ἢ τὸν λόγον. 

5 If we may trust to the report of an op- 
ponent. Euseb. lib. V. ο, 28. 

ὁ Besides being cited in Epiphanius, it 
may be found in the appendices to Tertul- 
lian’s Preescriptions, ¢. 53. 


THE MONARCHIANS. THE ARTEMONITES. 581 


was first excommunicated from the church on account of his denial of 
the faith under a persecution, may have some foundation of truth. 
The Artemonites continued to propagate themselves in Rome till far 
into the third century. About the middle of this century, the Roman 
presbyter Novatianus still considered it necessary, in his exposition of 
the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, to notice particularly the objections 
of that party ; and, during the later Samosatenian disputes, it was spoken 
of as a party still in existence. 

If the Artemonites pretended that what they called the truth, had 
been preserved in the Roman church down to the time of the Roman 
bishop Zephyrinus, yet this, as we have remarked before, signifies 

‘nothing more here than it does in the other cases, where they cited the 
older church teachers generally and the apostles themselves as wit- 
nesses for the truth of their doctrine. When aman entrenches himself 
in some particular dogmatic interest, and makes that his central posi- 
tion, he can easily explain every thing in conformity with his own views, 
and find everywhere a reflection of Aimself. But when they asserted, 
that from the time of Victor’s successor, Zephyrinus, the true doctrine 
in this church become obscured ! — some fact must be lying at the bot- 
tom of this assertion, which unhappily, in the absence of historical data, 
it is impossible at present accurately to ascertain. Perhaps by these 
very disputes, the Roman church was led to fix some more clearly de- 
fined doctrinal distinction or other, which was unfavorable to the inter- 
ests of this party. But the Roman bishops, who, even at this early 
period, held so tenaciously to traditional forms, even in unimportant mat- 
ters, would hardly be induced to exchange, at once, the Monarchianism 
received from their predecessors, for the Logos-doctrine coming to them 
from abroad ; and such a change, moreover, did not admit of being so 
easily effected. 

As it regards the tendency of mind in which the doctrine of these 
Artemonites originated, we are furnished with a very instructive hint 
on this subject, in one of the objections brought against them. They 
busied themselves a good deal with mathematics, dialectics, and criti- 
cism; with the philosophy of Aristotle and with Theophrastus. It 
was, then, a predominantly reflective, critical, dialectic bent of mind, 
which, in their case, encroached on the fervency and depth of Christian 
feelings. They were for a Christianity of the understanding, without 
any mystical element. Every thing of a transcendent character, every 
thing which would not adapt itself to their dialectic categories, was to 
be expurged from the system of faith. It is worthy of notice, that they 
devoted particular attention to the Aristotelean philosophy. We per- 
ceive here the different kinds of influence exerted by the systems of 
philosophy ; the Platonic being employed to defend the doctrine of 
Christ’s divinity, while the opposite direction of mind, tending to combat 
that doctrine, leaned to the side of the Aristotelean. 

It was alleged against those Artemonites, that, under the pretence of 
emending the text of the holy scriptures, they indulged in a very ar- 


1 ᾿Απὸ τὲ τοῦ διαδόχου αὐτοῦ Ζεφυρίνου παρακεχαράχϑαι τὴν ἀλήϑειαν. Euseb. 1. V. c. 28, 


49" 


582 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

bitrary kind of criticism. An accusation of this sort from the mouth of 
opponents is in itself, it must be admitted, not entitled to much credit. 
There was ever a strong inclination to charge those who deviated from 
the church doctrine, whenever they cited other readings than those 
which were customarily received in the church, with mterpolating and 
corrupting the holy scriptures so as to make them favor those opin- 
ions in which they differed from the church.1_ But the peculiar intellec- 
tual bent of these people renders it not improbable, that they did 
indulge in a licentious criticism, favoring the interest of their own pecu- 
har dogmas. Their antagonists speak of the variations which were to 
be found in the several recensions of the text proceeding from the theo- 
logians of this party, as each was ambitious to acquire importance by 
his skill in criticism.? 

Many of the Artemonites were led also by this critical bent of mind, 
as it would seem, to oppose the tendency to confound together the fun- 
damental positions of the Old and New Testament; to combat the 
practice of implying, by means of allegorical interpretation, every Chris- 
tian truth in the scriptures of the Old Testament. They were for hold- 
ing the two positions more distinctly apart; for distinguishing more clearly 
the new, specifically Christian element from that of the Old-Testament 
scriptures. _ Possibly, also, they may have discriminated more carefully 
the peculiar character of the agency exerted by the Holy Spirit in the 
case of the New-T'estament, from that in the case of the Old-Testa- 


ment scriptures. 
authority as to the former.® 


1 Tertullian’s Prescriptions: Ubi veritas 
disciplinze et fidei Christiane, illic erit veri- 
tas scripturarum et expositionum. De pre- 
script. ὃ, 19. 

2 There were many copies of the New 
Testament, inscribed with the names of the 
critics of the several sects from which the 
revision of the text proceeded. Πολλῶν 
(ἀντιγραφῶν) ἐστιν εὐπορῆσαι, διὰ τὸ φιλοτί- 
μως ἐγγεγράφϑαι τοὺς μαϑητὰς αὐτῶν, τὰ 
ὑφ᾽ ἑκάστου αὐτῶν, ὡς αὐτοὶ καλοῦσι͵ κατωρ- 
ϑωμένα. Euseb. |. V.c. 28. 

§ We infer this from the remarkable 
words in the controversial notice just cited, 
Euseb. 1. V. c. 28: Ἔνιοι δ᾽ αὐτῶν οὐδὲ Ta- 
ράσσειν ἠξίωσαν αὐτὰς (τὰς γραφὰς) ἀλλ᾽ 
ἁπλῶς ἀρνησάμενοι τόν τε νόμον καὶ τοὺς 
προφήτας, ἀνόμου καὶ ἀϑέου διδασκαλίας 
(here a word must have slipped out, for I 
do not feel at liberty to supply évexa, nor 
do I believe that this is the word missing. 
Neither can I, with Stroth, take these words 
as in apposition with χάριτος.) προφάσει 
χάριτος (under the pretext, that they would 
glorify the grace bestowed by the gospel) 
εἰς ἔσχατον ἀπωλείας ὄλεϑρον κατωλίσϑησαν. 
We may here compare what Origen says 
of the same class: Qui Spiritum Sanctum 
alium quidem dicant esse, qui fuit prophe- 
tis, alium autem, qui fuit in apostolis. 
Fragment. Commentar. in epist. ad ‘Titum. 


To the latter they may not have ascribed the same 


But when I find Dr. Baur endeavoring to 
establish a connection between the tendenc 
here described and the sect of Ration T 
must be allowed to say, that I see no ground 
whatever for any such hypothesis. If these 
people agreed with the school of Marcion 
in opposing the practice of confounding to- 
gether the fundamental positions of the 
Old and the New Testament, (and yet they 
were certainly very far from proceeding to 
the same length in this opposition as Mar- 
cion did,) this cannot possibly be regarded 
as sufficient evidence of any relationship 
of theirs with the sect of Marcion. They 
were driven to this result from an entirely 
different starting-point, by an intellectual 
tendency directly opposed to that of the 
Marcionites. Had they stood in any sort 
of connection with the sect of Marcion, 
other Christians certainly would never have 
had so much to do with them, but would 
have repelled them, without ceremony, from 
their society, as notorious heretics. But 
neither can we believe, that it was to this 
party the opponents belonged, whom 'Ter- 
tullian combats as a Montanist, (see above, 
p 525, note 2;) for had it been in his power 
to charge these opponents with such errors 
as the above-described, he would assuredly 
not have allowed such an opportunity to 
pass without availing himself of it. 


THE PATRIPASSIANS. 588 


‘We recognize the same tendency in the oldest opponents of John’s 
gospel, who were connected with this party, — the so-called Alogz, whom 
we have already spoken of, as. a sect that pushed the antithesis of Mon- 
tanism to its farthest extreme on the other side.1 

As to the second class of Monarchians, the Patripassians, the first 
one of the party who comes to our knowledge is the confessor Prazeas. 
He came from Asia Minor, the father-land of Monarchianism, where he 
had made himself known as an antagonist of Montanism ; from which 
circumstance, however, it is by no means clear, that the peculiar direc- 
tion he took with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity had any connec- 
tion whatever with this opposition ; especially if we consider that the 
prophetic spirit of the Montanists itself, as we have before pointed out, 
assumed in the first place an Old-Testament form, and spoke in the name 
of God the Father only. He afterwards travelled to Rome,” and by 
his influence induced the Roman bishop, either Eleutherus or Victor, 
to pronounce sentence of excommunication against the Montanists in 
Asia Minor. He at that time encountered no opposition on the score 
of his Patripassianism ; whether it was that men were less disposed to 
examine rigidly into the creed of the confessor ; or that, amidst the ne- 
gotiations respecting many other important matters connected with the 
interests of the church, this difference in doctrine never happened to be 
mentioned ; or that Praxeas found in the church doctrine at Rome, 
which as yet was not very precisely defined, a point of union for his 
own views, and by his zeal in behalf of the faith in Christ, as the God- 
man, perhaps by his hostility to the other party of the Monarchians, 
won over the public opinion in his favor. He next went to Carthage, 
where too he may have relied for support on the before-described pious 
interests of simple faith in the laity, which had not yet passed through 
any process of theological development.’ Yet here an opponent of this 
doctrine presented himself, and a controversy arose. If we may believe 
the hostilely-disposed Tertullian, Praxeas was induced to recant his 
opinions. Yet we should here probably distinguish between the real 
matter of fact, and the interpretation of the fact by an antagonist. It 
may be doubted whether the explanation of Praxeas, to which Tertul- 
lian alludes, may not have been simply a vindication of his doctrine 
against some falsely charged conclusions. Somewhat later, when Ter- 
tullian had already gone over to the Montanistic party, the controversy 
broke out afresh ; and he had now a double motive for writing against 
Praxeas. 

According to his representations, there were two possible ways of 
construing the doctrine of Praxeas: either that he denied the exist- 
ence of any distinction in the being of God himself — denied the ex- 
istence of any duality in God, which might seem to be presupposed by 
Christ’s appearance, even a duality understood merely in a formal sense — 


1 See above, p. 526. are: Dormientibus multis in simplicitate 
2 For the precise time, see above, p. 513, doctrine. c. Praxeam, c. 1. nis 
note 3, and 525. 4His langudge is: Caverat pristinum 


8 Tertullian’s words, where he is speaking doctor de emendatione sua et manet chiro- 
of the spread of this doctrine in Carthage, graphum apud psychicos. L. 6. 


584 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
and applied the name Son of God to Christ simply with reference to 
his bodily appearance on earth ;! or that he admitted the doctrine of a 
divine Logos in a certain sense. In the latter case, he would not only 
have applied the name Son of God to Christ with reference to his 
human appearance, but he would have acknowledged a distinction, from 
the creation of the world, between the hidden, invisible God, and him 
who revealed himself in the work of creation, in the Theophanies of 
the Old Testament, and finally in'a human body, in Christ. In the 
last-mentioned relation, God would be called the Logos or the Son. By 
extending, in some sense, his activity beyond himself, and so generat- 
ing the Logos, he thus made himself a Son.2 Now Tertullian, when 
he expresses himself in this last way, has either failed to enter fully 
enough into the whole connection of his opponent’s mode of thinking, 
has transferred to Praxeas his own way of construing the meaning of 
Praxeas, or else different views must have existed among Praxeas’ fol- 
lowers, according to the degree of their intellectual culture, and ac- 
cording as they adhered more or less closely to the church terminology. 
To this class of Monarchians belongs, moreover, oetus, who ap- 
peared in the first half of the third century at Smyrna.? It is a char- 
acteristic fact, and serves to confirm what we have said before re- 
specting the import of Patripassianism, that when Noetus was cited 
before an assembly of presbyters, to answer for the erroneous doctrine 
of which he was accused, he alleged in his defence that his doctrine 
tended only to honor Christ. ‘ Of what evil am I guilty,” said he, 
“when I glorify Christ?”?* The unity of God and Christ, this only 
God — was his motto. In proof of his doctrine he referred to Rom. 
9: 5, where Christ is called God over all ; — to the words of Christ, 
John 10: 30, “‘I and my Father are one ;”’ — perhaps also® to the 
words John 14: 9, ‘* He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” It 
appears, from these examples, that Patripassianism appealed to the 
authority of St. John’s gospel, as well as to others; and it is evident, 
how slight are the grounds furnished by the spread of such doctrines 
for presuming that this gospel was either not known to exist, or not re- 
ceived. If, in the case of Praxeas, we were still uncertain whether he 
made the distinction between God hidden within himself and God in 
his self-manifestation, it is, on the other hand, clearly evident from the 
report of Theodoretus, that Noetus made a doctrine of this kind his 
very starting-point. There is one God, the Father, who is invisible 
when he pleases ; and appears (manifests himself’) when he pleases ; 


1 See Tertullian, c. Praxeam c. 27. 
2L.¢.c. 10, 14, and 26. The objections 
of Baur cannot move me. The passage 


that others before him had already broached 
one of the same kind, among whom he 
names two individuals unknown to us, 


marked c. 14, especially, where the writer 
is speaking of the application of the doc- 
trine to the Old Testament, leads necessa- 
rily to this result. 

8 Theodoretus, together with Hippolytus, 
furnishes the most characteristic notion of 
this doctrine, (vid. Heeret. fab. 111. c. 3.) 
He correctly remarks that Noetus set forth 
no new doctrine invented by himself, but 


Epigonius and Cleomenes. 

* Vid. Hippolyt. c. Noét. § 1: T? οὖν κα- 
κὸν ποιῶ, δοξάζων τὸν Χριστόν; 

5 I say “ perhaps,” because it is not abso- 
lutely certain from the words of Hippoly- 
tus, whether he is answering an objection 
actually made, or only one which he con- 
conceived possible. 


DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 585 
but the same, whether visible or invisible, begotten or unbegotten. 
Theodoretus refers this last expression to the birth of Christ ; — but it 
may be doubted whether he has in this instance rightly taken the sense 
of the man; whether the latter had not in his mind the γέννησις τοῦ λόγου : 
and by this he could have understood here nothing else than God’s ac- 
tivity without himself. At all events, he must have so appropriated 
the Logos-doctrine of John as to understand by the Logos only a desig- 
nation for God proceeding forth from his hidden essence, God re- 
vealing himself; —the same God, denommated, in different relations, 
ov and λόγος. 

Tn the conflict with these two classes of the Monarchians, the church 
doctrine of the Trinity unfolded itself— and in two different quarters, 
in the Western and in the Eastern church. In the latter, the doctrine 
of subordination became firmly established in connection with the hypos- 
tatical view of the Logos; since in the controversy with the Monar- 
chians, who denied the distinction of hypostases, that distinction became 
still more prominently set forth. On the other hand, we see how the 
Western mind, starting from the doctrine of subordination received 
along with the distinction of hypostases, is ever striving to make promi- 
nent the unity of the divine essence in connection with this distinction. 
The designation of Christ as the Logos could have been’ known from 
the gospel of John, without any use being made of it, however, for a 
speculative exposition of the doctrine concerning Christ. This first 
took place, when a species of intellectual culture which had been 
formed in the schools of philosophy, particularly in the Platonic school, 
though after a superficial manner and more under the impulse of a reli- 
gious than of a philosophical interest, came into contact with Christian- 
ity. The first author still extant, in whom this character may be dis- 
cerned, is Justin Martyr. He availed himself, in his speculations (as 
Philo, whose ideas seem to have been known to him and to have influ- 
enced him, had already done) of the ambiguity of the Greek term Lo- 
gos, which denotes both reason and word. Hence the comparison of 
the reason, which dwells in God, (the λόγος ἐνδιάϑετος,) and the revela- 
tion of this reason, appearing creatively without — the self-subsistent 
Word, (λόγος προφορικός, the word as it stands related to the thought,) by 
which the ideas of the divine reason are revealed and become actual- 
ized. Accordingly this: word —so taught Justin—emanated from 
God before all creation, (being his self-manifestation,) as a personal- 
ity derived from God’s essence, and ever intimately united with him 
by this community of essence, — a distinction which does not arise out 


1 Justin describes the doctrine of Christ’s 
divinity as one taught by Christ himself. 
Πείϑεσϑαι τοῖς δ αὐτοῦ διδαχϑεῖσι. Dial. 
Tryph. f. 267. The doctrine concerning 
Christ as the Son of God in that higher 
sense, he thought he found in the ἀπομνη- 
μονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων, by which phrase 
he means the gospels, as being memorials 
of Christ’s life. See f. 327; and when all 
the scattered allusions to the gospel of 
John, in his writings, are compared togeth- 


er, it is impossible to doubt that he had 
read this gospel, and comprised it among 
his apostolic commentaries ; for, indeed, he 
describes these commentaries as having 
been composed partly by the apostles them- 
selves, (Matthew and John,) and partly by 
their disciples, Luke and Mark. Τοῖς ἀπο- 
μνημονεύμασι, & φημι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων 
καὶ τῶν ἐκείνοις παρακολουϑησώντων συντε- 
τάχϑαι. Dial. Tryph. f. 331. 


586 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

of any necessity of nature, but is brought about by an act of the divine 
will. The idea of this Logos, as the invisible teacher of the spiritual 
world, from whom all goodness and truth proceed, Justin employs for 
the purpose of setting forth Christianity as the central point, where all 
the hitherto-scattered rays of the godlike in humanity converge, — the 
absolute religion, in which all that has been, till now, fragmentary and 
rent piece-meal, is brought together into a higher unity ; and for the 
purpose of comparing the full and unalloyed revelation of the absolute, 
divine Logos in Christ, with the partial and fragmentary revelations — 
so fragmentary as to contradict each other—of truth m the human 
consciousness, growing from the implanted seed of the Logos, which is 
of one nature with that eternal, divine reason.! The same fundamental 
view we find in the other apologetic writers ;? but we may notice, in 
the case of Athenagoras, how, in endeavoring to strip away everything 
that savors of Anthropopathism, and in contrasting the spiritually con- 
ceived idea of the Son of God with the pagan myths concerning sons of 
deities,® he is led to express himself on the unity of the divine essence, 
in a way which strikes a middle course between the Monarchian theory 
and the doctrine of the church in its later and more matured form. It 
is easy to see how the above-named Monarchians might avail. them- 
selves of the authority of such passages, to maintain the higher an- 
tiquity of their own form of doctrine. 

Thus unfolded, this doctrine passed over into the Alexandrian school, 
whose philosophically cultivated minds strove from the first to remove 
away from it all relations of time and analogies of sense, as the analogy, 
for example, drawn from the expression of thoughts in words.* Already 
Clement describes the Logos as the ground-principle, without beginning 
and timeless, of all existence.° He transfers what was taught in the 
Neo-Platonic school concerning the relation of the second principle, the 
νοῦς living in self-contemplation, the hypostatised ideal world, to the ab- 
solute, the 6», —he transfers and applies this to the revelation of the Lo- 
gos to the Father, — although, at the position he occupied, and with his 
mode of contemplating the universe in the light of a Christian Theism, 
which acknowledged a living, personal, acting God, it was still impossi- 
ble for him to appropriate to his own purpose the sense in which all this 
was meant in the coherence of that philosophical system.® The specula- 


1 Which proceeds from the ἔμφυτον παντὶ 
γένει ἀνϑρώπων σπέρμα τοῦ λόγου, the κατὰ 
λόγου μέρος, compared with the λογικὸν τὸ 
ὅλον, πάντα τὰ τοῦ λόγου ὅς ἐστι Χριστός. 
Apolog. I. f. 48. 

2 In Athenagoras after the following 
form: The Logos, as God’s indwelling rea- 
son, projects the ideas;— The Logos, as 
Word, emanated into self-subsistence, car- 
ries them into realization, λόγος ἐν ἰδέᾳ καὶ 
ἐνεργείᾳ; ---- ἃ5 προελϑὼν ἐνεργείᾳ, it is that 
by which the organized world was formed 
out of chaos. 

8 The πρῶτον γέννημα, obx’ ὡς γενόμενον; 
for the Father had from all eternity his Lo- 
gos in himself. 


4In the λόγος ἐνδιάϑετος and προφορι- 
KOC. 

5 *"Aypovog καὶ ἄναρχος ἀρχὴ, ἀπαρχὴ τῶν 
ὄντων. Strom. 1. VIII. f. 700. ‘H τῶν 
ὅλων ἀρχὴ ἐπεικόνισται ἐκ τοῦ ϑεοῦ τοῦ do- 
ρώτου πρώτη καὶ πρὸ αἰώνων. L.c.1 V. f. 
565. Λόγος αἰώνιος. L. ec. 1. VII. f. 708. 

6 We see this by comparing Clement, 
Strom. 1. IV. f. 537, with Plotinus, Ennead. 
1Π. c. 7, seqq. It is true, Clement may 
not have taken any thing from Plotinus, 
who wrote some years later; but we must 
presuppose doctrines of the Neo-Platonic 
school still older than Plotinus. Clement 
says: Ὁ ϑεὸς ἀναπόδεικτος Ov, οὔκ ἐστιν 
ἐπιστημονικός. This answers to the Neo- 


ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 587 
tive ideas of Neo-Platonism were, in his case, mixed up with Christian 
intuitions. As we observed on a previous page, that Clement intro- 
duced into certain philosophical propositions a religious matter which 
was foreign from them, so here too we see him striving to find the idea 
which grew out of his own Christian consciousness and thought — this 
idea of the unity of the divine life, and of negation and schism as the 
very essence of unbelief — striving to find this idea in the speculative 
maxims of the Neo-Platonic school concerning the voic.1 But the Alex- 
andrian system, which sprang out of the germ furnished by Clement, 
was first carried out and moulded into its perfect shape by Origen ; — 
and the influence of his exposition of the doctrine continued long to be 
felt in the Eastern church. The leading ideas in it were as follows. 

There is an original source of all existence, to be called God in the 
absolute sense ;? the fountain of divine life and blessedness to a world 
of spirits, who, as they are allied to him by nature, are also, by 
their communion with him, deified and raised superior to the limitations 
of a finite existence. In virtue of this divine life, which flows to them 
through their communion with the original divine essence, the more ex- 
alted spirits may be denominated, in a certain sense, divine beings, 
gods.?” But as the αὐτόϑεος is the original source of all existence and . 
of all divine life, so the Logos is the necessary intermediate link through 
which all communication of life from him proceeds. This latter is the 
concentrated manifestation of God’s glory, its universal, all-embracmg 
reflection, by whom the partial eradiations of the divine glory are dif 
fused abroad through the whole world of spirits.* 

As there is but one original divine essence,” so there is but one origi- 
nal divine reason, the absolute reason,° through which alone the eter- 
nal Supreme Being reveals himself to all other existences. He is to 
them the source of all truth, — objective, self-subsistent truth itself. Ori- 
gen considers it very important to hold fast the position, that each sev- 
eral rank of reasonable beings, or each several intelligence, has not its 
own subjective Logos, but that one absolute objective Logos, as well as 
one absolute objective truth, exists for all; the one truth of the divine 


Platonic maxim concerning a suprarational, 
intellectual intuition, by which the νοῦς, ris- 
ing above itself, soars to the 6v,—so Ploti- 
nus says of the ov: Ὑπερβεβηκὸς τοῦτο τὴν 
τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν, τίνι ἁλίσκοιτο ἐπιβολῇ ἀϑρόᾳ; 
What Plotinus says of the νοῦς as the évép- 
yea πρώτη ἐν διεξόδῳ τῶν πάντων, as the 
ἕν πᾶν, Clement transfers to the Logos. 

1 Because the λόγος is the πάντα ἕν, ---- τὸ 
εἰς αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ δ' αὐτοῦ πιστεῦσαι, povadl- 
κόν ἐστι γίνεσϑαι, ἀπερισπάστως ἑνούμενον 
ἐν αὐτῳ, τὸ δὲ ἀπιστῆσαι, διστάσαι ἐστὶ καὶ 
διαστῆναι καὶ μερισϑῆναι. 

2 The ἁπλῶς ϑεός, αὐτόϑεος. 

3 Μετοχῇ τῆς ἐκείνου ϑεότητος ϑεοποιού- 
μενοι. Intimately connected with this dis- 
tinction, stands Origen’s theory concerning 
the process of the development of Theism. 
They occupy the highest position, who 
have soared to the αὐτόϑεος himself; — the 


second, those who believe that they possess 
in Christ the Supreme God himself, (see 
above ;) the third, those who are conducted 
first to some notion of God, by recognizing 
those higher divine essences, the divine in- 
telligences which animate the planets. Ori- 
gen argues, as Philo had already done from 
Deut. 4: 19, a certain necessity of Polythe- 
ism, and in particular of Sabeism, in the 
process of the religious development of 
mankind, ordained by God: Τῷ τοὺς μὴ 
δυναμένους ἐπὶ τὴν νοητὴν ἀναδραμεῖν φύσιν, 
6’ αἰσϑητῶν ϑεῶν κινουμένους περὶ ϑεότη- 
τος, ἀγαπητῶς κἀν ἐν τούτοις ἴστασϑαι καὶ 
μὴ πίπτειν ἐπὶ εἴδωλα καὶ δαιμόνια. See in 
Joann. T. XII. § 3. 

4In Joann. T. 11. c. 2; T. XXXII. c. 18. 

5 The αὐτόϑεος. 

6 The αὐτόλογος. 


588 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 


consciousness, which binds man with all the different ranks of intelli- 
gences in the world of spirits. “Ἢ Every one certainly will admit,” says 
he, “ that truth is one. None surely will venture to affirm that the truth 
of God is one thing; that of the angels, another ; and that of men, still 
another; since, in the very nature of the case, there can be but one 
truth in regard to each one thing. But if truth is one, it rightly fol- 
lows that the evolution of truth, which is wisdom, must be conceived as 
one, inasmuch as all false wisdom comes short of the truth, and cannot 
properly be called wisdom. But if there is one truth and one wisdom, 
then the Logos also is one, who reveals truth and wisdom to all such as 
are capable of receiving 10.) Although the Logos, however, is by his 
own nature the absolute one, yet he-places himself in manifold forms 
and modes of activity, according to the different positions and the 
different wants of reasonable beings, to whom he becomes whatsoever is 
necessary for their well-being. While the Gnostics made different hy- 
postases out of these different modes of operation of one and the same 
Redeeming Spirit, Origen referred back these different hypostases to 
different ideas and relations, (ἐπινοίας - but while he combated these 
all-hypostatising Gnostics, he opposed also the Monarchians, who re- 
᾿ duced the whole Triad simply to different relations of one and the same 
divine essence. He who denied the independent existence of the divine 
Logos, seemed to him to reduce every thing to the subjective, — to 
deny the existence of an absolute objective truth,—to make of this 
a bare abstract thing ; for he could not otherwise conceive of the divine 
Logos, than as he had been accustomed to conceive of the νοῦς of the 
Neo-Platonic philosophy. ‘‘ Not one of us,’”’ says Origen,! “is pos- 
sessed of so mean an intellect as to suppose that the essence of truth? 
did not exist before the earthly appearance of Christ.” 

As Origen explained the several designations of the Logos to be sym- 
bolical, so he considered it to be also with the name Logos itself; and 
he spoke against those who, availing themselves of the comparison with 
the λόγος προφορικός, which seemed so inadequate to the Alexandrians, 
held fast to the name Logos alone, and thought they might refer to this, 
all passages of the Old Testament where a λόγος was spoken of.? The 
notion, which went along with this view, of an emanation of the Logos 
to self-subsistent. existence before the creation of the world, was, like 
every other transfer of temporal relations to the Eternal, combated by 
Origen. He who fixed no beginning to the creation, but supposed it to 
be eternal, would far less fix any beginning here. He strove to banish 
all notions of time from the conception of the generation of the Logos. 
It was necessary here —as he thought— to conceive of a timeless 
present, an eternal now; and this he supposed to be intimated by the 
expression ‘‘ to-day ”’ in the second Psalm.! 

In excluding all notions of time, it is also implied, in his opinion, that 
the generation of the Logos should not be conceived as something which 


1¢, Cels. 1. VIII. c. 12. mpopopay πατρικὴν οἱονεὶ ἐν συλλαβαῖς Ker 
3 Ἢ τῆς ἀληϑείας οὐσία. μένην. εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ, 
8 Ἐκ εὶ συνεχῶς χρῶνται tar ἐξηρεύξατο ἡ 4 In Joann. I. 32; IL 1. 

καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαϑόν͵ ψ. 44, 1, οἰόμενοι 


ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 589 
happened once and was then over. With the conception of beginning, 
that also of an end must be carefully excluded — it should be conceived 
as a timeless, eternal act. Origen seeks to render this theogonic pro- 
cess clear by an analogy — by comparing it with the process accord- 
ing to which the divine life developes itself in believers — the just man 
not being born of God at once, by virtue of the divine life imparted to 
him, but being ever born anew of God; so that all the good he does, 
proceeds from this generation of the divine life in him.t With the glory 
of God exists also its radiation in the Son; from the light ever goes 
forth its radiation.2 We should not forget here, that Origen was led 
into this view by his philosophical education im the Platonic school ; for 
he only needed to apply what was taught in this school concerning the 
relation of the ὄν to the νοῦς, to the relation of the Father to the Logos. 
But here, owing to the difference between his own fundamental position 
and the Neo-Platonic, a question might occur to him. On the Neo- 
Platonic principle, all teleological considerations, all will and action of 
the absolute, were excluded ; nothing properly had any place here but a 
necessity of the conception. But it was otherwise with Origen’s idea 
of God the Father : —hence the question arises, whether, in reference 
to the generation of the Logos, he conceived of a necessity grounded 
in the divine essence, or of an act proceeding freely from the divine 
will. Had he been possessed of the later-developed notion of the unity 
of essence in the Triad, it would have resulted from this as a matter 
of course, that he would be led to distinguish the eternal generation of 
the Son, as an immanent act grounded in the divine essence, from a 
fiat of the divine will as the mediating cause of the creation. But the 
matter presented itself in a different aspect to Origen, viewed in the 
light of his principle of subordination, which, strictly taken, excluded 
such a mode of conception. And this result, to which Origen’s princi- 
ple would lead, he is said actually to have expressed in his disputation 
with the Valentinian Candidus, in which he attacked the Gnostic doctrine 
of emanation. He affirmed, that we are not to conceive of a natural 
necessity in the case of the generation of the Son of God, but, precisely 
as in the case of the creation, we must conceive of an act flowing from the 
divine will; but he must have excluded here all temporal succession of 
the different momenta.? From this view of the subject, Origen was 


1 Concerning Christ: Ὅτι οὐχὶ ἐγέννησεν 


ter dividatur in partes, sed dicit sublimem 
ὁ πατὴρ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ ἀπέλυσεν αὐτὸν ὁ πα- 


et excellentissimam creaturam voluntate ex- 


THP ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ γεννᾷ 
αὐτόν. Concerning the just man: Οὐ γὰρ 
ἅπαξ ἐρῶ τὸν δίκαιον γεγεννῆσϑαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ 
γεννᾶσϑαι kav ἑκάστην πρᾶξιν ἀγαϑὴν, ἐν 
ἡ γεννᾷ τὸν δίκαιον ὁ ϑεός. In Jerem. Hom. 
ΙΧ. § 4. 

2΄“Ὅσον ἐστὶ τὸ φῶς ποιητικὸν τοῦ ἀπαυ- 
γάσματος, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον γεννᾶται τὸ ἀπαύ- 
γασμα τῆς δόξης τοῦ ϑεοῦ. 

8 Jerome says: Habetur Dialogus apud 
Grecos Origenis et Candidi, Valentiniani 
heresis defensoris, in quo repugnat, Dei 
Filium vel prolatum esse vel natum, (the lat- 
ter certainly he could only deny so far as it 
was too sensuously conceived,) ne Deus Pa- 


VOL. 1, 


stitisse Patris, sicut et cxteras creaturas 
Hieronym. T. II. contra Rufin. ed. Vallarsi 
T. IIL. p. I. p. 512. Venet. 1767, or ed. Mar- 
tianay, T. IV. f. 413. It must be confessed, 
the source from which we obtain this is not 
wholly to be relied on; for we know not 
with what degree of care the notes of this 
disputation were taken down. Many ex- 
pressions which are here ascribed to Origen, 
do not agree with his mode of thinking or 
style of language. Zhe above definition, 
however,as must be evident, is well sup- 
ported by Origen’s system ; and it is easy to 
see, that he would have been led to state 
this in so express terms, only when driven 


590 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

also led to object emphatically to the notion of a generation of the Son of 
God from the essence of the Father, (γέννησις ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας. Inasmuch as 
such a theory seemed to him to lead to the supposition of a natural ne- 
cessity to which the divine essence was subjected —to the supposi- 
tion of a sensuously conceived emanation —a severing of the divine 
essence.! " 

In conformity with this development of ideas, Origen held it to be 
quite necessary to insist on the absolute exaltation and superiority of 
God the Father, so far as his essence is concerned, above every other 
existence ; just as he was accustomed, when a Platonist, to consider the 
highest ὄν as immeasurably superior to all other things, and exalted, in 
its essence, even above the νοῦς itself. It appeared to him, therefore, 
something like a profanation of the first and supreme essence, to sup- 
pose an equality of essence or a unity between him and any other be- 
ing whatever, not excepting even the Son of God. As the Son of God 
and the Holy Spirit are incomparably exalted above all other existences, 
even in the highest ranks of the spiritual world, so high and yet higher 
is the Father exalted even above them.? To this distinction between 
the essence of the Son of God and that of the Father,? Origen was in- 
duced to give still more prominence in opposing the Monarchians. As 
these latter, with the distinction of essence, denied also the personal 
distinction, so it was with Origen a matter of practical moment, on ac- 
count of the systematic connection of ideas in his philosophical system 
of Christianity, to maintain in opposition to these the personal indepen- 
dence of the Logos. Sometimes, in this controversy, he distinguishes 
between unity of essence, and personal unity, or unity of subject, in 
which case he was only interested to controvert the latter. And this 
certainly was the point of greatest practical moment to him; and he 
must have been well aware, that many of the fathers, who contended 
for a personal distinction, held firmly at the same time to a unity of 
essence. But the internal connection of his own system required that 
both should stand or fall together: wherever he spoke, therefore, from 
the position of that system, he affirmed at one and the same time the 
ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας and the ἑτερότης τῆς ὑποστάσεως OY τοῦ ὑποκειμένου ὃ 

From this doctrine he drew the practical inference, that we are bound 
to pray to the Father alone, and not to the Son; whence it is apparent, 
what a strong practical interest the Patripassians, they whom Origen 
accused of knowing only the Son, without being able to elevate them- 
selves to the Father, must have had to controvert such a system. But 
still Christ was, even to Origen, the way, the truth, and the life—as 


to it in opposing the doctrines of a sensu- 
ous emanation-theory, or of natural neces- 


sity. 

tli those who erroneously explain- 
ed the passage, John 8: 44, as referring to 
the generation of the Logos, he says, in 
Joann. T. XX. § 16: "AAAo δὲ τὸ ἐξῆλϑον 
ἀπὸ ϑεοῦ, διηγήσαντο ἀντὶ τοῦ γεγέννημαι 
ἀπὸ τοῦ ϑεοῦ,͵ οἷς ἀκολουϑεῖ ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας 
φάσκειν τοῦ πατρὸς γεγεννῆσϑαι τὸν υἱὸν, 


οἱονεὶ μειουμένου καὶ λείποντος τῇ οὐσίᾳ, ἡ 


πρότερον εἶχε, δόγματα ἀνθρώπων, μηδ᾽ ὄναρ 
φύσιν ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον πεφαντασμένων. 

2 In Joann. T. XIII. § 25. 

8 The doctrine of a ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας, 
in the dispute against the ὁμοούσιον. 

4 In Joann. T. X. against those who said, 
Ἕν, ob μόνον οὐσίᾳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑποκειμένῳ 
τυγχώνειν ἀμφοτέρους. 

5In Joann. T. II. ὁ 2. De orat. ὃ, 15: 
Kar’ οὐσίαν καὶ nad’ ὑποκείμενόν ἐστιν ὃ 
υἱὸς ἕτερος τοῦ πατρός. 


THE ALEXANDRIAN LOGOS-DOCTRINE. 591 
he expressed it with full conviction, even on the grounds of his own 
philosophical system of Christian ideas. He knew of no other way to 
the Father; no other source of truth ; no other spring of divine life 
for all creatures, but him: he was the mirror, through which Paul and 
Peter, and all who were like them, saw God.! He says, the Gnostics 
may be allowed in a certain sense to be right, when they affirm that the 
Father was first revealed by Christ. Until then, men could have no 
other knowledge of God, than as the Creator and Lord of the world, 
since it was first through the Son they came to the knowledge of him 
as their Father; and it was by the spirit of adoption which they re- 
ceived from him, they were first enabled to address God as their 
Father.2_ He recognized him as the Mediator from whom alone Chris- 
tians derive their communion with God; to whom they should con- 
stantly refer their Christian consciousness, and in whose name and 
through whom they should always pray to God the Father. He says, 
“Why may it not be expressed in the sense of him who said, Where- 
fore callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God. 
Why prayest thou to me? Thou shouldst pray to the Father alone, to 
whom I also pray... As you learn from the holy scriptures, you are 
not to pray to the High Priest ordained for you by the Father, to him 
who has received it from the Father to be your Advocate and Interces- 
sor; but you must pray through the High Priest and the Intercessor, 
through him who can be touched with your infirmities, having been 
tempted in all points like as ye are, yet, by the gift of God, without 
sin. Learn, then, what a gift you have received from my Father, when, 
by your new birth in me, ye have received the spirit of adoption, that 
ye might be called sons of God, and my own brethren.” 3 

We have already remarked, that Origen unfolded and matured his 
doctrine of the Logos in the controversy with the two classes of the 
Monarchians ; and the systematic foundation which he laid for this doc- 
trine could not fail once more to call forth a reaction from the Monar- 
chian party; for his views, as must appear evident from the exhibition 
of his system, were hardly suited to remove the scruples they enter- 
tained against the hypostatical Logos-doctrine, in a way which would 
be satisfactory to them at their own position. But Monarchianism, in 
order to support itself, now made its appearance under a new shape. 
Amid the strifes of the two classes, there arose a conciliatory Monar- 
chian tendency.* It proceeded from those who agreed with the Mo- 
narchians in contending against the doctrine of a hypostatical, subor- 


1 In Joann. T. XIII. § 25. 

2In Joann. T. XIX. § 1. vol. VI. f. 286, 
ed. de la Rue; T. IL. p. 146, ed. Lom- 
matzsch. 


as its forerunner, must take the place which 
belongs to him, between the two above- 
named classes of the Monarchians and 
Sabellius. I add, that neither the strictures 


8 De orat. c. 15. 

*In opposition to Dr. Baur, who denies 
the existence of any such third class of 
Monarchians, I must once more affirm, that 
the phenomena presented in this portion of 
history could not possibly be understood 
without the supposition of such a concilia- 
ting tendency ; and that Beryllus of Bostra. 


of Dr. Ullman, in his Hallischen Weihnachts- 
programm, v. J. 1835, in the Studien und 
Kritiken, J. 1836, 4tes Stiick, S. 1073, nor 
those of Dr. Baur, in his History of the 
Doctrine of the Trinity, are of such force 
as to induce me to abandon the views which 
1 held before. 


592 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 


dinate Logos; but whose inferest for Christianity forbade them to be 
satisfied with the way in which the first class of the Monarchians con- 
templated Christ in his relation to other enlightened teachers ; — who 
felt constrained to believe that he possessed a special divine nature ; 
but who at the same time, as their reason could not be satisfied to re- 
move back the difficulties by appealing to the incomprehensibleness of 
the subject, must have felt themselves repelled by the Patripassian 
hypothesis of an incarnation of God the Father himself. Accordingly 
there started up a new theory concerning the person of Christ, which 
aimed to strike a middle course between those who ascribed to him too 
much, and those who conceded to him too little. It was not the whole 
infinite essence of God the Father which dwelt in him, but a certain 
efflux from the divine essence ; and a certain influx of the same into 
human nature was what constituted the personality of Christ. It was 
not before his temporal appearance, but only subsequently thereto, that 
he subsisted as a distinct person beside the Father. This personality 
originated in the hypostatizing of a divine power. It was not proper to 
suppose here, as the first class of Monarchians taught, a distinct hu- 
man person like one of the prophets, placed from the beginning under 
a special divine influence; but this personality was itself something 
specifically divine, produced by a new creative communication of God 
to human nature, by such a letting down of the divine essence into the 
precincts of that nature. Hence in Christ the divine and the human 
are united together ; hence he is the Son of God in a sense in which 
no other being is. As notions derived from the theory of emanation 
were in this period still widely diffused ; as, even in the church mode of 
apprehending the incarnation of the Logos, the doctrine of a reasonable, 
human soul in Christ was still but imperfectly unfolded (at being by 
Origen’s means, as we shall see afterwards, that this doctrine was first 
introduced into the general theological consciousness of the Eastern 
church); —so, under these circumstances, a theory which thus substi- 
tuted the divine, which the Father communicated from his own essence, 
in place of the human soul in Christ, could gain the easier admittance. 
If we transport ourselves back into the midst of the process whereby 
the doctrines of Christianity were becoming unfolded in consciousness, 
into the conflict of opposite opinions in this period, we shall find it very 
easy to understand how a modified theory of this sort came to be 
formed. 

It belongs also to the peculiarity of this new modification of Monar- 
chianism, that it spoke of an ideal being of Christ, a being in the 
divine idea, or predestination, before his temporal appearance. Cer- 
tainly they who expressed themselves thus did not wish to deny, that 
this could be said concerning the relation of God’s eternal plan to 
everything that appears in the succession of time. But, when they 
gave prominence to this point in reference to Christ’s appearance in 
particular, they must have connected with the assertion some peculiar 
meaning; they meant without doubt to mark thereby the important 
bearing which the appearance of Christ had on the execution of the 
divine plan of the universe, as being the end and central point of all ; 


BARYLLUS OF BOSTRA. 


598 


to mark the necessity of such an appearance, in order to the realiza- 


tion of the divine ideas. 


And by virtue of their peculiar mode of ap- 


prehending the essence and the origin of Christ’s personality, they might 
certainly ascribe to it this significancy. ‘To this, then, they would also 
refer those passages of the New Testament which speak of Christ’s 
being with the Father before his temporal appearance. 

The first who took a conciliatory position of this sort was Beryllus, 
bishop of Bostra, in Arabia, a man well known in his times as one of 


the more learned teachers of the church. 


1 See Euseb. 1. VI. c. 20. His doctrine 
is described by Eusebius in the somewhat 
obscure passage in 1. VI. ὁ. 33: Tov κύ- 
ριον μὴ προὐφεστάναι κατ’ ἰδίαν οὐσίας περι- 
γραφὴν πρὸ τῆς εἰς ἀνϑρώπους ἐπιδημίας. 
In the interpretation of these words, I 
must agree, on one point, with Baur, and 
differ from Schleiermacher, in his well- 
known dissertation on the Monarchians, 
and from Ullmann, and maintain that περί- 
γραφή certainly does not denote a circum- 
scription of the divine essence; but, as I 
have already explained the same thing 
above, and, as 1 believe, proved in the first 
edition of this work, it can mean, in the 
scientific language of Origen, nothing else 
than a personal, individual existence, as 
contradistinguished from a barely ideal ex- 
istence, or a mere distinction of the under- 
standing. Compare 6. g. in Joann. T. 1. 
§ 42, where the εἶναι κατ᾽ ἰδίαν περιγραφῆν 
is opposed to the εἶναι barely κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν 
ἕτερον, the ἀνυπόστατον. The words mean, 
then, that Christ, before his appearance in 
humanity, had no self-subsistent, personal 
existence. He could thus be, before this, 
different from the Father only κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν, 
or have only an ideal being. This marks 
the opposition to the hypostatical Logos- 
doctrine, but also to the doctrine of the 
Patripassians; for, according to the latter, 
there was not acknowledged to be in Christ, 
even when he appeared on the earth, any 
οὐσία Kar’ ἰδίαν περιγραφὴν ἑτέρα, in rela- 
tion to the essence of the Father. But we 
must now bring in also the second part of 
the description: μηδὲ μὴν ϑεότητα ἰδίαν 
ἔχειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐμπολιτευομένην αὐτῷ μόνην τὴν 
πατρικῆν. ‘The explanation of this passage 
by Baur, who professes to adhere to the 
etymological and original meaning of the 
word πολιτεύεσϑαι, I cannot but regard as 
somewhat arbitrary and artificial. The 
word denotes, according to the use of lan- 
guage in that period, and according to the 
context, certainly nothing else than the no- 
tion of indwelling. Now such an expression 
would assert too much, if it was meant to 
denote barely a certain inworking of God 
upon a man standing under his special in- 
fluence. These words would rather char- 
acterize the view of the Patripassians; but 
which we cannot suppose to be expressed 
here, on account of the preceding proposi- 

* 


The peculiar modification 


tion. We must, then, seek for a hypothe- 
sis holding the middle place between the 
two views above mentioned, as that does 
which is presented in the text. Why should 
Eusebius waste so many words, if he meant 
simply to attribute to Beryllus a theory 
akin to that of the Artemonites ? He would 
doubtless have expressed himself in this 
case, as he did in speaking of the doctrine | 
of Paul of Samosata, with much more heat 
and acrimony. I must therefore decidedly 
object to the view of Baur; according to 
which, moreover, it would be impossible to 
point out any difference between the doc- 
trine of Beryllus and that of the Artemo- 
nites. We must next compare what Origen 
says concerning the Monarchians, in his 
Commentary on the Epistle of Titus, which 
had a striking resemblance to the above- 
quoted language of Eusebius; but which, 
unhappily, has come down to us only in the 
Latin version of Rufinus: Qui hominem 
dicunt Dominum Jesum precognitum et 
preedestinatum, qui ante adventum carna- 
lem substantialiter et proprie non exstiterit, 
sed quod homo natus Patris solam in se 
habuerit Deitatem. True, one might sup- 
pose, since the others whom he describes in 
the second member of the sentence are the 
Patripassians, (see the passages cited above, 
Ῥ. 578, note 6,) it would be necessary to 
infer that we are to conceive here of the 
same class of Monarchians as in the passa- 
ges quoted above, (p. 576-7, note 4, begin- 
ning at line 12;) but, on the other hand, it is 
to be considered that Origen’s expression 
denotes higher views of the divine element 
in Christ, than we can attribute to the first 
class of Monarchians, — that Origen would 
doubtless have expressed himself more 
strongly against these, and that he had al- 
ready spoken before of those who held 
Christ to be a mere man, and therefore would 
not have repeated it. We find in these 
words, then, a confirmation of our views. 
And, if it may be presumed of itself, that 
Beryll supposed no human soul in Christ, 
distinct from the indwelling of the divine 
nature in him, I see not why we may not 
be warranted to place in connection with 
this the report of Socrates, (III. c. 7,) that 
the synod convened against Beryll settled 
the doctrine concerning a human soul in 
Christ. A doctrine so determined always 


594 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

of the Monarchian doctrine which he presented having excited contro- 
versy, in the year 244 a synod convened for the purpose of settling 
the matter in dispute. The great Origen, then residing at Caesarea 
Stratonis, in Palestine, was drawn into this controversy, being the most 
important advocate of the opposite doctrine of the Logos. He entered 
largely into the dispute with Beryll; and probably by his intellectual 
superiority, argumentative skill, and moderation, succeeded im convin- 
cing the latter of his error. True, we here follow the account of Euse- 
bius, one of Origen’s enthusiastic friends; and, as we no longer have 
access to the sources of information from which Eusebius drew his ac- 
count, we are without the means of forming an unbiassed and indepen- 
dent judgment of our own. Yet we should give its due weight to the 
fact, that at this period, when as yet there was no religion nor church 
of the state, there existed no earthly power which could force Beryllus 
to recant ---- though the authority of an episcopal collegium had great 
—jindeed too great— power over the churches. But had it been the 
‘ purpose of the bishops to crush their colleague under the weight of 
their numbers, they needed not to call to their aid the banished and heret- 
ical presbyter, whose only power was in his knowledge. Nor was Ori- 
gen a man who would be disposed to overwhelm another by the weight 
of his name or the superiority of his intellect. 

It is the men of the Alexandrian school alone, who furnish us the 
rare example of such theological conferences, which, instead of result- 
ing in still greater divisions, created a union of feelings. Such was 
the influence of men who were not slaves to the mere letter, and who 
knew how to unite with zeal for truth, the spirit of love and moderation. 

According to Jerome’s account,! Beryllus addressed a letter of 
thanks to Origen for the instruction he had received from him. We 
have no reasons for doubting this; yet the account of Jerome is not so 
much to be relied on as that of Eusebius. 

If the midway tendency of Beryllus was thus obliged to yield under 
the preponderance of the other system, yet we soon notice the appear- 
ance of a similar attempt, conceived and carried out in a still more sys- 
tematic form. Sabellius of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, Africa, who pro- 
ceeded still farther in the path struck out by Beryllus, appears to have 
been the most original and profound thinker among the Monarchians. 
Unhappily we have only a few fragmentary remains of his system, from 
which we must seek to reconstruct the whole, and among which not a 
little still remains doubtful or obscure. Since the time of Schleiermach- 
er’s profound dissertation on this subject, the opinion has obtained some 
considerable currency, that Sabellius shows, particularly in one respect, 
an important advance in the further development of the Monarchian 
theory. While, for instance, the earlier Monarchian tendencies agreed 


leads us to infer its opposite as the means 
by which it was distinctly brought out. And 
since, in the case of Origen, his Logos-doc- 
trine was so closely connected with his doc- 
trine concerning the human soul of Christ. it 
becomes so much the more probable, that 


both were united also in his polemical ef- 
forts. Thus we must reckon Beryll with 
those who held Christ to be a πάντ᾽ 
ἀσύνϑετον. Orig. in Matth. T. XVI. § 8. 

1 De vir. illustr. c. 60. 


SABELLIUS. 595 
with the system of the Logos-doctrine so far as this, that they consid- 
ered the name of God the Father to be a designation of the primal 
divine essence, and all besides this to be something derived ; Sabellius, 
on the other hand, referred all the three names of the Triad to relations 
wholly codrdinate. The names Father, Logos,! and Holy Ghost, would, 
according to him, be, after the same manner, designations of three dif: 
ferent phases, under which the one divine essence reveals itself. All 
the three would belong together, to designate, in a manner exhausting 
the whole truth, the relation of God to the world. There would thus 
be the general antithesis between the Absolute, the essence of God in him- 
self, the μονάς, which must be regarded as the pure designation of the 
Absolute, of the 6; and the Triad, by which would be denoted the 
different relations of the self*evolving μονάς to the creation. We have, 
it is true, several sayings of Sabellius, according to which one might 
suppose, that he would have distinguished God the Father, as well as 
the Logos and the Holy Ghost, from the μονάς in itself; as for instance, 
when he taught that the Monad unfolded became the Triad.2 But, in 
other places, he clearly identified the Father with the μονάς, and con- 
sidered him as the fundamental subject, which, when hidden within him- 
self, was the pure Monas, (the ὄν,) and, when revealing himself, unfolded 
his essence to a Triad, as he expressly says: “‘ The Father remains the 
same, but evolves himself in the Son and Spirit.”"? Τῦ is this only that 
distinguishes Sabellius from the other Monarchians ; — he received the 
whole Triad, and, along with the rest, the doctrine on the Holy Spirit, 
into his Monarchian theory. 

How the one divine essence comes to be called by different names, 
according to the different relations or modes of activity into which it 
enters, he sought to illustrate by various comparisons. What the Apos- 
tle Paul says about the relation of the multifarious modes of activity 
and gifts to one Spirit, who, persisting in his oneness, exhibits himself 
notwithstanding in these manifold forms, — this Sabellius transferred to 
the self-evolution of the Monad into the Triad.4 That which is, in it- 


1 Or, according to Baur’s view, “Son.” 

2 Ἢ μονὰς πλατυνϑεῖσα γέγονε τρίας. 
Athanas. orat. IV. c. Arian. ὁ 18, We may 
especially advert to the fact, that the ques- 
tion occurred even to Athanasius, whether 
Sabellius did not distinguish the μονάς from 
the Father. ᾿Εκτὸς εἰ μὴ ἡ λεγομένη παρ᾽ 
αὐτῷ μονὰς ἄλλο τί ἐστι παρὰ τὸν πατέρα. ---- 
Ὥστε εἷναι μονάδα, εἶτα καὶ πατέρα καὶ υἱὸν 
καὶ πνεῦμα. But as Athanasius, in this 
place, is only aiming to show Sabellius, that, 
conceive of the matter as he might, he must 
still find that he fell into absurdities, we 
ought not to lay too much stress on this 
imputation of consequences, as helping to 
determine the doctrine really taught by the 
man. 

8 Ὁ πατὴρ ὁ αὐτὸς μέν ἐστι, πλατύνεται 
δὲ εἰς υἱὸν καὶ πνεῦμα. Athanas. orat. IV. 
§ 25. I do not see with what propriety it 
can be asserted, that Athanasius has not al- 
lowed Sabellius here to use his own lan- 


guage, but imputed to him a mode of ex- 
pression to which he was a stranger. Even 
when Sabellius designates the Father as 
one of the πρόσωπα, it still by no means 
follows, as has been asserted, that he could 
not employ this name also to designate the 
μονάς. The same name which designates 
the ὧν in itself, serves also to distinguish it 
from the different phases of its self-manifes- 
»tation and self-communication. In its re- 
lation to the other ἐπινοίαις under which 
God is conceived, the one which designates 
originally God’s essence in itself is also the 
name of a particular ἐπίνοια, different from 
the others. When God speaks as the ov, 
this too is a πρόσωπον, in which he presents 
himself. 

4 “Ὥσπερ διαιρέσεις χαρισμάτων εἰσὶ, τὸ δὲ 
αὐτὸ πνεῦμα. οὕτω καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ὁ αὐτός ἐστι, 
πλατύνεται δὲ εἰς υἱὸν καὶ πνεῦμα. Athanas. 
orat. IV. § 25. 


596 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

self, and continues to be, one, presents itself, in its manifestation, as 
threefold. He is said to have made use also of the following compari- 
son, drawn from the sun. ‘ As in the sun we may distinguish its pro- 
per substance,! its round shape, and its power of communicating warmth 
and light, so may we distinguish in God his proper self-subsistent es- 
sence, the illuminating power of the Logos, and the power of the Holy 
Spirit, in diffusing the warmth and glow of life through the hearts of 
believers.”’? He did not scruple to make use of the church phrase, 
‘“‘three persons,” (tres personx, τρία πρόσωπα :ὺ but he took it in an- 
other sense, as denoting different parts, or personifications, which the one 
divine essence assumed according to varying circumstances and occa- 


sions. 
ins 


According as it behooved that God should be represented act- 
g in this or that particular way, so would the same one subject be 


introduced in the sacred scriptures, under different personifications,® as 


Father, Son, or Spirit.4 


According to this theory, the selfdevelopment of the divine Essence, 
proceeding forth from the unity of its solitary, absolute being, is the 


ground and pre-supposition of the whole creation. 


The self-expression 


of the Supreme Being — the ὄν becoming Logos ®— is the ground of 


1 The ov, the μονάς. 

2Epiphan. heres. 62. I leave it unde- 
termined, whether Sabellius made use also 
of the comparison drawn from the tricho- 
tomy of man’s nature, body, soul, and spirit, 
actually in this form. It seems to me not 
like his usual subtle manner. 

8 It is plain from Sabellius’ language, that 
he attached no other sense than this to the 
term πρόσωπον. The word, however, has 
sometimes been taken in its signification of 
“countenance,” and in this sense applied 
to explain the ideas of Sabellius ; but I must 
object to this as wholly arbitrary and un- 
warranted. 

4 Ἕνα μὲν εἷναι τῇ ὑποστάσει τὸν ϑεὸν, 
προσωποιεῖσϑαι δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς γραφῆς διαφόρως, 
κατὰ τὸ ἰδίωμα τῆς ὑποκειμένης ἑκάστοτε 
χρείας, καὶ νῦν μὲν τὰς πατρικὰς ἑαυτῷ περι- 
τιϑέναι φωνὰς, ὅταν τούτου καιρὸς ἡ τοῦ προ- 
σώπου, νῦν δὲ τὰς υἱῷ πρεπούσας, νῦν δὲ τὸ 
τοῦ πνεύματος ὑποδύεσϑαι προσωπεῖον. Basil. 
ep. 214, ὁ 3. Τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόστασιν πρὸς τὴν 
ἑκάστοτε παρεμπίπτουσαν χρείαν μετασχη- 
ματίζεσϑαι. Ep. 235,§ 6. Τὸν αὐτὸν ϑεὸν 
ἕνα τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ ὄντα, πρὸς τὰς ἑκώστοτε 
παραπιπτούσας χρείας μεταμορφούμενον, νῦν 
μὲν ὡς πατέρα, νῦν δὲ ὡς υἱὸν, νῦν ὡς τὸ 
ἅγιον πνεῦμα διαλέγεσϑαι. Ep. 210. 

5 We may here notice the theory of Dr. 
Baur, who holds that Sabellius did not con- 
sider the Logos to constitute one of the 
πρόσωπα of the Triad, but conceived this 
notion as holding an altogether different 
relation to the Godhead. The Logos, ac- 
cording to Baur, would only denote what 
stood opposed to the pure being of deity in 
itself, —the principle which supported and 
maintained this being in the form of an 
actual, concrete existence. It was first and 


only in this divine being, become an actual, 
concrete existence, that Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost would constitute three codrdi- 
nate designations, exhausting the whole 
sphere of this being, and corresponding to 
the three momenta, or periods of the uni- 
verse, in its historical development. Hence, 
again, they would not subsist simultaneous- 
ly, but follow one after the other; so that, 
when the πρόσωπον of the Son made its 
appearance in Christ, the πρόσωπον of the 
Father which belonged to the Old Testa- 
ment period would disappear; and, in like 
manner, the Holy Spirit would take the 
place of the Son, when the latter disap- 
peared. But I cannot possibly look upon 
this ingenious combination as one which 
correctly represents the theory. It were 
quite contrary to the whole analogy of the 
opinions and modes of thinking in this 
period to suppose, that the notion of the 
Logos was conceived as independent of that 
of the Father, and even prior to it. And 
in the language of Sabellius himself, all 
those expressions relating to a γεννᾷν, a 
προβώλλειν of the Logos, refer back, with- 
out any doubt, to the presupposed notion 
of the Father. Baur appeals, it is true, to 
the words of Sabellius already cited, (in 
note 4,) where a διαλέγεσϑαι is attributed as 
well to the Father, as such, as to the other 
πρόσωπα; -- is represented as common to all 
the three πρόσωπα. But manifestly this 
διαλέγεσϑαι has no reference to the proper 
Logos-notion. The author is treating in 
that passage simply of the different parts 
or personifications under which the same 
divine subject is introduced in the sacred 
scriptures, speaking sometimes as the Fath- 
er, sometimes as the Son, (which here in- 


SABELLIUS. 597 
all existence. Hence, says Sabellius, “‘ God silent, is inactive, — but 

eaking, is active. In a particular manner, he recognized the sym- 
bol of the divine Logos in the human soul. So Philo maintained, that 
to the ὄν, no creaturely existence can have any likeness; but that the 
soul was created after the image of the Logos. The condition, then, 
of the soul’s existence was, that God broke silence —the ὄν became 
Logos, or that he caused the Logos to proceed from him, — begat the 
Logos from himself. Hence Sabellius could say, in reference to mankind: 
‘To the end that we might be created, the Logos came forth from God, 
(or was begotten ;) and because he came forth from God, we exist.’’? 

But when these souls, by sinning, swerved from their true destina- 
tion, which is, to represent the image of the divine Logos, it became 
necessary for that archetypal Logos himself to descend into human 
nature, in order that he might perfectly realize the image of God in 
humanity, and redeem the souls which are akin to him. In his views 
relative to the person of Christ, Sabellius coincides with Beryllus. The 
same remarks which we made with respect to the doctrine of the lat- 
ter, will apply also to that of the former. The Logos is first hyposta- 
tized in Christ, but then only in a transient form of its manifestation. 
The divine power of the Logos appropriated to itself a human body, 
and by this appropriation begat the person of Christ. We may com- 
pare this theory of Sabellius with the doctrme taught by a class of 
Jewish theologians, who held that God caused to proceed from himself, 
and then withdrew again, his power of manifestation, the Logos; as 
the sun does his rays: — that the Angelophanies and Theophanies of 
the Old Testament are nothing else than different transitory forms of 
manifestation of this one power of God.? In like manner, Sabellius 
conceived the Theophany in the appearance of Christ. He made use 
of the same image: God caused the power of the Logos to go forth 
from him, as a ray from the sun, and then withdrew it again into 
himself.* 


Where Sabellius expressed himself strictly ὅ according to his system, 


deed is not, in the sense of Sabellius, iden- προεβλήϑη. L.c.§ 11. The words would 


tified with the Logos absolutely,) and some- 
times as the Holy Spirit. The Logos, 
therefore, may well be regarded as one of 
these three πρόσωπα. Again, according to 
the scheme of Sabellius, the transition from 
the Monad to the Triad begins with the 
πλατύνεσϑαι of the ὄν. But the πλατύνεσϑαι 
is necessarily connected with the gencra- 
tion of the Logos. Here, then, a separation 
into the several πρόσωπα must be already 
supposed. And if the notion of the Logos 
was intended to designate the universal 
sphere to which all the three πρόσωπα be- 
long, there would be an incongruity in con- 
ceiving the Logos and the Son as correla- 
tive notions, and in ascribing the incarnation 
to the Logos in particular. 

1 Τὸν ϑεὸν σιωπῶντα μὲν ἀνενέργητον, λα- 
λοῦντα δὲ ἰσχύειν. Athanas. orat. LV. § 11. 

2 Ἵνα ἡμεῖς κτισϑῶμεν, προῆλϑεν ὁ λόγος, 
καὶ προελθόντος αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν. Athanas. 
orat. IV. § 25,—or: Δ ἡμᾶς γεγέννηται, 


give another sense, if we preferred to un- 
derstand them as referring to the καινῇ κτί- 
σις, and to the incarnation of the Logos. 
But taking them as they read, and as they 
are cited by Athanasius, the meaning above 
ascribed to them must still be regarded as 
the most natural. 

8 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. Ὁ 358. As the 
light issues from and returns back to the 
sun, οὕτως ὁ πατὴρ, ὅταν βούληται, δύναμιν 
αὐτοῦ προπηὸδᾷν ποιεῖ, καὶ ὅταν βούληται, πώ- 
λιν ἀναστέλλει εἰς ἑαυτόν. 

1 Ὡς ὑπὸ ἡλίου πεέμφϑεῖσαν ἀκτῖνα, Kat 
πάλιν εἰς τὸν ἥλιον αναδραμοῦσαν. Epiphan. 
heeres. 62, 

5 ΤΊ was somewhat different, when, (per- 
haps by way of accommodation to the 
church terminology,) speaking of a genera- 
tion of the Logos, he may have styled him 
the Son in a certain figurative and improp- 
er sense. 


598 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

he applied the name Son of God to the personality derived from the 
hypostatizing of the Logos. The Logos is, in itself, only Logos ; — 
with its humanization it first becomes the Son of God.t_ But while this 
was the original doctrine of Sabellius, that the name Son of God was 
not to be applied to the Logos in itself, but only to Christ, yet the ad- 
herents to this system, as appears from the quotations of Athanasius, 
had different ways of explaining themselves on this point. Either it 
was said, that not the Logos, but the man into whom the Logos en- 
tered, was the Son of God;? or both taken together, that which re- 
sulted from the union of the human nature with the Logos, was the Son . 
of God ;* or the Logos itself, so far as it was hypostatized in the man- 
ner described, was styled the Son of God. All these three modes of 
expression might doubtless flow out of one system. By reason of this 
connection of ideas, it might now be said again, — the Logos is called 
the Son of God, not in respect to essence, but only in reference to a 
certain relation.* 

It may be gathered from the whole coherence of this system, that in 
it the personality of Christ could not be regarded as anything possessed 
of an eternal subsistence, but only as a transitory appearance. The 
ultimate end of all is defined by Sabellius to be this: that the Logos, 
after having conducted the souls created in his image to their perfec- 
tion, would return back into his original being, into oneness with the 
Father,° — the τρίας would again resolve itself into the μονάς 5 Whence 
it necessarily follows, that, when everything has reached this ultimate 
end, God once more withdraws into himself the power of the Logos, 
which had been hypostatized into a self-subsistent, personal existence : 
and, consequently, this personal existence itself is annihilated. 

The question, however, might arise, whether it was not the opinion 
of Sabellius, that after Christ had accomplished his work on the earth, 
God did then, with his ascension to heaven, re-absorb this ray which 
had flowed from himself, and by which the personality of Christ was 
constituted. The manner in which Epiphanius represents the doctrine 
might seem to favor this view; namely, that, after the Son had accom- 
plished all that was necessary for the salvation of mankind, he was 
conveyed up once more to heaven, like a ray of light flowimg from the 
the sun, and returning back to it again.’ A comparison of this with 
the above-mentioned doctrine of the Jewish sect respecting the Theo- 
phanies, where a similar image is employed, would seem to confirm 
this view. And we might suppose a connection of ideas, somewhat 


1’Ev ἀρχῇ μὲν εἶναι λόγον ἁπλῶς" ὅτε δὲ 
ἐνηνθϑρώπησε, τότε ὠνομάσϑαι υἱὸν: πρὸ γὰρ 
τῆς ἐπιφανείας μὴ εἶναι υἱὸν, ἀλλὰ λόγον μό- 
νον" καὶ ὥσπερ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, οὐκ Ov 
πρότερον σὰρξ, οὕτως ὁ λόγος υἱὸς γέγονε, 
οὐκ Ov πρότερον υἱός. Athanas. orat. LV. 


2 Τὸν ἄνϑρωπον, ὃν ἐφόρησεν ὁ λόγος, ab- 
τὸν εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ϑεοῦ ---- τὸν μονογενῆ, 
καὶ μὴ λόγον, υἱόν. L.c. § 20. 

8 Συνημμένα ἀμφότερα υἱός, Ἱ,. ο. § 21. 


4 Kar ἐπίνοιαν υἱὸν λέγεσϑαι τὸν λόγον. 
Athanas. orat. IV. § 8. 

5 Av ἡμᾶς γεγέννηται, καὶ pe’ ἡμᾶς ἀνα- 
τρέχει, ἵνα ἡ, ὥσπερ ἣν. Lie. § 12. 

6 L. c. § 25. 

7 Πεμφϑέντα τὸν υἱὸν καιρῷ ποτε, ὥσπερ 
ἀκτῖνα, καὶ ἐργασάμενον τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ κό- 
σμῳ τὰ τῆς οἰκονομίας τῆς εὐαγγελικῆς καὶ 
σωτηρίας τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀναληφϑέντα δὲ 
αὗϑις εἰς οὐρανὸν, ὡς ὑπὸ ἡλίου πεμφϑεῖσαν 
ἀκτῖνα, καὶ πάλιν εἰς τὸν ἥλιον ἀναδραμοῦ- 
σαν. 


SABELLIUS. 599 
like the following: that, after God had withdrawn again into himself the 
personifying power of the Logos, the infusion of life into the distinct 
personalities of believers by the divine power, in the form of the Holy 
Spirit, was thenceforth to take the place of the former. But when we 
consider that Sabellius, however, seems to describe the ἐπίνοια of the 
Son of God, which the Logos assumed, as something permanent, some- 
thing which was to end only when this entire τλατυσμός, whereby the 
Monad had become Triad, should cease, after the purpose which the 
whole was to subserve, had been attained ;! we might rather be inclined 
to think it was his opinion, that the person of Christ would cease to 
exist only with this final consummation. Although Epiphanius enter- 
tained a different opinion, yet this may have arisen from his not under- 
standing what Sabellius had said respecting the ultimate purpose of the 
redemption, exactly according to the latter’s meaning.2 Thus it may 
be explained, how Sabellius could jom in the anathema pronounced on 
such as believed not in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ since he con- 
sidered all the three πρόσωπα as continuing until that final consummation. 
But the question may still arise, how Sabellius, if he defined the evolution 
of the Monad to the Triad to be something which preceded the appear- 
ance of Christianity, could apply this to the Holy Spirit; since, indeed, 
according to his opinion, the communication of the Holy Spirit is but a 
consequence of the redemption accomplished by the hypostatized 
Logos. But we may perhaps assume that he supposed a certain actua- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, even in the ante-Christian period, particularly 
under the Old-Testament dispensation ; and from this we might per- 
haps infer some such connection of ideas in his mind as the following: 
that the ante-Christian efficiency of the divine Spirit stood related to 
the efficiency of the same Spirit mediated through the personal appear- 
ance of the Son of God, or to that which is to be entitled the Holy 
Spirit in the strieter sense, in the same manner as the efficiency of the 
Logos, in itself,* under the Old-Testament dispensation, stood related 
to the efficiency of the Son of God, under the New-Testament dispen- 
sation. We may here refer to the remarks made on a former page,° 
concerning those who are said to have distinguished the Holy Spirit 
that actuated the apostles, from the Spirit of God in the prophets. 
And thus the Triad of Sabellius would possess also a historical signifi- 


1 Τῆς χρείας πληρωϑείσης. Athanas. orat. 
IV. § 25. 

“2. After this statement, we may under- 
stand why Dionysius of Alexandria (Euseb. 
1. VII. ¢. 6) accused Sabellius of many 
blasphemies against God the Father, (so 
such an expression as the expansion of the 
divine Monad into the Triad must have ap- 
peared to the Origenists,) of great unbelief 
with regard to the incarnation of the Lo- 
gos, (inasmuch as he looked upon it only in 
the light of a transitory manifestation of 


the divine power,) and of great insensibili- ἡ 


ty (ἀναισϑησία) in respect to the Holy 
Spirit, (because he denied his reality and 
objectivity, and had represented him as 


nothing more than single transitory emana- 


tions of divine power.) 

8 According to Arnobii conflictus cum 
Serapione. Bibl. patr. Lugd. T. VIII. 

4“In the Old Testament,” said Sabel- 
lius, “no mention is.made of the Son of 
God, but only of the Logos,” (μὴ εἰρῆσϑαι 
ἐν TH παλαιᾷ περὶ υἱοῦ, ἀλλὰ περὶ Adyov,) 
Athanas. orat. IV. § 23, which perhaps 
would lead us to presume also a difference 
in his mode of explaining passages in the 
Old Testament. 

5 P. 582, note 8, and the passage there 
quoted from Origen’s Commentary on the 
Epistle to Titus 


600 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 


cancy, having some reference to the succession of events in time. At 
the legal stage, where a separating gulf stands between God and man- 
kind, God reveals himself as the Father; and along with this is to be 
found, in the Old Testament, only the preparatory agency of the Logos 
and the Spirit, until the Logos, in Christ, hypostatizes himself to the 
Son of God; and, by virtue of this intimate union of God with human- 
ity, the Spirit of God now becomes also a real, individual, animating 
principle in the human personalities of which it takes posession.! 

The ultimate end, then, was considered by Sabellius to be the resto- 
ration of the original unity ---- that God, as the absolutely one, should 
be all in all —im which sense, probably, he interpreted the words in 
1 Corinth. 15: 28. But in this case, what were his views respecting 
the continued duration of the separate creaturely existence? Did he 
suppose, that at length all existence, as it had been begotten from God 
through the mediation of the Logos, would, at the close of this media- 
tion, return back again to God, and no existence subsist any longer out 
of himself? Since the Christian faith in a personal, eternal life stands 
on the faith in the eternal duration of the personality of Christ, we 
might conclude, that as Sabellius made Christ’s personality to be noth- 
ing more than a transitory appearance, so he must have conceived it to 
be also with regard to all personal existence. And, in general, he who 
has not found that personal existence, by its very nature, can subsist 
no otherwise than for eternity ; he who can make up his mind to regard 
any personal existence, and especially the most perfect of all, as being 
merely an ephemeral appearance, will find it a comparatively easy 
thing to conclude the same to be true of all personal existence. The 
pantheistic element which lies under such a mode of apprehension, 
may easily push him on further. Athanasius? understood these conse- 
quences, which might result from the system of Sabellius. But as he 
himself, the warm opponent of this system, signalizes this only as one 
of the consequences resulting from it, but by no means charges it upon 
Sabellius as a position actually mamtained by him; so we should be the 
less warranted to attribute to him such a pantheistic denial of immortal- 
ity, which, if it had been suspected, would have been more severely cas- 
tigated by his Christian contemporaries. At the same time, this first 
shaping of Monarchianism, which was somewhat akin at least to a pan- 
theistic tendency, remains a noticeable historical phenomenon. 

We need, it is true, no outward ground of explanation to account for 
such a system, sprmging as it did from a mind so speculative as we 
must suppose that of Sabellius to have been. But as there are so many 
points of resemblance in this system to what we find in the Alexandrian- 
Jewish theology, a report of Epiphanius, who supposes Sabellius bor- 
rowed his system from an apocryphal gospel derived from the same 
source with the latter, the εὐαγγέλιον κατ’ Αἰγυπτίους ὃ deserves some notice. 


1 See Theodoret. fab. heeret. II. ο. 9. δρομοῦντος τοῦ λόγου, ody’ ὑπάρξει ἡ κτίσις. 
2 Ei iva ἡμεῖς κτισϑῶμεν,͵ προῆλϑεν ὁ λό- Lic. ὁ 12. 
γος, καὶ προελϑόντος αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν, δῆλον ὅτι ὃ Exhibition of the gospel history accord- 
ἀναχωροῦντος αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν πατέρα, οὐκέτι ing to the Egyptian (the Alexandrian) tra- 
éooueda. Athanas. orat. 1V.§ 25. Παλιν- dition. 


PAUL OF SARMOSATA 601 

In this gospel, Christ is said to have communicated to his disciples, 
as a doctrine of esoteric wisdom, some similar notions respecting the 
relation of the Monad to the Triad: “If the multitude, who cannot ele- 
vate themselves to the intuition of the highest, simple unity, hold God 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to be different divine beings, 
they (the disciples) should know that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are 
but one, but three different forms of the revelation of the divine es- 
sence.’ Moreover, the Sabellian doctrine, akin to the pantheistic 
element, that all antitheses would finally resolve themselves to unity, 
seems to have been set forth in this gospel; for to the question of Sa- 
lome, who asks when his kingdom should come? Christ replies: 
‘¢ When two shall be one, and the outer as the inner, and the male with 
the female; when there shall be no male and no female.”’ 

Soon after Sabellius, we see Monarchianism revived in an opposite 
form by Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch. Except that he re- 
ceived into his system the Logos-doctrine, after modifying it by that 
system, he had little or nothing peculiar to distinguish him from the 
Artemonites, with whom indeed he was usually compared by the 
ancient writers.2 But it is worth while to notice the contrast which 
these two shapes of Monarchianism, with which the evolution of the 
doctrine of the Trinity in this period terminates, form, when compared 
to each other, both in respect to their peculiar mode of apprehending 
the doctrine concerning Christ, and in respect to the whole intellectual 
bent out of which they grew. While in Sabellianism, the human and 
personal element in Christ was made simply a transitory form of the 
manifestation of the Divine, the theory of Paul of Samosata, on the 
other hand, gave prominence to Christ’s human person alone, — and 
the Divine appears only as something which supervenes from without. 
While Sabellianism tended towards a Pantheism which confounded God 
with the world, we discern in the theory of Paul the deistic tendency 
which fixes an impassable gulf betwixt God and the creation, — which 
admits of no community of essence and of life between God and hu- 
manity. 


1 Epiphan. heres. 62. Concerning this 
gospel: Ἔν αὐτῷ γὰρ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα ὡς ἐν 
παραβύστῳ μυστηριωδῶς ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ 
σωτῆρος ἀναφέρεται, ὡς αὐτοῦ δηλοῦντος τοῖς 
μαϑηταῖς, τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι πατέρα, τὸν αὐτὸν 
εἶναι υἱὸν, τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι ἅγιον πνεῦμα. 
The passage in Philo, de Abrahamo f. 367, 
may serve to explain the sense, where it is 
said, that the ov, from which proceed the 
two highest δυνάμεις, the ποιητικῇ and the 
βασιλικῆ, appear, according to the different 
positions at which the souls that are more 
or less purified stand, as one or as threefold. 
If the soul has ‘risen above the revelation 
of God in the creation, to the intellectual 
intuition of the ὄν, then for that soul the 
Trinity rises to Unity, — the soul bekolds one 
light, from which proceed, as it were, two 
shadows, God’s essence, and those two 
modes of operation, merely shadows, which 
fall off from his transcendent light. Tpv- 

5 


VOL. I. 


τὴν φαντασίαν ἑνὸς ὑποκείμένου καταλαμβά- 
vel, τοῦ μὲν ὡς ὄντος, τοῖν δ᾽ ἄλλοιν δυοῖν͵ 
ὡς ἂν ἀπαυγαζομένων ἀπὸ τούτου σκιῶν. 
Next: Παρέχει τῇ ὁρατικῇ διανοίᾳ τότε μὲν 
ἑνὸς, τότε δὲ τριῶν φαντασίαν ; ἑνὸς μὲν, ὅταν 
ἄκρως καϑαρϑεῖσα 7 ψυχὴ καὶ μὴ μόνον τὰ 
πλήϑη τῶν ἀριϑμῶν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γείτονα 
μονάδος δυάδα ὑπερβᾶσα κτὰῇ. There is also 
a striking resemblance between Sabellius’ 
mode of expression and that which is pe- 
culiar to the Clementines, a work which 
proceeded from some Jewish-Christian The- 
osophist. Clementin. H. 16. ὁ. 12: Κατὰ 
yap ἔκτασιν καὶ συστολὴν ἡ μονὰς δυὰς εἶναι 
νομίζεται. 

2 Baur, who attacks me on account of 
this assertion, contributes, however, by his 
own representation of the matter, consid- 
ered apart from his parenthetical remarks, 
to confirm the same view. 


602 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

The Logos — according to Paul of Samosata —is in relation to God 
nothing other than reason in relation to man,!— the Spirit in relation to 
God, nothing other than the spirit in relation to men. As he contro- 
verted the doctrine of a personal Logos, so too he declared himself op- 
posed to the theory of an incarnation of the Logos, of an indwelling of 
its essence in human nature. He would only concede, that the divine 
reason or wisdom dwelt and operated in Christ after a higher manner 
than in any one else.2 To his mode of developing himself, as man, 
under the divine influence,’ is to be attributed the fact that he outshone 
in wisdom all other messengers of God that preceded him. For this 
reason — because he was, in a sense in which no other prophet before 
him had been, an organ of the divine wisdom that revealed itself 
through him — he is to be styled the Son of God. This Paul is said 
to have employed the expression “‘ Jesus Christ, who comes from here 
below,” (Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς κάτωϑεν,) in order to indicate that the Logos did 
not enter into a human body, but Christ, as man, was deemed worthy 
of being exalted to this peculiar union with God by means of such 
an illumination from the divine reason.4 And hence, indeed, Paul 
affirmed that the divine Logos came down and imparted his influence to 
Christ, and then rose again to the Father.® Although, by this theory, 
Christ was regarded as a mere man, yet Paul, adopting the scriptural 
and church phraseology, seems to have called him God in some im- 
proper sense, not exactly defined. In this case, however, he explained, 
that Christ was not God by his nature, but became so by progressive 
development.® If his language was strictly consistent with his system, 
he certainly referred the name Son of God to Christ alone, —to the 
man specially distinguished by God after the manner above described ; 
and hence he ever made it a prominent poimt, that Christ, as such, did 
not exist before his nativity; that when a being with God before all 


αὐτόν. 


1 “Ὥσπερ ἐν ἀνϑρώπου καρδίᾳ ὁ ἴδιος λόγος. 
Epiphanius, heeres. 67. 

2°Evoixjoa ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν σοφίαν͵ ὡς ἐν 
οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ. He taught οὐ συγγεγενῆσϑαι 
τῷ ἀνϑρωπίνῳ τὴν σοφίαν οὐσιωδῶς, ἀλλὰ 
κατὰ ποιότητα. Paul’s words, as cited in 
Leontius Byzantin. c. Nest. et Eutychen ; 
which work, till lately, had been known only 
in the Latin translation; but the fragment 
of Paul, in the original Greek, has been pub- 
lished from the manuscript in the Bodleian 
library at Oxford, in Erlich’s Dissertation : 
de erroribus Pauli Samosat. Lips. 1745, 

. 23. 
Ps I must agree with Baur on this point, 
viz. that there is no satisfactory evidence for 
supposing that this Paul denied the super- 
natural birth of Christ. 

4 See the synodal letter in Euseb. 1. VII. 
ο. 30. 
δ᾽ Ελϑὼν ὁ λόγος ἐνήργησε Kai μόνον καὶ 
ἀνῆλϑε πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, in Epiphanius. 

6 So Athanasius (de Synodis, c. 4) repre- 
sents the doctrine of the Samosatians con- 
cerning Christ: Ὕστερον αὐτὸν μετὰ τὴν 
ἐνανθρώπησιν ἐκ προκοπῆς τεϑεοποιῆσϑαι 


These words might, indeed, be un- 
derstood to mean, that Christ first raised 
himself to the divine dignity through the 
moral perfection which he had attained by 
his own human efforts. But if this were 
his opinion, he would doubtless have said, 
as the Socinians afterwards did, that Christ 
raised himself by what he had accomplish- 
ed in his life on earth, to such divine digni- 
ty, in virtue of his glorification. But, in all 
the other citations from him, we find no evi- 
dence of such a separation made by Paul 
between that which Christ was originally, 
and that which he became by his own ef- 
forts and his own doings. In the system of 
Sabellius, what Christ was over and above 
all other men, is, in fact, traced to the very 
circumstance, that he stood from the begin- 
ning under the special influence of the di- 
vine reason or wisdom. The προκοπῆ forms 
here simply the antithesis to the κατὰ φύ- 
σιν —te the ἄνωϑεν answers the κάτωθεν ---- 
and so, accommodating himself to the 
church phraseology, he is reported to have 
said: Θεὸς ἐκ τῆς παρϑένου, ϑεὸς ἐκ Ναζα- 
ρὲϑ ὀφϑείς. Athanas. c. Apollinar. 1. II. § 8. 


PAUL OF SAMOSATA. 603 
time is ascribed to him, this is to be understood as relating only to an 
ideal existence in the divine reason, in the divine predetermination.! 
Hence, when his opponents, judging rather from the connection of ideas 
in their own mind than in his, accused him of supposing two Sons of 
God, he could confidently affirm, on the contrary, that he knew of but 
one Son of God.2 It may be, however, that, where it was for his 
interest to accommodate himself to the terminology of the church, he 
too spoke of a generation of the Logos in his own sense, understanding 
by this nothing else than the procession of the Logos to a certain out- 
ward activity, — the beginning of its creative agency, — what was usu- 
ally designated by the phrase λόγος προφορικός. 8 

Of this man’s character, the bishops and clergy, who composed the 
synod that condemned his doctrines, give a very unfavorable account.* 
They describe him as haughty, vain-glorious, and self-seeking — a man 
that eagerly entered into the cares and business of the world. It is 
true, the accusations of polemical opponents, especially opponents 
80 passionate as these were, are seldom entitled to much confidence ; 
but the charges in the present case contain so much of a specific char- 
acter, that we can hardly suppose them to have been wholly without 
foundation; and unhappily this picture accords but too well with what 
we otherwise learn respecting the bishops of the large towns, like Anti- 
och, the great capital of Roman Asia in the East.? These districts 
were then comprised under the empire of Zenobia,® Queen of Palmyra, 
who is said to have been friendly to Judaism.’ Paul is accused of 
having sought to present the doctrine concerning Christ in a dress 
which would be more acceptable to the Jewish mode of thinking, ex- 
pressly with a view to gain favor with this princess. But there is no 


1 In the synodal letter to Paul of Samo- 
sata, published by Turrian, cited in Mansi, 
(Concil. I. f. 1034,) the only credible docu- 
ment among those made known by him re- 
lating to these transactions, this opposite 
thesis is set up, viz. that the Son of God 
existed πρὸ αἰώνων ob προγνώσει ἀλλ᾽ οὐσίᾳ 
καὶ ὑποστάσει : from this we may infer, then, 
that Paul taught the contrary: Tov υἱὸν τοῦ 
ϑεοῦ οὐχ’ ὑποστάσει, ἀλλα προγνώσει κτλ. 
Which is confirmed also by the representa- 
tion of Athanasius, who says of Paul’s doc- 
trine concerning Christ: Λόγον ἐνεργὸν ἐξ 
οὐρανοῦ καὶ σοφίαν ἐν αὐτῷ ὁμολογεῖ, τῷ μὲν 
προορισμῷ πρὸ αἰώνων ὄντα, τῇ δὲ ὑπάρξει 
ἐκ ἀναζαρὲτ ἀναδειχϑέντα. c. Apollinar. 1. 
IL. § 3. 

2 Μὴ dio ἐπίστασϑαι υἱούς. Leont. Byzant. 

8 This is made probable by the opposite 
thesis in the before-cited synodal letter: Διὰ 
τοῦ λόγου ὁ πατὴρ πάντα πεποίηκεν, οὐχ᾽ ὡς 
δι’ ὀργάνου, οὐδ᾽ ὡς δ’ ἐπιστήμης ἀνυποστάτου, 
γεννήσαντος μὲν τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν υἱὸν ὡς ζῶ- 
σαν ἐνεργείαν καὶ ἐνυπόστατον. From this 
it may be inferred that Paul had spoken of 
a σοφία, ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος, and by the 
γέννησις of the λόγος understood nothing 
else than an évepyeia ἀνυπόστατος of God 
as the Creator. From this, however, it does 


not certainly follow that he himself made 
use of the expression γέννησις. 

4 Euseb. 1. VII. c. 30. 

5 See what Origen says in Matth. f. 420, 
ed. Huet., or Vol. IV. T. XVI. § 8, p. 24, 
ed. Lomm.: “ We, who either do not under- 
stand what the teaching of Jesus here 
means, or who despise these express admo- 
nitions of our Saviour himself, we proceed 
so far in the affectation of pomp and state, 
as to outdo even bad rulers among the pa- 
gans; and, like the emperors, surround our- 
selves with a guard, that we may be feared 
and made difficult of approach, especially 
by the poor. And in many of our so-called 
churches, particularly in the larger towns, 
may be found presiding officers of the 
church of God, who would refuse to own 
even the best among the disciples of Jesus, 
while on earth, as their equals.” Μηδεμίαν 
ἰσολογίαν ἐπιτρέποντας to ὅτι Kal τοῖς καλ- 
λίστοις τῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ μαϑητῶν, εἷναι πρὸς av- 
τούς. 

6 Married to the Roman commander, 
Odenatus, who had made himself indepen- 
dent of the Roman empire. 

7 Ἰουδαῖα ἣν Ζηνόβια, καὶ ἸΤαύλου προέστη 
τοῦ Σαμοσατέως. Athanas. hist. Arianor. 
ad Monachos. ὁ 71. 


604 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 


evidence that this charge was well founded; the facts of the case re- 
quire no such explanation ; and the constancy with which Paul adhered 
to his convictions, even after the political circumstances were changed, 
suffices to vindicate him from this imputation. It were more reasona- 
ble to suppose, that his intercourse with Jews about the person of the 
queen, with whom Paul, being a man of the court, stood in high con- 
sideration, may have had some influence in giving this turn to his 
doctrinal opinions ; — though we are under no necessity of supposing even 
this. It may have been, too, that his peculiar doctrinal opinions con- 
tributed to procure for him the favor of the queen. The connection 
once formed with this powerful patroness, he made use of it to gain 
influence and consideration in secular affairs, and to surround himself with 
state. In direct contrariety to the ecclesiastical rules which had already 
been publicly expressed, at least in the Western church, (see above, ) 
he held a civil office not quite compatible with the vocation of a bishop.! 
At Antioch, the profane custom seems already to have passed over 
from the theatre and rhetorical schools to the church —a practice 
which put church teachers on the same level with actors and declaimers 
— that of applauding popular preachers, by the waving of handker- 
chiefs, exclamations of applause, and the clapping of hands. The vain- 
minded Paul was delighted with all this; but the bishops, his accusers, 
seem well aware, that it was contrary to the dignity and order becom- 
ing the house of God. The church hymns which had been in public 
use ever since the second century, he banished as an innovation ; prob- 
ably on the same principlé which at a later period was advanced also "Ὁ 
by others, that in the church nothing ought to be sung but pieces taken 
directly from the holy scriptures. Probably, therefore, he ordered 
that, in place of those church hymns, Psalms only should be used. 
There is no good reason for the conjecture, that Paul did this merely 
out of flattery to his Jewish patroness, Zenobia. It is more probable, 
that, knowing what a deep impression the sentiments contained in those 
church hymns made on the minds of the hearers, he was hoping to 
banish, with those ancient songs of praise to Christ, the sentiments they 
contained from the hearts of men. When we are told, that the man 
who so carefully weighed every expression which was applied to Christ, 
delighted in the incense of extravagant flattery heaped on himself, un- 
der the form of odes and declamations in holy places ;— and in being 
called, in the swollen, rhetorical language of the times, an angel come 
down from heaven, we are not indeed to give implicit faith to such 
stories from the mouths of heated opponents; nor yet have we any 
good reason whatever to reject them as wholly false. 

It seems to have been the design of Paul of Samosata to introduce 
his peculiar views of Christ into the minds of his flock by degrees. To 
this purpose served the change which he introduced with regard to the 


1 The office of Ducenarius procurator, (not he was already in possession of this office 
to be confounded with the Ducenarius ju- when elected bishop; in this case the bish- 
dex,) so called because the pay amounted ops would accuse themselves for tolerating 
to 200 sestertia. See Sueton. Claudius, such an infraction of the ecclesiastical laws. 
c. 24; Cyprian. ep. 68. It is possible that 


VIEWS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH. 605 


use of church hymns; and he contrived, as we have seen in particular 
cases, to explain the church terminology in conformity with his own 
views. Hence it might be difficult to convict him of erroneous doc- 
trine ; and it was not till after many previous unsuccessful attempts, 
that the bishops finally succeeded, at a synod convened in 269, to bring 
him, chiefly by means of the presbyter Malchion, an expert dialecti- 
cian, to an open avowal of his opimions.1_ He was deposed, and his 
office conferred on another; but as he still had a party in his favor, 
and was moreover patronized by Zenobia, it was impossible to carry the 
matter through, until the year 272, when Zenobia was conquered by 
the Emperor Aurelian. The latter referred the matter to the decision 
of the Roman bishop.” 

But while, in the Eastern church, the struggle with this Monarchian 
tendency, which gave an undue prominence to the wnzty in the Triad, 
had an influence in causing the distinctions and gradations in it to be 
more precisely marked, and the subordination system, which had been 
reduced by Origen into a settled form, to be more decidedly pronounced, 
a quite different relation was gradually working itself into shape in the 
Western church, which we will now more closely consider. 

How differently the same Christian truth may shape itself to the ap- 
prehension of minds which have been differently trained, is seen by 
comparing Origen with Tertullian. To Tertullian, accustomed and 
familiarized to material notions of the divine essence, the same difficul- 
ties would not present themselves here, as revolted the philosophical 
mind of Origen. He could quite clearly conceive, by the aid of his 
material notions of emanation, how the Godhead might cause to pro- 
ceed from its own essence a being possessed of the same substance, 
only in an inferior degree, and standing in the same relation to the 
former as a ray of light to the sun. He asserted, therefore, the doc- 
trine of one divine Essence, shared in a certain gradation by three per- 
sons, most intimately connected.? 

The Son, so far as it concerns the divine essence, is not numerically 
distinct from the Father; the same essence of God being also in the 
Son; but he differs in degree, being a smaller portion of the common 
mass of the divine essence. Thus the prevailing view in the Western 
church came to be this: one divine essence in the Father and Son; 
but, at the same time, ‘a subordination in the relation of the .Son to 
the Father. Here were conflicting elements. The process of develop- 
ment must decide which of the two should gain the preponderance. 
This, then, constituted the difference between the two churches: — that 
while, in the Eastern church, the prominence given to the distinctions 
in the Triad did not leave room for the consciousness of the unity; 
in the Western church, on the other hand, the unity of essence, once 


1¥From Eusebius’ expressions, although 2 See vol. I. p. 142. 
Theodoretus, to whom perhaps they ap- 3 Una substantia in tribus cohzrentibus. 
peared offensive, explained them otherwise, 4 Deus de deo, modulo alter, non nume- 
we must infer, that this ecclesiastic, too, ex- ro. Adv. Praxeam. 
ercised a profession not wholly befitting his 
spiritual calling, that of a rhetorician. 


606 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
decidedly expressed, caused the subordination-element to retire more 
into the back-ground. 

Thus, from a difference in the process of the development of doc- 
trine in the two churches, an opposition of views naturally arose on 
this subject; as we see in the case of the above-mentioned council at 
Antioch, in 269, which, in the heat of the polemical opposition to Mon- 
archianism, was moved to condemn the expression ‘‘ ὁμοούσιον͵ answer- 
ing to the doctrinal formula of the West ‘una substantia.” + And 
we see, again, in another noticeable appearance, a premonitory symp- 
tom of those doctrinal controversies which, in the fourth century, 
sprung out of the opposition thus prepared between the two churches.” 

The doctrine of Sabellius, and his mode of interpreting the church 
terminology so as to accord with his own system, havmg found their 
way among the bishops of that district, Dionysius, the bishop of Alex- 
andria, felt it incumbent on him, since the whole of that church diocese 
fell under his supervision, to issue a pastoral letter against these spread- 
ing tenets. The opposition into which he was thus brought with the 
Sabellian denial of the hypostases, led him to express the distinction 
of hypostases, and hence too the doctrine of subordination, in a more 
stiff and decided manner than he would otherwise have done. He 
made use of several expressions which Arianism could afterwards fall 
back upon. He made it a prominent point, that the Son of God had 
his existence by the will of the Father; he styled the Son, im relation 
to the latter, a ποίημα, and employed many singular comparisons, with a 
view to mark his subordinate relation to the Father. He is reported 
to have made use of expressions, for the purpose of affirming with em- 
phasis that the Son received his existence from the Father, which after- 
wards became favorite mottos of Arianism; as, for example, that he 
did not exist before he was begotten; there was a moment when he 
did not as yet exist. He also declared himself opposed to the 
Homoousion. 

Certain individuals, to whom these expressions of Dionysius appeared 
a disparagement of the divine dignity of Christ, laid their complaints 
before Dionysius, bishop of Rome ; and the latter was thus led to com- 
pose a work,’ wherein he opposed to the different tendencies of the 


1 See ec. g. Athanas. de Synod. § 43; Hi- 
lar. de Synod. § 86. 

2 As this admits of being so naturally 
explained from the system of doctrines held 
in the Alexandrian school, and moreover 
the reasons urged by the council against 
this church expression answer perfectly 
to this svstem. the account is for these rea- 
sons, if there were no other, rendered prob- 
able. The Arians, from whom we receive 
the account, are, it is true, on this point, 
suspicious witnesses; but the fact that their 
warm opponents, Athanasius, Hilarius of 
Poitiers, and Basilius of Cuesarea, quote 
the same account from their mouth, yet 
without contradicting it, may be considered 
as a confirmation of its truth. 

3 The letter to Ammonius and Euphra- 


nor, of which fragments have been preserv- 
ed in Athanasius’ work on the doctrines of 
Dionysius. 

4 Athanas. de sententia Dionysii, ὁ 14. 
For the purpose of strongly emphasizing 
the οὐκ ἀεὶ ἣν, he is reported to have said: 
Οὐκ ἣν πρὶν γεννηϑῇ, ἀλλ᾽ ἣν ποτὲ ὅτε οὐκ 
ἦν. Being a disciple of Origen, he may 
have expressed himself in the latter way ; 
perhaps to mark a beginning of existence, 
but no beginning in time. But, in truth, it 
is impossible, since Dionysius’ work has not 
been preserved entire, to determine, with any 
degree of certainty, what his language real- 
ly was, so as to distinguish what he actually 

id say, from the conclusions which men 
thought proper to draw from what he said. 

5 ᾿Ανατροπῆ, fragments of which work 


DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA. 607 
Eastern church, that system of the unity of essence which had become 
already matured in the Western church, and from which every trace of 
subordination had been nearly obliterated.’ Besides the Sabellians, he 
attacks two other tendencies. He says he had heard that many among 
their teachers 2 had fallen into an error directly opposed to that of Sa- 
bellianism, viz. Tritheism ;* that they had separated the holy unity into 
three hypostases, totally alien and totally separated from one another. 
Yet we can hardly reconcile it with the general shaping of Christian 
thought and speculation among the Orientals, to suppose that those 
teachers did really hold to the existence of three essences, equally 
without beginning, and standing im no relation of dependence on each 
other. The Roman bishop here assuredly followed. the reports of 
others, who so interpreted the explanations of those teachers. It is 
probable that, in marking broadly and strongly the distinction of the 
hypostases in the conflict with Sabellianism, they may only have so 
expressed themselves as to furnish some color for those complaints. 
The third of these erroneous views, censured by the Roman Dionysius, 
was precisely that one, according to which the Son of God was re- 
garded as a creature, and a beginning assigned to his existence ;—the 
error which some were bent on finding in Dionysius of Alexandria. 
Now, had the latter clung pertinaciously to the difference which did 
really exist on this doctrine between himself and the Roman Dionysius, 
had he given still greater distinctness and prominence to the differences 
between his own and the Roman form of doctrine, and set himself to 
defending these points, the signal would have been given for a con- 
troversy, which might have terminated in a separation of the two 
churches. 

But Dionysius demeaned himself according to the spirit, so superior 
to dogmatic narrowness, which had descended to him from his great 
master Origen. The common ground-work of the Christian faith stood 
at a higher value with him than subordinate differences of opinion ;— 
he was more anxious to preserve alive the consciousness of unity, than 
to give prominence to the dividing points of opposition. Without man- 
ifesting any resentment to his accusers, who had resorted to a foreign 
bishop, and one so eager to obtrude himself as a judge in the concerns 
of other churches; without being ruffled even by that bishop him- 
self, who seems to have assumed the tone rather of a judge than of a 
colleague, he endeavored, with calmness and prudence, and without 
denying his own convictions, so to explain the offensive propositions, by 
pointing out their connection with his whole system, as to remove all 
scruples against them, even from those who adopted the principles of 


have been preserved in Athanasius’ book 
on the decrees of the Council of Nice. 

1 We still perceive, however, some re- 
mains of the old system of subordination, 
when the Father, as the ἀρχῇ, the God of 
the universe, is styled absolutely the Al- 
mighty. Τὴν τριάδα εἰς ἕνα, ὥσπερ εἰς κο- 
ρυφῆν τινα, τὸν ϑεὸν τῶν ὅλων τὸν παντοκρά- 
τορα λέγω, συγκεφαλαιοῦσϑαι καὶ συνάγεσϑαι 


πᾶσα ἀνάγκη. Athanas. de decretis synodi 
Nicene, ὁ 26. 

2 His words are, |. ¢.: Πέπυσμαι εἷναι 
τινὰς τῶν παρ᾽ ὑμῖν κατηχούντων καὶ διδασ- 
κόντων τὸν ϑεῖον λόγον ταύτης ὑφηγητὰς τῆς 
φρονήσεως. 

3 Οἱ κατὰ διάμετρον ἀντίκεινται τῇ Σαβελ- 
λίου γνώμῃ. : 


608 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 


the Roman church. He expounded, in the manner of Origen, the 
notion of the eternal generation of the Logos. He was even willing 
to tolerate the term ὁμοούσιον, so far as it was employed to denote sim- 
ply the relationship of essence between the Son of God and the Father, 
and to distinguish him from all created beings; though he had it to 
object, that it was a term not hitherto sanctioned by ecclesiastical use, 
and nowhere to be found in the holy scriptures, — an objection of little 
weight, we must allow, against a dogmatic expression, since the changes 
arising from the progressive development of the dogmatic spirit gener- 
ally, and from the new errors which strike into it, may make it absolutely 
necessary to resort to new expressions ; and since all that is really im- 
portant here, is to see that the notion which the dogmatic term should 
express, is clearly deducible from the scripture doctrine. By this self- 
denying moderation of Dionysius, the dispute was brought to an end, 
and a schism avoided which might have rent the bonds of Christian 
fellowship.’ It is true, this practical union had no power of enduring 
influence. The oppositions which had once made their appearance in 
the process of doctrinal development, must continually assert over again 
their rights within the sphere of thought, and strive on towards their 
reconciliation in a higher unity. 

In the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit, the want of correspon- 
dence between what was contained in the Christian consciousness 
and its notional expression, clearly manifested itself. In the first youth- 
ful age of the church, when the power of the Holy Spirit made itself to 
be so mightily felt in the life, as.a new creative, transforming principle, 
it was still very far from being the case, that the consciousness of this 
Spirit, as one identical with the essence of God, had been thoroughly 
apprehended and presented in conceptions of the understanding. 

If we except the Monarchians and Lactantius,? men were agreed in 
conceiving of the Holy Spirit as a personal being. The conception of 
his reality and objective essentiality coincided in the Christian thought 
with the conception of his personal, self-subsistent existence. But the 
logical consistency of their system of subordination in the Logos-doc- 
trine, compelled the church fathers to conceive of the Holy Spirit as 
subordinate to the Father and the Son; the first of the bemgs pro- 
duced by the Father through the Son ;— and we shall perceive the 
after-influence of this tendency of thought in the Hastern church, till 
late into the fourth century. When, on the one hand, men felt them- 
selves constrained, by the demands of the Christian consciousness and 
of the holy scriptures, to recognize in the Holy Spirit something be- 
yond a creaturely existence, to bring him into nearer relation to the 
Son of God, and assign him a place in the Triad ; and were driven, 
on the other hand, by the logical consistency of the theory of subordi- 
nation, to represent him as the first being created by the Logos, through 


1 See the fragments of the second letter Father and of the Son, eum vel ad Patrem 
to the bishop Dionysius, under the title: referri vel ad Filium; et sanctificationem 
Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀπολογία, in Athanasius de utriusque persone sub ejus nomine demon- 
sententia Dionysii. strari. Vid. Hieronym. ep. 41. ad Pamach. 

2 Who is supposed to have explained the et Oceanum. 

Holy Spirit as the sanctifying energy of the 


THE HOLY SPIRIT. 609 
whom God called all things into existence ; — the thought, proceeding 
on such different assumptions, must entangle itself in contradictions, 
which would give an impulse to still further efforts to place the doc- 
trine in its right shape. ‘Thus, in Justin Martyr particularly, we may 
observe a wavering of this sort, between the idea of the Holy Ghost, 
as one of the members of the Triad, and a spirit standing im some rela- 
tionship with the angels.! Also, in Origen, we observe the two ele- 
ments coming together,— the sound Christian view, producing itself 
out of the immediate contents of the Christian consciousness, and the 
speculative view, standing in no sort of relation to it. On the one 
hand, he considers the Holy Spirit as the substance of all the gracious 
gifts proceeding from God, communicated through Christ,? the source 
of sanctification to believers ; and then he describes him, notwithstand- 
ing, as only the first-begotten of the Father through the Son, to whom 


1 The reasons which have been presented 
by Catholic and Protestant theologians 
against my exposition of Justin’s expres- 
sions respecting the Holy Spirit, cannot pre- 
vail on me to abandon it. See the literature 
on this dispute in a monography on Justin, 
remarkably full and thorough, written by 
Semisch, II. p. 318. If it has been at- 
tempted to show, that Justin’s notions of 
the essence of the angels and of creatures 
generally were irreconcilable with that 
view, yet this objection is set aside by our 
remarks in the text. Self-contradictory 
momenta ought not to be considered as 
anything strange, when found at this stage 
of the development of doctrine; but unless 
we return back to old doctrinal prejudices, 
and overlook once more the essential char- 
acter of the process of historical develop- 
ment, — the besetting sin of a certain narrow 
and narrowing church tendency, of which 
however, I cannot accuse many of my op- 
ponents, — they must appear rather as a 
matter of course. On the same grounds, I 
must protest against that which the Herr 
Diaconus Semisch brings as _ evidence 
against the truth of my own view of the 
matter, where he says: “ No representation 
certainly clashes, so much as this, with the 
scriptural position and the common feeling 
of the ancient church.” But as it concerns 
the scriptural position, we have nothing to 
do with that question here. The included 
contents of the divine Word must, in its 
process of development for the human 
thought, go through manifold intermediate 
forms. The position taken by Justin con- 
stitutes one among these historically con- 
ditioned intermediate forms. And as it 
respects the common Christian feeling, we 
do, in truth, recognize such a common feel- 
ing, by which the church in all ages is knit 
together; but this common feeling did not 
find at once its corresponding expression 
in the forms evolved by the understanding. 
Of the two passages from Justin, which we 
are concerned with, one is where Justin, in 


confronting the charge of ἀϑεότης, enumer- 
ates the objects of religious worship among 
the Christians; Apol. II. f. 56: κεῖνόν re 
καὶ TOV Tap’ αὐτοῦ υἱὸν ἐλϑόντα καὶ διδάξαντα 
ἡμᾶς ταῦτα καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἑπομένων καὶ 
ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαϑῶν ἀγγέλων στρατὸν, 
πνεῦμά TE τὸ προφητικὸν σεβόμεϑα καὶ προς- 
κυνοῦμεν. Now Semisch affirms, that it is 
contrary to the laws of language and of 
logic to refer the word ἄλλων to that which 
follows after. But the simple question is, 
whether, in a writer like Justin, such an 
instance of negligence in stvle may not be 
supposed. If, with Semisch, we take the 
passage in this way,—that Justin. under 
the term ἄλλων, had in mind Christ, and 
understood the word ἄγγελος at one and the 
same time in the more general sense (of a 
messenger of God) and the more limited 
one (of angel) —it still remains certainly 
a very harsh construction, not admissible 
in the case of any other writer. For the 
rest, in whatever way the word ἄλλων might 
be explained,—a circumstance by no means 
decisive as to the whole meaning of the 
passage, — it still ever remains the easiest 
and best way, to account for what we find 
here associated together, by referring to the 
connection which existed between the no- 
tions of the Holy Spirit and of the angels. 
But in no case can 1 concede to Hr. Sem- 
isch, that by the angel of God, the might 
sent by Christ for our assistance, (Dial. ὁ. 
Tryph. f. 344,) Justin could lave under- 
stood anything else than the Holy Spirit. 
The reference to the passage in the 3d of 
Zechariah has nothing to do with the ques- 
tion here; but if it had, it would be rather 
in favor of, than against, the necessity of 
this interpretation. If we pay any regard 
to Justin’s peculiar style of doctrinal lan- 
guage, it is quite impossible to understand 
this term as referring merely to the moral 
power bestowed by Christ. 

2 “Ὕλη τῶν χαρισμάτων, ἐνεργουμένη ἀπὸ 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ, διακονουμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. In 


Joann. T. II. § 6. 


610 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 
not only being, but also wisdom and holiness, is first communicated by 
the Son; dependent on him in all these relations.2 

It is besides worthy of notice, that, in the dispute with the Monarchi- 
ans, the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit was not touched upon at 
all—a proof how little men had busied themselves as yet with the 
more accurate determination of this doctrine — how very-far it retired 
into the background, compared with the significance attached to the 
Logos-doctrine. It altogether befitted the peculiar bent of the Patri- 
passianists to refer everything to the undivided God, the Father in 
Christ ; and to consider the Holy Spirit simply as his agency or influ- 
ence. But when the doctrine of the Holy Spirit assumed the impor- 
tant place which it did in the perfected Montanistic system, the pro- 
ceedings entered into with the adherents of this scheme would. lead to 
more accurate investigations of this doctrine; as indeed we know that 
Clement of Alexandria, in whose writings preserved to us no specula- 
tive determination of this point is to be found, was intending, in his 
work on prophecy, (περὶ προφητείας, which had reference to the dis- 
pute with the Montanists, to enter into a fuller development of the doc- 
trine concerning the Holy Spirit.2_ Accordingly Sabellius was the first 
who received into his Monarchian scheme the notion also of the Holy 
Spirit. In this dogma, too, we see the element of the subordination 
theory more and more overcome, by the matured conception of the one 
substance in the Western church. ‘This is particularly discernible in 
the letter of Dionysius, bishop of Rome, to Dionysius, bishop of Alex- 
andria, (see above.®) 

From the doctrine concerning God, (theology in the stricter sense 
of the word,) we pass to the doctrine concerning human nature, (An- 
thropology,) —the two doctrines bemg, in their peculiar Christian 
acceptation, most intimately connected ; both deriving their peculiar 
Christian significancy from their particular relation to the doctrine of 
redemption — the central point of Christianity. From the doctrine of 
God’s holiness proceeded a conception of sin, entirely different from 
that presented in the mode of thinking of the ancient world ; and this 
of itself had the greatest influence on Anthropology. 

Again, the redemption in which entire humanity is destined to par- 
ticipate, presupposes, on the one hand, the need of such a provision ex- 
isting in all men — the feeling of their own moral insufficiency, of the 
inner schism, the sin and guilt which separate them from God; and, on 
the other hand, the consciousness of a recipiency for the redemption, 
as a quality possessed by human nature in general, by virtue of which 
the redemption may find a point of union in the soul’s act of free self- 
determination. Both are intimately connected ; for it is out of the 


1 Ob χρήζειν ἔοικε τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, διακο- 
νοῦντος αὐτοῦ τῇ ὑποστάσει, οὐ μόνον εἰς τὸ 
εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ σοφὸν εἷναι καὶ λογικὸν καὶ 
δίκαιον καὶ πᾶν ὁτιποτοῦν χρὴ αὐτὸ νοεῖν 
τυγχάνειν κατὰ μετοχὴν τῶν προειρημένων 
Χριστοῦ ἐπινοιῶν. LL. ο. 

2 The Holy Spirit, as something above 
nature, supervening to the original faculties 
of the soul: Ἡμεῖς μὲν τῷ πεπιστευκότι προς- 


επιπνεῖσϑαι τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα φαμὲν, ---- ἀλλ᾽ 
oby’ ὡς μέρος ϑεοῦ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν τὸ πνεῦ- 
pa ὅλων δὲ ἡ διανομὴ αὕτη καὶ ὅτι ποτὲ ἔστι 
τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, ἐν τοῖς περὶ προφητείας καὶ 
περὶ ψυχῆς ἐπιδειχϑῆσεται ἡμῖν. ϑιίγοτη.]. V. 
f.591; 1. TV. f. 511, 

8 ᾿ἘΠμφιλοχωρεῖν τῷ Sed καὶ ἐνδιαιτᾶσϑαι 
τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα. De decretis Synodi Ni- 
cenz, ὁ 25. 


CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN VIEWS. 611 


recipiency that the want developes itself, and the want without the re- 
cipiency would be a self-contradiction in nature. The consciousness of 
sin and guilt, which answers to the need of redemption, itself presup- 
poses also something akin to God, elevated above natural necessity, 
something of the essence of a free self-determination of the spirit, with- 
out which sin and guilt can have no existence. On both these sides, 
the position occupied by the ancient world was opposed to Christianity. 
On the one side was the moral self-sufficiency,! which exhibits itself to 
us at its highest pomt in Stoicism— the self-feeling from which pro- 
ceeded the ethical notion of a μεγαλοψυχία, (magnanimity,) and to 
which the Christian virtue of humility appeared to be a sort of self: 
degradation: on the other side, that pomt of view which made man 
dependent on natural necessity, and caused moral evil to be regarded 
as something having its ground in such necessity — a point of view by 
which room enough was still left to admit the notion of moral imperfec- 
tion, but not the conception of sin. In the stoical doctrine both are 
brought together, the Autonomy and Autarchy of the Wise man, and 
the necessity of evil in order to the harmony of the universe. Al- 
though, in relation to the first of these pomts, the opposition m which 
the fundamental principle of the ancient world stands to Christianity 
is tempered by the Platonic philosophy ; 2 yet it comes forth with so 
much the greater strength on the other side, when all evil is here 
regarded as something involuntary, is traced to a deficiency of knowl- 
edge, a preponderance of the natural (of the ὕλη) over the rational 
element in man, by virtue of which preponderance the rational element 
cannot yet attain to a free development. It is true, different stages 
are here to be distinguished in the development of Platonism, accord- 
ing as the tendency predominates to apply and carry out its specula- 
tive principles with logical consistency, as in the case of Plotinus, or a 
prevailing interest in behalf of religion and morality operates indepen- 
dently of those principles, as in the case of Plutarch, who so earnestly 
defends moral freedom against the stoical doctrine of necessity. But 
even where this notion of freedom most decidedly manifested itself, as, 
for instance, in Aristotle, who combated the Platonic principle that evil 
implied the absence of freedom,? men must necessarily have felt em- 
barrassed by great difficulties in endeavoring to apply the notion of free- 
dom to life. They thought they perceived an unconquerable natural 
temperament of certain tribes, certain great classes among men, who 
had no power of elevating themselves above a very inferior grade of 
moral culture. But even these restrictions could not overcome the idea 
of freedom in such men as Aristotle. Yet they could be wholly got 
rid of only when the might of evil in humanity came ‘generally to be 
understood to be something not original, but to be first traced itself to 
an original act of freedom; and when a power was introduced into 


1 The Horatian maxim, bonam mentem terminate character of a man, by which he 


mihi ipse parabo. is determined in his judgments and actions, 
_? See on this relation, vol. I, Introduc- is itself a work of freedom. Ἔξ ἀρχῆς μὲν 
tion. ἐξῆν, τοιούτοις μὴ yevéodat, διὸ ἑκόντες εἰσίν. 


3 Thus he understands, that even the de- Nicom. III. 7. 


612 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 


humanity, whereby those differences of nature could be equalized, and 
the same divine life could be imparted alike to all. It was only with 
the victory over the nature-principle and over the aristocratic leaning 
of antiquity, that the idea of moral freedom could be completely estab- 
lished in its rights, as a power belonging to human nature. 

As Christianity, then, brought about an important revolution in the 
ethical and anthropological views of mankind, by the doctrine of a prim- 
itive condition and of man’s loss of it by an act of his own choice; 
so we may add, as another weighty fact, that it placed Anthropology in 
connection with the doctrine concerning spirits (Pneumatology), inas- 
much as it caused the essence of spirit to be known as the image of God ; 
as the common element in man and all ranks of the spiritual world ; 
and as lying at the basis and indicating the fact of a common destina- 
tion; inasmuch as it presented to view, on the one hand, the fellowship 
of one divine life uniting together all spirits in the kingdom of God, 
and on the other, referred back the origin also of the ungodly life to the 
first act of the self-will of a higher intelligence. This latter fact was 
particularly important as opposed to the pagan nature-view of sin, and 
to all the tendencies which led men to regard it as something necessa- 
rily rooted in the organism of human nature,in the union of a rational 
with a sensuous nature. 

Now, while the interests of the Christian faith require the union of 
the momenta here unfolded, — of all that has reference to the need of re- 
demption, and of all that has reference to the recipiency for redemp- 
tion; andthe severance of these correlative momenta engenders the 
heretical element; yet the greater or less degree of prominence given 
to the one or the other of these momenta, depended partly on the oppo- 
sitions, and partly on the peculiar character, of the different tendencies 
of the theological spirit, which we have previously described. As it 
respects the former, we may notice in particular the opposition of Gnos- 
ticism. Against this there was no need, as is clear from the represen- 
tation of the Gnostic doctrines, to prove in the first place the existence 
of a schism in man’s nature, and of a need of redemption grounded in 
that schism; but on the contrary, as an original threefold difference of 
human natures was asserted by the Gnostics, and a recipiency of the 
divine life acknowledged to exist only in one class of these natures, the 
capacity for the redemption and the power of moral freedom had to be 
demonstrated to belong in common to all. The polemical interest ex- 
cited by the controversy with the Gnostics was the cause, therefore, 
that many extremely one-sided theories, to which men were afterwards 
led by separating momenta of the Christian consciousness which be- 
long together, did not as yet make their appearance. The hypothesis 
of a predetermination of natures endangering moral freedom was there- 
by kept back. Those passages of the Old Testament, such as related 
for instance to the hardening of Pharaoh, which subsequently furnished 
a foothold for such doctrines, but which were made use of by the Gnos- 
tics as points of accusation against the God of the Old Testament, men 
must seek to defend against them, and to show them, that these pas- 
sages contained a meaning capable of being reconciled with God’s love 


CHRISTIAN AND GNOSTIC VIEWS. 613 
and justice, and man’s indestructible freedom. Thus it belongs among 
the peculiar characteristics of the position which this period held in the 
evolution of the doctrines of the Christian faith, that, as a general thing, 
men were far from the thought of framing to themselves, out of some 
of the more dark and difficult passages of scripture, — like those from 
which, singly taken, in after times, the doctrine of absolute predestina- 
tion was derived, —a system to which they would be ready to sacrifice 
all other religious interests and the whole analogy of Bible faith, but 
went rather on the principle of holding fast to that which they found, 
by comparing different passages of scripture, was the collective doctrine 
lying every where at bottom. On this point, those who took the lead 
in the guidance of the church were uniformly agreed ; and it was only 
ignorant, uneducated, and at the same time arrogant individuals among 
the laity, who were inclined to fix on such insulated passages, and run 
into downright extravagances of doctrine.” 

It belongs further to the common ground assumed by all Christians 
in opposing Gnosticism, that while the Gnosties regarded Dualism as an 
original and absolute truth, and the schism as a necessary thing in the 
evolution of existence, necessary to appear at some period in order to 
be overcome, something of which the foundation was laid already in the 
world of Adons ;— the church fathers, on the other hand, were agreed 
in this, that contrary to the Gnostics, they traced everything here to 
the freedom of the creature. The Gnostics were used to propose the 
dilemma ;—TIf the first man was created perfect, how could he then 
sin? If he was created imperfect, we suppose God himself to be the 
author of sin. To this the church fathers, if we set aside what was 
peculiar in Origen’s system, were accustomed to reply ; — that a dis- 
tinction should be made between what the first man was in respect to 
his original capacity, and what he was to become by that development 
of this capacity which depended on his own free will. Here we meet 
with a distinction, widely recognized, around which, in the subsequent 
evolution of the doctrines of faith, important differences clustered. The 
distinction between that which is denominated οὖν and that which is 
denominated 197 in Genesis, the εἰκών and the ὁμοίωσις τοῦ ϑεοῦ (the Image, 
and the likeness of God) : — the first being what was laid in the original 
capacities of human nature, and what, inasmuch as it was grounded in 
its essence, was indestructible ; to which were usually reckoned reason 


1 Opposed to this were the hermeneutical 
canons which Irenzeus set up against the 
Gnostics ; as, for example, that men should 
not seek to explain xnigmata per aliud 
majus enigma, sed ea, que sunt talia, ex 
manifestis et consonantibus et claris accipi- 
unt absolutiones. Lib. II. ¢.10,§1. Ta 
φανερῶς εἰρημένα ἐπιλύσει τὰς παραβολὰς. καὶ 
διὰ τῆς τῶν λέξεων πολυφωνίας ἕν σύμφωνον 
μέλος ἐν ἡμῖν αἰσϑήσεται. Lib. II. ο. 28, ὁ 3. 

2 Origen, in his exposition of the passage 
in Ex. 10: 27, distinguishes from the Gnos- 
tics, who made use of such texts as argu- 
ments against the God of the Old Testament, 
and those who sought to remove the difh- 


VOL. I. 52 


culty by correct interpretation, two classes 
among the Christians: Οἱ μὲν φρονοῦσιν, 
ὡς ἄρα κατὰ ἀποκλήρωσιν ὃ ϑεὸς Ov ϑέλει ἐλεεῖ, 
ὃν δὲ ϑέλει σκληρύνει " ἕτεροι δὲ βέλτιον παρὰ 
τοῦτους φερόμενοί φασι πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα κε- 
κρύφϑαι τῆς γραφῆς αὐτοῖς νοήματα, καὶ οὐ 
παρὰ τοῦτο τῆς ὑγιοῦς πίστεως τρέπεσθαι. 
T. VIII. ed. Lomm. p. 299. The principle 
described in these last words of Origen, is 
the same with one which is laid down also 
by Ireneus: Ei ἔνια τῶν ζητημάτων ἀνα- 
ϑήσομεν τῷ ϑεῷ, καὶ τὴν πίστιν ἡμῶν δια- 
φυλάξομεν καὶ ἀκίνδυνοι διαμενοῦμεν. Lib. 
II. c. 28, § 3. 


614. DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 


and the power of moral freedom ;—the second, the likeness to God 
actually realized by the right employment of these capacities, in 
which consists the image of God,— but in order to the realization of 
which, another principle, besides what is given in man’s natural capaci- 
ties, must supervene,—a principle partaking of the supernatural, — 
fellowship with God, without which human nature is inadequate to at- 
tain to its completion. The important thing here was, the recognition 
of an indestructible image of God in human nature, and of an original 
destination of man for the supernatural, the deep-founded consciousness 
of the essence of human nature, as one which could find the fulness of 
its true essence and the attainment of its end only in the fellowship 
with God ; thus the recognition of the correlation, existing from the 
first, of the human and the divine —the recognition of the fact that 
they belonged together. This distinction, however, might be so appre- 
hended, as to lead to a false separation of the human and the divine.! 

In the next place, the fundamental differences of the theological ten- 
dencies which have been described by us, would have a special influ- 
ence in determining the peculiar method of treating Anthropology. 
Those church-teachers whom we have described as representing the 
predominantly supranaturalist tendency, were urged by this their pre- 
vailing tendency, to set in the most prominent light the corruption of 
man’s nature and his need of redemption, the power of renewing grace, 
and the contrariety between grace and nature. Montanism, which we 
presented as the extreme exhibition of this fundamental tendency, was 
in truth ever inclined to glorify the divine grace in such sense, as that 
the human element was entirely swallowed up by it, stead of seeking 
to establish the harmonious union and codperation of both. Those 
church-teachers, on the other hand, who, as the antagonists of a sheer 
supernaturalism, strove after a union between the interest of faith and 
that of reason, were led by this their own peculiar tendency, to give 
special prominence in their treatment of Anthropology, to human free- 
dom and self-activity ; and thus, in the case of those church-teachers 
who otherwise held a conciliatory position in relation to the Gnostics, 
the polemical interest against Gnosticism could not fail very decidedly 
to manifest itself in the treatment of this doctrine. 

It becomes very important, therefore, that on this point also, we 
should compare together the doctrine of the Worth-African church and 
that of the Alexandrian school. 

The doctrine of the North-African church took its shape from Ter- 
tullian. He adopted, out of the previous doctrine of the church, the 
idea, that the first man, as he was created by God, possessed all 
the faculties necessary to reveal the image of God through his moral 
nature ; but that these faculties lay still in a dormant, undeveloped 
state. Their development depended on man’s free will. ΤῸ the in- 
working of God on human nature there was, by virtue of its purity, as 
yet no obstacle ; by fellowship with God, human nature would have be- 
come more and more ennobled and transfigured, and was made capable 


1 In the doctrine concerning the relation of the dona gratuita to the dona naturalia. 


TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 615 


of attaining to a participation in a divine, imperishable life, so as to be 
placed beyond the dominion of death. But by the first sin, which con- 
sisted in man’s refusing to subject his own will, but setting it up in 
opposition to the will of God,! man departed from this fellowship with 
God, and so became subject to a sinful and a mortal nature. By 
the church-teachers of this period, these two are united in the 
notion expressed by φϑορά, while the opposite term ἀφϑαρσία denotes with 
them at once a divine, imperishable, and holy life —a connection of 
ideas which had an important influence on the systems of faith and 
morals. As the harmony between the divine and the human will resulted 
in harmony through all the departments of man’s nature, so the schism 
between the divine and the human will resulted in the schism which runs 
through the whole of human nature. In place of that union with the 
divine Spirit, came the union with an ungodly spirit. The original 
father entailed the spirit of the world on all his posterity.” 

Peculiar, however, to Tertullian was his theory to explain the propa- 
gation of this original corruption of human nature, — being connected 
with his theory respecting the propagation of souls. It was his opinion, 
namely, that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of 
all mankind; that the soul of the first man was the fountain-head 
of all human souls, and that all the varieties of individual human nature 
are but different modifications of that one spiritual substance. Hence 
the whole nature became corrupted in the original father of the race; 
and sinfulness is propagated at the same time with souls.* 

Although this mode of apprehending the matter in Tertullian is con- 
nected with his sensuous habits of conception, yet is this by no means 
a necessary connection. At the root of this mode of apprehension lay 
a higher truth and necessity, of which Tertullian bore witness as the 
author of the so-called doctrine of the traduction of souls. 

It is worthy of notice, that the same Tertullian, who first brought 
out the doctrine of inherited sin in this explicit form, exclaims — 
though in a somewhat earlier work, where he takes ground against the 
practice of infant baptism:° ‘ Wherefore should the age of innocence 
be in haste after the forgiveness of sin ?”’ § 

Tertullian was equally penetrated with the consciousness of sinful- 
ness cleaving to man’s nature, and with the consciousness of an unde- 
niable godlike nature in man, in contrast with which it is that sin re- 
veals itself as sin. This great church-teacher, who in many respects 
must be considered as the forerunner of Augustin, is to be compared with 
him also in this particular, — since without any doubt he had had occa- 
sion to learn from his own experience the resistance of a fiery, violent, 
rude nature to the godlike spirit, and so the opposition between nature 
and grace. Though we know less about his early development than we 
do about Augustin’s, yet we may infer from his wholly peculiar charac- 
ter, as it exhibits itself to us in his writings, that it was only after 


1 Electio suze potius quam divine sen- 4 Tradux anime tradux peccati. 
tentiz. 5 See vol. I. p. 312. 
? Spiritum mundi universo generi suo 56 Quid festinat innocens «tas ad remis- 
idit. sionem peccatorem. De bapt. c. 18. 


ὃ De anima, c. 10 and c. 19. 


616 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 

many an inward struggle he could atta to peace ; — and the reaction 
of those deep elements of his natural character doubtless furnished 
occasion for many an after-conflict.1 But equally mighty was the imme- 
diate feeling of the underlying godlike principle in his sturdy, inartifi- 
cial nature. “ The corruption of nature,’ he says,? “is a second 
nature, which has its own god and father, even the author of the cor- 
ruption himself; so that goodness, however, still resides also in the 
soul; that original, that godlike and genuine thing, which is its proper 
nature. For that which is from God is not so much extinguished ag 
obscured ; for it can be obscured, since it is not God; but it cannot be 
extinguished, since it is of God. As the light, when some object is 
interposed, continues to exist, though it may not be transmitted, owing 
to the density of the object ; so goodness in the soul, when suppressed 
by evil, as it is the peculiar nature of evil to suppress it, either re- 
mains wholly inactive, its light bemg hid; or else bursts through in 
freedom, where it is given it to do so. ‘Thus it is that some are very 
good and others very bad; and yet all souls are of the same stock: 
thus, too, there is something good in the very worst, and something bad 
in the very best; since God alone is without sin, and as man, Christ 
alone without sin, since Christ is also God. Thus it is that the divinity 
of the soul, by virtue of its original goodness, breaks out in obscure 
presentiments, and the consciousness of God comes forth as its witness. 
For this reason no soul is without guilt, for none is without the seeds 
of goodness.” 

It is a characteristic trait in Tertullian, that, as he laid peculiar 
stress, because he was a Montanist, on the unusual psychological phe- 
nomena presented in the effects of the new divine life, on the miracu- 
lous element in the charismata;* so too, where he is led to speak of 
man’s natural condition, he is fond of bringing up such eccentric 
appearances as the manifestation of a natural power of divination, as 
indications of the indestructible, godlike element in human nature.* 

He was led still further to unfold and to defend these views, not only 
in his controversy with Marcion, who, as we have observed above, did 
not acknowledge the existence of anything originally godlike in the 
soul, but also in his dispute with Hermogenes. On this latter occasion, 
he wrote a work, which has not come down to us, on the descent of 
souls. Hermogenes had combated the theory of a heavenly descent 
of the soul, of the imbreathing into it of a divine particle, by which 
theory the Divine was subjected to a mar, to a stam, since it was im- 
possible to avoid the necessity of tracing to this soul, at the same time, 


1 Thus we hear him speaking out of the 
fulness of his inner experience, when in his 
work, written in praise of the Christian vir- 
tue, patience, he says, c. 1: “ Ita miserrimus 
ego semper ΦΌΡΟΥ caloribus impatientia, 
quam non obtineo patientiw sanitatem, et 
suspirem et invocem et perorem necesse est, 
cum recordor et in mex imbecillitatis con- 
templatione digero, bonam fidei valetudinem 
et dominic discipline sanitatem, non facile 


cuiquam, nisi patientia adsideat, provenire.” 

2 De anima, c. 41. 

3 The distinction between that natural 
faculty of divination and prophecy as a 
charisma is stated, de anima, ¢. 22: Divi- 
natio interdum, seposita, ques per Dei gra- 
tiam obvenit ex prophetia. 

4 De censu animes. We learn what were 
the contents of this book from his work de 
anima. 


TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 617 
the origin of evil.!_ He thinks himself bound to suppose in matter, — 
that inorganic stuff lying at the ground of the creation, — not only 
something akin to the corporeal world which is produced out of it, but 
also something akin to the soul, which was likewise formed out of it. 
The wild motion in it, isthat which it has akin to the soul, and which 
lies at the ground of the soul.2— As God, by his organizing influences, 
produced the corporeal world out of the chaotic mass, so he formed the 
soul out of the chaotic principle of motion.? ‘Taking his position on this 
ground of materialism, he hence agreed with Marcion in denying that 
any point of union was presented for Christianity in an original element 
of the human soul akin to the Divme. Evil he derived from this wild, 
chaotic principle of motion, not overcome; just as he would regard 
whatever was hateful in the corporeal world as a remnant of the an- 
cient chaos. Also in Satan and evil spirits, he believed probably that 
he saw the reaction of that untamed chaotic power of motion. Souls 
needed the communication of a divine life really related to God, and 
imparted to them by the redemption and by regeneration, in order to 
be enabled to vanquish the evil element growing out of their origin. 
Tertullian defended, as he himself affirms, against Hermogenes, the 
free will, as an original property of the soul and indestructible. We 
might thence infer, that Hermogenes regarded the participation in the 
redemption, and in the divine life originally alien from the soul, as not 
conditioned by the selfdetermmation of the free will; that he did not 
consider faith as proceeding from that source ; but derived everything 
here alike from the unconditional divine influence and election; and 
he would thus belong among the first advocates of the doctrine of an 
unconditioned predetermination, and of an unconditioned, irresistible 
grace. The logically consistent development of his principles might 
certainly lead to such results; for if the soul, by virtue of its material 
origin and essence, presents no point of union for grace, there seems 
necessarily to follow, as from the theory of an absolute corruption of 
human nature, such a result from these premises. Yet we are too im- 
perfectly acquainted with the system of Hermogenes, to be able to 
affirm with any certamty, that such was the connection of his ideas. 
From the thesis we cannot argue with perfect safety to the antithesis ; 
for it is possible that Tertullian may have been led, simply on the 
ground that Hermogenes denied the original existence of anything akin 


to God in the soul, to maintain this against him, together with all the 


marks and characters belonging thereto, among which he reckoned also 
the free will, without Hermogenes having wholly denied. the freedom 
of the will; just as Tertullian does in fact maintain the doctrine of the 


1 Dum incredibile est, spiritum Dei in 
delictum et mox in judicium devenire. ex 
materia potius anima credatur quam ex Dei 
spiritu. De anima,c.11. Tertullian con- 
tends, on the contrary, that the soul is de- 
rived, not from the spiritus Dei, but from 
the flatus Dei; that it was not the essence 
of God, but only something imparted im- 
mediately by the Spirit of God — something 


52* 


in affinity with that spirit, which resided in 
the soul. 

2 The incorporale inconditus motus ma- 
teriz. Ady. Hermogenem, c. 36. 

8 Comp. the passage from Plutarch, cited 
on p. 376, relative to a soul united originally 
with the chaos. 

4 Inesse nobis τὸ αὐτεξούσιον naturaliter, 
jam et Marcioni ostendimus et Hermogeni. 
De anima, c. 21. 


δ 
a 


618 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 
free will against Marcion, while yet we do not know that Marcion ever 
denied it.1 At all events, Hermogenes denied the natural immortality 
of the soul, and regarded immortality only as a consequence of the 
new divine life imparted by Christ: hence he considered believers 
only to be immortal. All evil — evil spirits, and men who have not be- 
come partakers of the divine life — were finally to be resolved into the 
matter from whence they originally sprang.” 

Against this doctrine of Hermogenes, then, Tertullian maintained, 
“ὁ that the souls, sprung from that first soul which arose immediately 
from the breath of God, are immortal, endowed with free will, in pos- 
session of a faculty of divimation: — evident signs of their heavenly 
origin.’ 3 

He considered all the parts and faculties of human nature as one and 
the same work of God, a work good in itself; and everything contrary 
to reason in it, therefore, as but a consequence of that original schism 
which grew out of the first sin. The division which Plato makes of the 
soul into the λογικόν and ἄλογον he was willing to admit; though not in 
respect to the original, but only in respect to the corrupted, human 
nature.t 

To the Gnostic doctrine concerning the different fundamental princi- 
ples of human nature, according to which they maintained that a hyliec 
or material nature could never be converted into a pneumatic or. spirit- 
ual one, and that a spiritual nature could never be converted into a 
material one — to this doctrine Tertullian opposed the almighty power 
of grace and the mutability of the human will. When the Gnostics 
appealed to the declaration of Christ, that an evil tree cannot bring 
forth good fruit, nor a good tree evil fruit, he replies to them: “ If this 
is to be understood so, then God cannot raise up from the stones child- 
ren to Abraham; then the generation of vipers cannot bring forth 
fruits to repentance ; and the apostle was mistaken, when he wrote, 
‘Ye also were sometimes darkness,’ and ‘ We also were once by nature 
the children of wrath,’ and ‘ Ye were once among these ; but now are 
ye washed.’ But will the declarations of the holy scripture contradict 
one another? No; for the evil tree will not bring forth good fruit, wnless 
ἐξ be grafted; and the good tree will bring forth evil fruit, unless it 
be cultivated ; and the stones will become children of Abraham, if they 
be formed to the faith of Abraham; and the generation of vipers will 
bring forth the fruits of repentance, when they have disgorged the 


1 We must here remark, by way of supple- 


advocate of the doctrine of absolute predes- 
ment, that, in Marcion’s system, this point 


tination. 


still remains undecided. For the same rea- 
sons, as in the case of Hermogenes, such an 
hypothesis would perfectly accord with his 
system also, and it would moreover harmo- 
nize well with his ultra-Paulinism. But the 
prominent place which he gives to God’s 
paternal love, and the manner in which he 
speaks of the arbitrary conduct of the God 
of the Old Testament, accusing him of hay- 
ing compassion on some, and hardening the 
hearts of others, leave it quite improbable, 
that Marcion ought to be considered as an 


2 Vid. Theodoret. fab. heret. I. ¢. 19. 

8 Animam Dei flatu natam, immortalem, 
liberam arbitrii dominatricem, divinatricem. 
De anima, c. 22. ‘ 

4 De anima, 16. Naturale enim rationale 
credendum est, quod anime a primordio sit 
ingenitum a rationali videlicet auctore ; irra- 
tionale autem posterius intelligendum, ipsum 
illud transgressionis admissum atque (quod) 
exinde inoleverit in anima, ad instar jam 
naturalitatis, quia statim in naturee primor- 
dio accedit. 


TERTULLIAN’S VIEWS. 


poison of wickedness. These effects divine grace can produce ; which, 
of a truth, is mightier than the nature to which the free will withm us 
is subjected. As this last, too, is a natural thing and susceptible of 
change, so the nature turns in the same direction as this turns.””} One 
might understand the above remarkable passage, as if even at this early 
period Tertullian would attribute to grace an irresistibly attractive 
power over the corrupted will of man; one might say he asserted the 
freedom of the will only in opposition to the doctrine of ἃ natural ne- 
cessity, to the affirmation of a complete moral want of susceptibility in 
the case of certain natures; but not in respect to the soul-transforming 
principle of grace. Montanism might easily result in giving the 
utmost prominence to the overwhelming influence of the divine power, 
and in reducing the free will to a blind passive instrument. But we 
are by no means authorized by the connection to give the language such 
an interpretation. For Tertullian, according to the context, is only 
intending to prove, that grace, through its inworking agency on the 
corrupted nature, could, by virtue of the free will, impart to it a higher 
power than dwells in itself, and thus transform it to something else ; 
and we are bound in justice to adopt that interpretation which best 
accords with other explanations that Tertullian gives concerning the 
free will. It is true, as we have before remarked, that the influence 
of the whole peculiar tendency lying at the root of Montanism must 
have been, to cause that the power of grace should be magnified ; but 
even Montanism cannot be accused of rending asunder the momenta 
which belong together in Chnistianity, and giving supremacy to one 
wholly at the expense of the other. Hven Montanism was far from any 
tendency to the doctrine of a constraining grace, operating with irre- 
sistible power on the conversion of man generally. That it did not look 
upon the agency of grace generally as being of this kind, may be gath- 
ered from the fact, that it regarded this kind of gracious agency con- 
nected with bare passivity on the part of man, as an exception to the 
general rule, —as an extraordinary thing ; — supposed it to be confined 
to the prophets. Accordingly we find, even in Tertullian, a passage 
in which he speaks of such influences of grace, where everything de- 
pends solely on the divine influence, nothing on human conduct — such 
extraordinary virtues as could be regarded only in the light of free 
gifts of divine grace, which God imparts to each individual as he pleases.” 
But this very circumstance, of his ascribing the whole to the action of 
grace alone only in such extraordinary cases, may serve as a proof, 
that he did not consider this as the general law which governed the 
evolution of the Christian life. And we are by no means warranted to 
conclude from such a declaration of Tertullian, that he was already a 
Montanist when he so expressed himself ;— for, in this particular refe- 


rence, our general remark will find its application, that Montanism is | 


619 


1 Hee erit vis divine gratix, potentior 
utique natura, habens in nobis subjacentem 
sibi liberam arbitrii potestatem, qua cum sit 
et ipsa naturalis atque mutabilis, quoquo 
vertitur, natura convertitur. De anima, c. 21. 

2 Quod bonorum quorundam sicuti et ma- 


, 


lorum intolerabilis magnitudo est, ut ad 
capicnda et preestanda ea sola gratia divinze 
inspirationis operetur. Nam quod maxime 
bonum, id maxime penes Deum; nec alius 
id quam qui possidet, dispensat, ut cuique 
dignetur. De patientia, c. 1. 


“3 


620 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 
to be regarded merely as the extreme point of tendencies and modes of 
thinking which were already in existence. 

Buta directly opposite view to this resulted of itself from the process 
of development in the Alexandrian church. Accordingly Clement com- 
bated, without meaning to do so, the doctrine of the North-African church, 
having in his eye simply the Gnostic dualism, which represented birth to 
be a work of the evil principle. ‘‘ How then,” he asks, “could the chil- 
dren have sinned, or fallen under the curse of Adam, when they are 
chargeable with no actions of their own?! The question here related 
to the explanation of those passages of the Old Testament, which in the 
North-African church were adduced in proof of the doctrine of inherited 
sin. Job 14: 4— Ps. 51: 7.2 Clement referred such and similar pas- 
sages to the natural ignorance of man in reference to God and divine 
things, to the power of sinful habits. But it by no means follows, that 
Clement did not believe in the doctrine of a fall from a state of moral 
purity. Τὸ the Gnostic dilemma,‘ above quoted, he opposed the assertion, 
that the first man was not created perfect, but with the capacity for vir- 
tue ;° so that its cultivation and application depended on himself. He 
yielded to the enticements of sensual pleasure in that childhood of his 
being, as it was for him to decide, according to his own free choice.® 
While many Gnostics made the fall to consist in this, that the first man, 
yielding to sensuous appetite, gave himself up to the indulgence of the 
sexual propensity, whereby both himself and his entire posterity came un- 
der the dominion of the ὕλη ; Clement, on the other hand, regarded man’s 
guilt to consist simply in this, that he did not wait for the suitable period 
appointed by God for the satisfaction of that impulse.’ Thus he might 
regard that power of the sensuous appetites over the spirit as a conse- 
quence of the first disobedience — might suppose, that by the guilt of 
man the sway of sense became continually stronger, while still, how- 
ever, it continued to depend on man’s will to resist its enticements. 
We perceive the influence of the ideas which had found their way into 
his mind through his philosophical education, in the inclination he 
manifests to refer back evil to the power of sense; and accordingly he 
must refer redemption and regeneration mainly to the end of providing 
a way for the soul to partake of the divine life, by being delivered from 
these foreign elements. ‘It is not without special grace,” says he, 
‘that the soul attains to this power of soaring aloft on wings, after 
having laid aside every weight, so as to unite itself with its kindred 
element.”® This was the important thing with Clement, to recognize 
both the need in which the free will stood of assistance, and also the 


1 Strom. 1. III. f. 453 et 469. 

2 See Cyprian’s collection of proofs from 
the scriptures of the doctrines of faith and 
morals, Testimonior. 1. III. ο. 54. 

8 Συνηϑεία ἡ ἁμαρτωλός. 'Τὰς πρώτας ἐκ 
γενέσεως ὁρμὰς, Kay’ ἃς ϑεὸν οὐ γινώσκομεν, 
ἀσεβείας λέγει. Strom. 1. III. f. 469. 

4 See above, p. 613. 

5 ᾿Ἐξπιτήδειος πρὸς τὴν κτῆσιν ἀρετῆς. 
Strom. 1. VI. f. 662. 


6 Tlapyyero ἐπιϑυμίαις ὁ παῖς. Clement, 


like Philo, regarded the serpent as a sym- 
bol of ἡδονῇ. Protrept. f. 69. 

7 Taya που προλαβόντος τὸν καιρὸν τοῦ 
πρωτοπλάστου. Strom. 1. IIL. f. 4006. Ἔκι- 
νήϑησαν ϑᾶττον ἢ προσῆκον Hv ἔτι νέοι πεφυ- 
κότες, ἀπάτῃ παραχϑέντες. L. ο. f. 470. 

ὃ Οὐ χάριτος ἄνευ τῆς ἐξαιρέτου πτεροῦται 
τε καὶ ἀνίσταται καὶ ἄνω τῶν ὑπερκειμένων 
αἴρεται ἡ ψυχὴ, πᾶν τὸ βρίϑον ἀποτιϑεμέ 
καὶ ἀποδιδοῦσα τῷ συγγενεῖ. Lc. 1. γι ἢ 
588. 


CLEMENT. ORIGEN. 621 
fact that grace was conditioned on its efforts, and was designed to meet 
its deficiencies. On this point he thus expresses himself:! “6 When 
man seeks by his own efforts and practice to free himself from the power 
of his passions, he effects nothing. But when he manifests a true zeal 
and earnestness, then he gains the victory, by the accessory power of 
God; for God bestows his Spirit on willing souls. But when they remit 
their desire, the Spirit, which God bestows, also withdraws. The king- 
dom of heaven belongs not to the sleeping and indolent, but the violent 
take it by force.’ He was too strongly fettered to this dogmatic inte- 
rest, too little capable of moving out of the circle of his subjective 
notions, rightly to understand, out of its own self, particularly the Paul- 
ine type of doctrine —as appears, for example, in his remarkably tor- 
tuous interpretation of 1 Corinth. 1: 21; where the last words, accord- 
ing to him, are not to be taken as a question, but thus: it was not God 
who made the wisdom of this world foolishness, butit became foolish- 
ness through the guilt of man.? 

Quite peculiar to himself on this subject, is also the system of Ori- 
gen. We have observed, that he was attached to a spiritually con- 
ceived theory of emanation; in opposition to the Gnostics, who would 
account for the difference among rational creatures, partly by a natural 
law regulating the graduated evolution of life proceeding from God, 
partly by their derivation from different fundamental principles. Origen 
sought to trace all differences to moral freedom. God, as the absolute 
unity, he taught, can only be a source of unity. So far as all existence 
springs from him, the unity of his own essence must reveal itself therein. 
No difference, no manifoldness, can spring from him. It would, more- 
over, be inconsistent with his love and justice, not to bestow on all his 
creatures the same measure of perfection and blessedness.? God there- 
fore is to be originally contemplated as the fountain of a world of spir- 
its, allied to his own nature, blessed in their communion with him, the 
members of which were all homogeneous and equal. In the second 
book of his work epi ἀρχῶν, he so expresses himself, as if he considered 
not only all difference in the measure of powers and of blessedness, but 
all differences in individual existence generally, as a thing which was 
not original, but which resulted in the first instance from the difference 


1 Qnis dives salv. οἹ 21. 

2 Strom. lib. IJ. f. 313. 

3 Ritter, in his Christlichen Philosophie, 
Bd. 1. 5.517, maintains, that, at the founda- 
tion of Origen’s doctrine, lies the thought, 
“ that created spirits in the outset did not ac- 
tually partake of the good and of the perfect, 
but had simply received the faculty for all 
good. Their connate perfection consisted 
in this.” But such a thought would cer- 
tainly imply the notion of a development 
from a lower stage,—a progressive and 
graduated movement from the imperfect to 
the perfect; and it is evident how utterly 
this view clashes with the system of Origen. 
Origen does in truth conceive the perfect as 
the original state ; — traces all imperfection 
to a fall, involving guilt because it was an 


act of freedom; and regards, as the final 
end, the restoration of the original state, and 
not the complete development of the capa- 
cities bestowed at the creation. - This simply 
is the thought lying at the basis of his sys- 
tem, — that the rational spirit should main- 
tain, by freedom as its property, the perfec- 
tion bestowed on it already by the creation ; 
and, having lost it, should recover it again 
by freedom ; — that the fellowship with God, 
the source of all good in the rational creature, 
is not coercive, but can be preserved only by 
virtue of a free appropriation, and can be 
acquired again only by the same means. 
This is among the points, too, which essen- 
tially distinguish the doctrine of Origen 
from that of Clement. 


622 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 

in the moral bent of the will. According to this, Origen would have 
held the original creation to be one of beings perfectly equal and only 
numerically different ; and would have regarded all individual peculi- 
arities as a consequence of estrangement from God. A very narrow 
conception of the creation, we must allow, viewed in relation to the in- 
finite being of God; but in a characteristic manner does Origen here 
show how, in opposition to the Gnosticism and Platonism, by which he 
was at other times governed, the Christian point of view, though but 
partially seized by him, predominates in his way of thinking, and how 
he places over against the hypothesis of a natural necessity, the moral 
point of view, as the highest position, by which everything else must be 
determined.! 

Already in Origen’s predecessor, Clement, it may be perceived how 
the pushing to an extreme of one Christian momentum, the doctrine of 
freedom, seized to the exclusion of the other,—the pushing of this 
doctrine to an extreme, in opposition to the Gnostic distinction of na- 
tures, could lead to such a result as that is, where he supposes it neves- 
sary to ascribe whatever there was which distinguished the apostles 
from other men, not to a peculiar nature bestowed on them by God, 
but all to the merit of the right direction of their own will. According 
to his opinion, they did not become such, because they were chosen to 
be such by God; but they were chosen to their office by God, because 
he foreknew what they would become by the direction of their own will. 
In proof of this position, Clement adduces the fact, that Judas Iscariot 
was also one among the apostles, that Matthias, in consideration of his 
worthiness, was afterwards received into the number of the apostles in 
place of Judas. It was only necessary to carry out this one-sided 
view, — which was diametrically opposed to the doctrine of absolute 
predetermination and divine decrees, and by which the significance of 
any distinction of nature given by creation itself was utterly denied, 
and everything here derived solely from moral worth, — to its legiti- 
mate consequences, in order to be driven on from the position of Cle- 
ment, to the system which Origen carried to its completion. 

It may have been the case, however, that at some later period, Origen 
retracted this hypothesis, as he did many other immature ideas which he 
had brought to view in that work of speculative dogmatism. At least, he 
says, in a passage belonging to a later work,* that the Son of God is the 
universal brightness of God’s glory, but that scattered beams of his 
glory were spread over the rest of the rational creation, since no cre- 
ated being could contain the whole of the glory of God; in which it 
would seem to be implied, that what in the Logos is one and the same, 
In Matt. T. 


ἢ ἐν τοῖς μεταξὺ τυγχάνειν. 
XIII. § 26 


1 The importance of the free will, as con- 
nected with all spiritual development, Origen 


describes in the following words: ’E7i μὲν 
TOV σωμάτων ob παρὰ τὴν αἰτίαν τοὺ ἀνϑρώ- 
που, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, ὁ 
μέν τις ἐστὶ βραχὺς καὶ μικρὸς, ὁ δὲ μέγας, 
ὁ δὲ μεταξὺ" ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν 
καὶ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἦϑος 
τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχει τοῦ μέγαν τινὰ εἷναι ἢ μικρὸν 


2 Οὐχ ὅτι ἧσαν ἐκλεκτοὶ γενόμενοι ἀποστολοὶ 
κατά τι φύσεων ἰδίωμα, ἐπεὶ ὁ ᾿Ιούδας ἐξελέγη 
σὺν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ᾽ oloite ἧσαν ἀπόστολοι γενέσ- 
ϑαι ἐκλεγέντες πρὸς τοῦ καὶ τὰ τέλη προορωμέ- 
νου, Strom. |. VI. f. 667. 

8 Jn Joann. T. XXXII. § 18. 


ORIGEN. 623 
unfolds itself in the rest of the world of spirits into a manifoldness of 
individual natures, of which each reflects and represents the glory 
of God in his own peculiar way, so that only the collective sum of all 
these individuals would correspond to the glory of God in the Logos. 
This must doubtless have been the case, if Origen had clearly opened 
out to his own mind all that is contaimed in the thought which he ex- 
pressed; but it may be questioned, if he ever did this. He seems, 
im one passage of the same commentary on John from which the passage 
just alluded to is taken, to consider it as the final end of this evolution, 
that all the rational beings conducted back by the Logos to a perfect 
communion with God, would have but one common employment, — that 
of the intuition of God; and that, fashioned through the knowledge of 
the Father, they would know as completely what the Son is, as at pre- 
sent only the Son has known the Father.1_ But since, according to the 
system of Origen, all things are, by that final consummation,? to be 
once more restored to their original condition, it seems to follow, accord- 
ing to the same system, that such a state of equality and unity was the 
one which originally existed. 

Origen argued still further: God alone is by his own nature good ; 
all created beings, on the contrary, are, and continue to be, good only by 
virtue of their fellowship with the original fountain of all good, the Lo- 
gos. As soon as the desire arises in any rational being to be something 
for himself, evil exists. “Ἅ What has become goodness,” says Origen,’ 
“cannot be in like manner good as that which is goodness by its own 
essence. It can never be wanting, however, to him who, for its preser- 
vation, receives into himself the so-called living bread. Whoever fails 
of obtaining it, fails by his own fault; since he neglects to partake of 
the livmg bread and of the true water, wherewith, nourished and 
refreshed, the wings grow.”* Evil is the only thing which has the 
ground of its existence in itself, and not in God. Which, therefore, 
generally, is grounded in no being, but is nothing else than an estrange- 
ment from the true being, that which has only a subjective and no ob- 
jective existence, that which is in itself nothing.® Hence he says: 


1 Τὴ Joann. T.I.§ 16. See also the pas- 
sage in Matth. T. X. § 2. f. 207: “ Then the 
righteous will no longer shine in different 


significance. The μὴ ὄν here is, according 
to his view, rather privative than negative. 
See in Joann. T. II. § 7: Οἱ μετέχοντες 


ways, as at the beginning; but all will shine 
like one sun in the kingdom of their Father.” 
Matth. 13: 43. (Tore μάλιστα οἱ δίκαιοι λάμ- 
ψουσιν οὐκέτι διαφόρως, ὡς κατὰ τὰς ἀρχὰς, 
ἀλλὰ πάντες εἷς ἥλιος) Yet this passage of 
Origen could be understood as referring 
barely to an equality of moral condition 
and blessedness. 

2 The ἀποκατάστασις. 

δ, Cels. 1. VI. c. 44. 

* An allusion to the Myth in Plato’s Phe- 
drus respecting the wings of the soul. 

5 To Plato’s metaphysical idea of μὴ ὄν 
(according to which, if we get a clear notion 
of it, evil is necessary as a limit to the evo- 
lution of life; and, consequently, the idea 
of evil, as to its moral import, is virtually 
annulled,) Origen gave more of a moral 


τοῦ ὄντος, μετέχουσι δὲ οἱ ἅγιοι, εὐλόγως ἂν 
ὄντες χρηματίζοιεν" οἱ δὲ ἀποστραφέντες τὴν 
τοῦ ὄντος μετοχὴν, τῷ ἐστερῆσϑαι τοῦ ὄντος, 
γεγόνασιν οὐκ ὄντες. Hence I cannot ad- 
mit at all the correctness of what Ritter says 
in his Geschichte der Christlichen Philoso- 
phie. Bd. I. § 524, concerning Origen’s 
theory: “ A limitation of this sort, in which 
created spirits originally exist, might per- 
haps be regarded by Origen as an element of 
evil or impurity in them, since he considered 
evil generally to be simply a defect of good- 
ness.” Such a view is wholly at variance 
with the theory of Origen, who thought it 
of so much importance to define evil as a 
thing which has its ground in no natural 
necessity, but which is derivable only from 
an act of the free will. The notions of im- 


624 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 
‘‘ The assertion of the Gnostics, that Satan is no creature of God,! has 
some foundation in truth; namely, to this extent, that while Satan is 
indeed a creature of God in respect to his nature, he is not so as 
Satan.” 3 

The will of the spirits, who were enjoying the blessedness of a divine 
life, having become estranged from God, the original unity was now dis- 
solved ; ἃ disharmony arose, which could only be*restored back to unity 
after a long process of purification and culture. The soul of the world 
is nothing other than the power and wisdom of God, which is able to 
combine these great moral differences into one living whole, and which 
pervades and animates the universe, subjecting all dissonances to a 
higher law.® 

The corporeal world was brought into existence and constituted with 
a view to this end, that the spirits which had become incapable of the 
purely spiritual, divine life, might be brought to a consciousness of 
their estrangement from God, and of their culpable misery ; that the 
craving might be awakened in them after a restoration of their fellow- 
ship with the divine Fountain of Good; that they might become more 
and more purified by conflict. The matter lying at the ground of the 
corporeal world is the undetermined element, destitute of all proper- 
ties, which receives first, from the plastic hand of Omnipotence, a cer- 
tain form and pressure, and that, varying according as bodies of a 
higher or lower order, ethereal or more gross, m manifold gradations, 
are formed out of it.4 Thus arise manifold gradations, from the spirit- 
ual to the sensuous, corresponding to the different stages of fallen 


beings.° 


perfection and of moral evil are, according 
to his doctrine, to be carefully distinguished. 
God, it is true, is the holy, good being, in a 
sense in which no creature can be so called 
(see T. II. in Matth. § 10); but moral evil 
is not an original element, but is to be traced 
only to a voluntary apostacy from God. 
The μὴ ὅν is not to be considered as a defect 
cleaving to creaturely existence, but as a 
voluntary alienation from the ὦν. 

1 See Part IT. 

2 Tn Joann. T. II. § 7. 

ὃ Περὶ ἀρχῶν, 1. 11. ¢. 1. 

4 In the ἔνυλος κόσμος is to be distinguished 
ὕλη lying at the ground, and the λόγος ὁ κοσ- 
μῶν τὴν ὕλην. In Joann. T. XIX. § 5. 

5 We here encounter a difficult question ; 
viz. whether Origen supposed, that from the 
beginning the ὕλη also was brought into 
existence, together with the world of spirits, 
as a necessary limit for the creature, so that 
the creaturely spirit must of necessity be 
always provided with a material organiza- 
tion, which, corresponding only to the stage 
of moral perfection, would be of a higher or 
lower order; or, whether he traced the first 
origin of matter, and of the material world 
itself, to the fall. If we confined ourselves 
to a passage in the work περὲ ἀρχῶν, we 
should be under the necessity of considering 


There exist intelligences, which were united in a freer man- 


the former position as the doctrine of Origen. 
The remarkable passage (1. II. c. 2. § 2) runs 
as follows: “ Principaliter quidem creatas 
esse rationales naturas, materialem vero 
substantiam opinione quidem et intellectu 
solum separari ab eis et pro ipsis vel post 
ipsas effectam videri, sed nunquam sine ipsa 
eos vel vixisse vel vivere.” From this, we 
should be led to represent the subject as 
Ritter understands it; namely, that the 
conception of matter arises simply from an 
abstraction of the sum total constituting the 
creaturely existence; that it is nothing else 
than the objective conception of the limit of 
creaturely existence, of that which forms the 
boundary of individual existence, — just as 
the Platonists taught, that the conception of 
matter could be apprehended only by the 
λόγος νόϑος. And it is very certain, that 
the antithesis between body and spirit van- 
ishes, to our apprehension, if we think of 
the manifold gradations in the attributes or 
properties stamped on the’ ὕλη, and by ab- 
straction go back to the undetermined some- 
what which lies at the ground of all these; 
μένειν τὸ ὑλικὸν, τῶν ποιοτήτων μεταβαλλου- 
σῶν εἰς ἀφϑαρσίαν. In Joann. T. XIII. § 59. 
This would harmonize with his doctrine 
concerning the transfigured organization 
after the resurrection, which rests doubtless 


ORIGEN. 625 


ner with an organic form of higher character, for the purpose of co- 
operating with and assisting the other fallen spirits, — those intelligen- 
ces residing in the planets,! which administer a painful service of love, 
yearning after the time of the universal restoration, when, lightened 
of this burden, they should be raised once more to a state of existence, 
emancipated and delivered from all that is sensuous ; — the earnest 
expectation denoted in Rom. ὃ: 19.2, According to Origen’s doctrine, 
these higher intelligences owe it to their own free will alone, to their 
own merit, that they occupy this elevated rank in the creation; that 
they are united in this freer manner with the corporeal world, and 
have received such an organization of higher, transfigured, more ethe- 
real mould. The question may now arise, did Origen regard these 
beings as those which had no share in the first fall, but, by reason of 
their unalterable fidelity to the Creator, had entitled themselves to this 
place in the universe? In this case, he would suppose that, by virtue 
of the free direction of their own will, some among the rational exist- 
ences had persevered in goodness, others swerved from it; but that 
those also who had remained steadfast must enter into some sort of con- 
nection with the corporeal world, —not as though they were bound to 
do so, but because they chose to subject themselves to this connection, 
in order to subserve the good of the other fallen beings. Hence the 
more do they long for that period when, the end of the universal puri- 
fication having been attained, they too shall be released from this bur- 
densome service. Or perhaps— and the doctrine set forth in the work 
περὶ ἀρχῶν is certainly more favorable to this view of the matter — 
Origen considered these intelligences, not as those who had remained 
wholly unaffected by the general defection of the creaturely existence, 
but simply as those which had taken the least share in it, and which 


speculative elements, borrowed from other 


on the same general foundation, and with 
quarters, and derived from Christianity, 


his doctrine concerning the transfigured, 


ethereal bodies of the angels; τὰ τῶν dyyé- 
λων σώματα αἰϑέρια Kai αὐγοειδὲς φῶς. In 
Matth. T. XVII. § 80. And to the souls of 
the planets, he ascribes a σῶμα αἰϑέριον καὶ 
καϑαρώτατον. De orat.c. 7. In this case, 
we must, with Ritter, consider that mode of 
expression as a strictly scientific one, to 
which everything else in the sense of Origen 
should be referred. Where, on the other 
hand, he speaks of a production of matter 
which ensuedat some later period, it must be 
explained as a case in which he descends 
from the strictly scientific position, and ac- 
commodates himself toa more popular mode 
of thinking — leaves the position of the 
γνῶσις for that of the πίστις. But we very 
much doubt, whether we are warranted to 
ascribe to Origen a speculative theory of this 
sort, so rigidly carried out, and uniformly 
adhered to. We cannot believe there is 
any good reason for explaining all his asser- 
tions belonging to a later period, and seem- 
ing to contradict what is here affirmed, 
according to the theory set forth in the work 
περὶ ἀρχῶν; for it is plain, how —in the 
case of a man in whose mode of thinking 
VOL. I. 


came together — he might easily be led to 
retract, at some later period, many things 
which he had presented in this first essay 
at a speculative system of doctrines. In 
this work itself, he rather puts down the 
matter as problematical, than decides on it 
with confidence. In Joann. T. 1. § 17, — 
where indeed he also expresses himself, not 
in a positive manner, but in the form: dvay- 
kaiov ἐπιστῆσαι ei, —he distinguishes from 
every corporeal existence, even from every 
free connection with an organization of 
transfigured mould, an ἄῦλος πάντῃ καὶ ἀσώ- 
ματος ζωῆ, as the original one. And, in 
Joann. T. XIX. § 5, he opposes this later 
formed corporeal world to the κόσμος νοητός, 
subsisting alone: ᾿Αλλὰ καὶ ὁ δεικνύμενος 
κόσμος ὑλικὸς γενόμενος διὰ τοὺς δεηϑέντας 
τῆς ἐνύλου ζωῆς τόπους μὲν ἔχει διαφόρους, 
οἵτινες δὴ πάντες, ὡς μὲν πρὸς τὰ aA καὶ τὰ 
ἀσώματα, κάτω εἰσὶν, οὐ τόσον τῷ τόπῳ ὅσον 
τῇ πρὸς τὰ ἀόρατα συγκρίσει. And he says, 
that the formation of the κόσμος ἔνυλος; 15 de- 
scribed not without reason as a καταβολή. 
1 See above, p. 392. 
2 See e. g. de Martyr. § 7. 


626 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 


then, by virtue of this their direction of will, whereby, at least, they 
distinguished themselves from the rest, obtained this position in the uni- 
verse. But if this is his train of thought, Origen takes away from free 
will with one hand, what he gives to it with the other; for, in this 
case, the free will no longer constitutes the difference between the 
beings who persevered in goodness and those who fell from it, but only 
between those who deviated to a greater or to a less extent ; and moral 
evil appears in this case as something necessary in the creaturely ex- 
istence, — at least in a certain degree, —as a necessary point of tran- 
sition. 

We see before us only a fragment of the great course of the world, 
which embraces in it all moral diversities, together with all the conse- 
quences thence resulting, up toytheir entire removal at the general con- 
summation : —hence our defective, limited Theodicee.! 

From the doctrine of Origen it necessarily followed, that human 
souls were originally the same in kind with all higher spirits; that the 
difference between the former and the latter, and between the former 
compared with each other, proceeded only from a diversity in the moral 
bent of the will of the several individuals; that accordingly all souls 
are fallen heavenly beings. All consciousness in time, which moves be- 
tween the antithesis of subject and object, and the understanding which 
is directed to things finite, only grew out of the estrangement from 
that unity of the divine life, which is the life of immediate intuition ; 
and it is the soul’s destination that, after having become purified, it 
should rise once more to that life which consists in the pure, imme- 
diate intuition of God; or, since the life of the spirit was changed to a 
life of the soul by the quenching of that heavenly fire, that the soul 
should be once more transfigured into spirit.” 

His theory of the preéxistence of the soul is opposed to the doctrine 
of the Creationists, who taught that each individual soul is formed by 
an immediate creative act of God —a doctrine which seemed to him 
irreconcilable with the love and the justice of God, which extend equal- 
ly to all his creatures — and also to Tertullian’s traduction system — 
a doctrine which he regarded as too crass and sensual. ‘That he might 
hold on upon his peculiar speculative theory concerning the origin of 
souls without seeming to interfere with the doctrines of the church, he 
insisted, as he had done in defending his theory of a creation ante- 
cedent to the creation of this temporal world, that these were points 
which, by the church doctrine, had been left undecided. 

But on the doctrine concerning an adherent corruption of human 
nature, he could express himself precisely after the same manner with 
the teachers of the North-African church ; he could speak of ἃ mystery 
of the birth,! owing to which every individual that comes into the world 
needs purification ; and in defence of this he might appeal to the same 
texts of scripture which were adduced by others in support of the doc- 


1 Homil. IV. in Jes. § 1. ψυχὴ κατορϑωϑεῖσα γίνεται νοῦς. Π. apy. 
2 Tlapa τὴν ἀπόπτωσιν καὶ τὴν ψύξιν τὴν 1. 11. ο. 8. Compare the similar view of the © 
ἀπὸ τοῦ ζῇν τῷ πνεύματι γέγονεν ἡ νῦν yevo- Gnostics above. 
μένη ψυχῆ" νοῦς πῶς οὖν γέγονε ψυχὴ, καὶ ὃ Μυστήριον τῆς γενέσεως. 


ORIGEN. 627 
trine of original sin. He had only to trace this condition of human 
nature to another source ; namely, to the personal guilt of each fallen 
heavenly spirit, in an earlier state of existence. And consequently 
this corruption could not, according to Origen’s theory, be the same in 
all; but the degree of it depended on the degree of the earlier guilt. 
Although he considered Adam to be a true, historical person, yet he 
could regard him in no other light than as the first carnate soul which 
had fallen from the heavenly state of existence. Like the Gnostics, he 
must give a symbolical explanation to the narrative concerning Para- 
dise ; which he represented as the symbol of a higher spiritual world, 
Adam being the type of mankind at large, of all fallen souls.? 

In his work περὲ ἀρχῶν, Origen — agreeing here too with the Plato- 
nists and with many of the Gnostics—had admitted the doctrine, at 
least, as one which could not be directly disproved, that fallen souls 
might, through total degeneracy, smk down even to the bodies of 
brutes.2 But as his system differed essentially from the Neo-Platonic, 
in giving predominance to the moral, teleological point of view peculiar 
to Christianity, he must have been ultimately led, as this poimt of view 
became more clearly fixed im his mind, to reject altogether the doctrine 
of such a transmigration of souls, as being inconsistent with that end of 
purification which presupposes the continuance of conciousness.? His 
doctrine, answering to the ethzco-teleological point of view, concerning 
the process of the soul’s purification prosecuted to the result of its final 
restoration, forms rather the direct opposite to the hypothesis of a cir- 
cle of metempsychoses, which grew out of the predominant habit of judg- 
ing spiritual things after the analogy of Nature.‘ 

Origen, like the Gnostics, placed in man’s fallen nature three prin- 
ciples, the σαρκικόν, the ψυχικόν, and the πνευματικόν : and also supposed 
three different stages or positions of human nature corresponding to 
these principles. But he differed from them in one essential point. 
As he acknowledged all human souls to be the same in kind, so he held 
that each and every one of them is possessed of the same principles ; 
and consequently he represented the different stages as resulting, not 
from any original difference of natures, but from the predominance of 
some one or other of those principles occasioned by the different bent 
of the will. The spirit (πνεῦμα) is the highest element im man’s na- 
ture, that which is immediately divine, that whereby man is connected 
with a higher order of things —the organ through which alone he is 
capable of understanding divine things. It is not liable to be affected 
by sin, or to be corrupted or alloyed by anything foreign. Nothing 
evil, nothing but what is divine, can proceed from it.’ It can retire 


le. Cels. 1. IV. § 40: Οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός 
τίνος, ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους ταῦτα φάσκον- 
τος τοῦ ϑείου λόγου. It is reconcilable with 
this, that Origen, in speaking of Adam on 
other occasions, expressed himself wholly 
after the manner of the church, as in Joann. 

-I.§ 22; T. XIII. ὁ 34. He might un- 
derstand the language in his own sense, 
espceially in homilies, where the gnosis did 
not properly belong. Hom. XIV. in Jerem. 


2 See the Greek fragment 7. dpy. 1. I. 
Orig. ed. de la Rue T. I. f. 76. 

3 See c. Cels. 1. III. c. 76, 11. 16, in Jerem. 
where he speaks of metempsychosis in a 
parabolical sense, carefully guarding against 
the misconception which would arise from 
taking his language literally. 

4 [Von vorherrschender Naturanschauung 
ausgehenden Annahme.| 

5’ Averidextov TOV χειρόνων τὸ πνεῦμα. In 


Joann. T. XXXII. § 11. 


628 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 

wholly out of view and become dormant only through man’s guilt, — 
only where it is hindered from revealing itself and from acting by the 
predominance of sense, of the lower faculties of the soul, of the worldly 
temper. In what the Apostle Paul says concerning an opposition be- 
tween the works of the flesh and the works of the spirit, Origen finds a 
confirmation of his opinion — since he refers the latter tothe spirit in 
man, as contra-distinguished from the flesh, — the active principle in all 
that is good.1 The reaction of the inward presentiment of God and of 
conscience against ungodliness, he derives from this πνεῦμα, There is 
here revealed a commanding, judging, punishing power, superior to the 
soul itself.2 Those men in whom the soul surrenders itself entirely to 
the guidance of this πνεῦμα, those in whom this faculty is predomi- 
nant, are hence denominated spiritual men, πνευματικοί, 8 In the case 
of such, the true saints, the unity of the whole life is grounded on the 
fact of its being determined by this πνεῦμα, ---- this is the governing prin- 
ciple of their whole life. Living in the spirit, all they do and suffer 
proceeds from this —it is this which gives their conduct its true im- 
port and significancy.* From this point of view, Origen ought to have 
been led to see, — for it seems to lie at the basis of all that is here 
said, — that it is by this unity grounded in the godlike alone, the essence, 
the destination of human nature can find its completion, its fulfilment, 
— that the true end of man consists in this very thing. Yet he says, 
that where Paul Opposes the πνευματικός to the ψυχικός (} Cor. 2: 14, 
16,) he describes the latter only, and not the former, as men; —since 
man consists of body and soul, but the πνευματικός 15 more than man.® 
And this form of expression is not a mere isolated exaggeration, pos- 
sessing no farther significance in relation to the fundamental principles 
of his theology; but it stands closely connected with that ground-ten- 
dency described by us above, by virtue of which Origen, both in theory 
and in practice, was inclined to regard the godlike not as the truly hu- 
man element, but as something superhuman, — a tendency in which we 
recognized the reaction of a principle belonging to the old world,® 
which remained yet to be vanquished by Christianity. And connected 


1 Τὰ κάλλιστα καρποὶ λέγονται εἷναι τοῦ 
πνεύματος, οὐχ ὡς dv οἰηϑείη τις, τοῦ ἁγίου, 
ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου. 

2Τη his commentary on Romans, I. II. 
where Origen refers what Paul says con- 
cerning conscience to the workings of this 
πνεῦμα, he expresses himself, according to 
Jerome’s translation, as follows: Quia ergo 
tantam ejus video libertatem, que in bonis 
quidem gestis gaudeat semper et exsultet, 
in malis vero non arguatur, sed ipsam ani- 
mam, cui coheret, reprehendat et arguat, 
arbitror, quod ipse sit spiritus, qui ab apos- 
tolo esse cum animo dicitur, velut peda- 

gus et quidam sociatus et rector, ut eam 
de melioribus moneat vel de culpis castiget 
et arguat. Ed. Lomm. T. VI. p. 107. 

8 Οὐ κατὰ μετοχὴν ἐπικρατοῦσαν χρηματίζει 
ὁ πνευματικός. In Joann. T. II. § 15. 

4'Q¢e yap ὁ ἅγιος ζῇ πνεύματι, προκατάρ- 


χοντι τῶν ἐν τῷ ζῇν καὶ πάσης πράξεως καὶ 
εὐχῆς καὶ τοῦ πρὸς ϑεὸν ὕμνου, οὕτως πᾶν ὅ, τι 
ποτ᾽ ἂν ποιῇ, ποιεῖ πνεύματι, ἀλλὰ Kav πάσχῃ, 
πάσχει πνεύματι, In Joann. T. XXXII. § 11. 

5 Ἡμεῖς γὰρ ob μάτην αὐτόν [the Apostle 
Paul] φαμεν ἐπὶ Tov πνευματικοῦ μὴ προς- 
τεϑεικέναι τὸ ἄνϑρωπος, κρεῖττον γὰρ ἢ ἄν- 
ϑρωπος ὁ πνευματικὸς, τοῦ ἤτοι ἐν ψυχῇ ἢ ἐν 
σώματι ἢ ἐν συναμφοτέροις χαρακτηριζομένου" 
οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ τούτων ϑειοτέρῳ, πνεύματι; 
L. ¢. 'T. IL, § 15. 

6 Thus Aristotle (Ethic. Nicomach. X. 7) 
places the contemplative life as the divine, 
answering to the godlike in man, above the 
practical, which he considers to be the purely 
human: εἰ ϑεῖον ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὸν ἄνϑρωπον, 
καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοῦτον βίος ϑεῖος πρὸς τὸν ἀνϑρώ- 
πίνον βίον͵ and yet he says of the νοῦς : τοῦτο 
μάλιστα ἄνϑρωπος. 


ORIGEN. 629 
with this severance of the πνεῦμα from the ψυχῆ, as the purely human 
element, is his doctrine, that those in whom the ψυχῆ surrendered itself 
to the guidance of the πνεῦμα, would persevere in the unity of this exist- 
ence animated by the πνεῦμα, and rise in the perfected state of their 
essence, when thoroughly penetrated by the πνεῦμα, to a higher life δὲ 
ter death ; but those in whom the ψυχῆ always resisted the πνεῦμα, would 
after death be forsaken by the latter, which would return to God from 
whom it came, while they themselves, separated from the πνεῦμα, would 
be given up to woe ;1—a doctrine which it is very difficult to reconcile 
with Origen’s idea of a purifying process going on after death, and of 
the universal restoration as the final end of all things. For the rest, 
he ascribed to this πνεῦμα --- as we might presume he would do, from his 
idea, already unfolded, respecting the relation of the rational being to 
God, —no autonomy —no independent self-subsistence, but regarded it 
as the organ destined to receive into itself and to represent the workings 
of the Divine Spirit. The πνεῦμα in man can be active, according to his 
doctrine, only by being connected with the Divine Spirit.” 

As Origen, then, supposed a threefold division of human nature, so 
he distinguished three different stages of moral development; accord- 
ing as the πνεῦμα, the ψυχῆ, or the σάρξ, predominated. The second stage, 
where the personal J, estranged from God, is uppermost, and at the 
same time there may be a certain dominion over sense, — where the 
soul follows its egoistic inclinations, — is the stage of a certain merely 
worldly cultivation, of an intelligent Egoism, where no enthusiasm for 
moral goodness impels the man, nor yet does moral eyil break out into 
any rude expressions,— where the man, as Origen expresses it, is 
neither cold nor hot. This stage does, it is true, in itself considered, 
hold the middle place between the two others; yet it might be asked, 
from which point the way is easiest to attain the divine life. Origen 
brings up the question, whether the σαρκικός (the carnal man) might not 
be more easily led than the ψυχικός (the spiritual man) to conviction of 
sin, and thereby to true conversion.2 Connected with this is Origen’s 
idea, that as a wise physician will sometimes call forth the elements of 
disease lurking in the body, and by means of his art cause other disor- 
ders to arise, that so these elements of disease which threatened to de- 
stroy the entire organism may be expelled; so God places men in 
situations where the evil lurking in their nature is called forth to open 
activity, in order that they may be thus brought to the consciousness 
of their moral disorder, and of its destructive effects, and so be the 
more easily and radically healed. In this sense, he explains the 


1 We can here cite passages only from 
works which have been preserved to us in 
Latin translations; the fidelity of which, 
however, on these points, we have no reason 
to suspect. Conimentar. ep. ad Rom. 1. II. 
c. 9, p. 108, ed. Lomm. Hie ipse spiritus 
est, qui cohxret animabus justorum. Si 
vero inobediens ei anima et contumax fuerit, 
dividetur ab ea post excessum. Commen- 
tar. series in Matth. c. 62, T. IV. p. 352, ed. 
Lomm. 

53" 


2Tn Matt. T. XIII. § 2: Ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ πνεῦμα, κἂν ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ, παρὰ τὸ πνεῦμα 
ἑκάστου ἀνϑρώπου τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ; which latter 
he here also distinguishes from the ψυχῆ. 

8 Περὶ ἀρχῶν, 1. IIL. ο. 4. 

4 See de orat. c. 29, and the fragment of the 
commentary on Exod. c. 10: 27 ; in the 26th 
chapter of the φιλοκαλία, and in the 2d vol. ed. 
dela Rue, f. 111. “Ὥσπερ ἐπί τινων σωματικῶν 
παϑημάτων, εἰς βάϑος τοῦ, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, 
κεχωρηκότος κακοῦ, ὁ ἰατρὸς εἰς τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν 


630 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 


scriptural expression, God hardens the heart, and others of the like 
import. 

Regarding the self-determination of the creaturely free will as: the 
original ground of all the diversities existing among rational beings, 
Origen supposed it was likewise this which conditions the whole subse- 
quent process of purification and development, including all the stadia 
up to the final goal of the restoration.1 Accordingly, it is with him an 
important point to define the notions of God’s foreknowledge, and of 
predestination as contradistinguished from the doctrine of an εἱμαρμένη, 
or of an unconditional necessity. He teaches, that God arranged the 

lan of the universe after having taken into view all the different bents 
of will, and all the possibilities of which they were the condition.2 He 
distinguishes, in moral evil, an objective and a subjective necessity. 
Although moral evil, when it once exists, must exhibit itself in certain 
determinate forms, yet it is not therefore necessary that this or that 
determinate evil should be brought about by this or that particular 
individual.® 

It must be quite clear already, from the exposition of Origen’s doc- 
trine respecting the relation of the spiritual world to God, and of the 
spirit (πνεῦμα ) in man to the Holy Spirit, (πνεῦμα ἅγιον, how grace and 
free will are, in his system, made to harmonize with each other. In 
conformity with this, he says: ‘‘As the good thrift of husbandry re- 
quires the coming together of two factors, the husbandman’s own activi- 
ty and the blessing of God; so, in order to goodness in rational beings, 
there must be their own free will and the power of God, to uphold the 
good purpose. But our own free will and the divine assistance are 
both necessary, not only to become good, but also in order to perseve- 
rance in virtue, when once attained ;— since even the perfect man 
would fall, if he became proud of his goodness, and ascribed it to him- 
self, —if he failed to give the honor which is due, to Him who bestowed 
on him all by which he was chiefly enabled both to attain to virtue, and 
to persevere in it.° 

It may be gathered, then, from what has offered itself to our notice 
as the views held in common by all in the Anthropology of this period, 
that not only—as was the case also among the Gnostics — the 
acknowledgment of a Redeemer found its point of attachment in the 
universally expressed need of redemption, but that also — which consti- 
tuted the difference between the church and the Gnostic Anthropology 
—human nature was on no side supposed to be so beset with moral 
evil, as to exclude the possibility of a complete appropriation of it by 
the Redeemer. Hence, from the very first, the church consciousness 
developed itself in antagonism with Docetism under all its forms and 


διά τίνων φαρμάκων ἔλκει καὶ ἐπισπᾶται τὴν 2 See the commentary on Genesis. 


ὕλην, φλεγμονὰς χαλεπὰς ἐμποιῶν καὶ διοιδῆ- 8 ᾿Ανάγκη ἐστὶ, ταῦτα ἐλϑεῖν, οὐκ ἀνάγκη 
σεις καί πόνους πλείονας ὧν εἶχε τις, οὕτως δὲ διὰ τοῦδέ τίνος. In Matth. T. XIII. § 22. 
οἶμαι καὶ τὸν ϑεὸν οἰκονομεῖν τὴν κρύφιον 4 Πρὸ τοῦ λογικοῦ ἀγαϑὸν μικτόν ἐστιν ἔκ TE 
κακίαν εἰς τὸ βάϑος κεχωρηκυίαν τῆς ψυχῆς. τῆς προαιρέσεως αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς συμπνεούσης 
T. VIII. p. 305, ed. Lomm. ϑείας δυνάμεως τῷ TA κάλλιστα προελομένῳ. 
1 Τὸν ϑεὸν ἑκάστην οἰκονομεῖν ψυχὴν, ἀφο- 5 From the commentary on ¥. IV. Philo- 


ρῶντα εἰς τὴν ἀΐδιον αὐτῆς ζωὴν, ἀεὶ ἔχουσαν cal. c. 34. Ed. Lomm. T. XI. p. 450. 
τὸ αὐτεξούσιον. De orat. § 29. 


ORIGEN. TERTULLIAN. 631 


degrees. Thus this anti-Docetic tendency is strongly marked in such 
passages of the epistles ascribed to Ignatius, as, by their stamp of an- 
tiquity, form a decided contrast to the prevailing tone of these letters. 
It is here said of the Docete, in an original way: ‘‘ They who would 
make nothing but a spectre of Christ, are themselves like spectres — 
spectral men.”! And Tertullian says to the Docete: “ How is it, 
that yeu make the half of Christ a lie? He was all truth.”? ‘ You 
are offended,” says he in another place,® ‘“ when the child is nourished 
and fondled in the uncleanliness of its swaddling-clothes. This rever- 
ence shown to nature you despise — and how were you born yourself? 
Christ, at least, loved man in this condition. For his sake, he came 
down from above; for his sake, he submitted to every sort of degrada- 
tion, to death itself. In loving man, he loved even his birth, even his 
flesh.”’ 

In opposition no less to Docetism, which objected to Christ in the 
form of a servant, which would receive only a glorified Christ, than to 
the esthetic Paganism, which idolized the beautiful,* the person of our 
Saviour was represented as being without form or comeliness, as that 
of one whose outward appearance contradicted the glory within ;— a 
notion which was based partly on a passage in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, 
too literally understood, and partly on misinterpreted passages in the 
gospels. Tertullian says:° ‘This was the very thing which excited 
men’s wonder as to everything else in him, when they said, Whence 
hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? The exclamation 
comes from men who thought they might despise his form.”’ ® 

If we here compare Tertullian with the Alexandrians, we see at once 
the great advantage which the former, from deriving everything solely 
from his own Christian consciousness, possessed over the latter, with 
whose notions other elements of a foreign culture had been blended. 
His characteristic trait was that of a vigorous, Christian realism. We 
have remarked already, in contemplating the Gnostic systems, what a 
close connection subsisted between the peculiar essence of the Christian 
system of morals, and the views entertained concerning the person and 
life of Christ. The intuition of Christ’s life was destined to give birth 
to a new ethical standard, — from this was to proceed forth the pecu- 
lar principle of the Christian system of morals. But in those cases 
where the ethical principle itself was adulterated by the influence of 
other standards conjoined with the Christian, this corruption reacted 
also on the views entertained concerning the person and life of Christ ; 
—as we have seen, indeed, in the case of the Gnostics;—and the 
same thing may be remarked in the case of Clement of Alexandria. 
Founding his judgment on that moral system which demanded an abso- 
lute estrangement from all human feelings, and which made Neo-Pla- 
tonic philosophers, and other ascetics of that period, ashamed of their 


1 Αὐτοὶ τὸ δοκεῖν ὄντες ἀσώματοι καὶ dat- _— * See vol. I. the Introduction. 
uovixot. Ep. ad Smyrn. § 2. 5 De carne Christi, c. 9. 

2 Quid dimidias mendacio Christum 1 6 Nec humane honestatis corpus fuit, ne- 
Totus veritas fuit. De carne Christi,¢.5. dum ccelestis claritatis. q 


81, ς. 6. 14. 


632 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 
own bodies, he was incapable of understanding the revelation of the 
divine life in the purely human form, as it was presented in the person 
of Christ. Instead of the purely human character, he was for the super- 
human. Christ was to represent the Ideal of estrangement from sense, 
of a life wholly independent of sense ; not to be affected by sensuous im- 
pressions ; by wants, as hunger and thirst, by feelings of pain, by agreeable 
or disagreeable sensations —the ideal of a perfect ἀπάϑεια, As the 
Logos became man, he must, in his essence, be superior to such things ; 
and so the genuine Gnostic, in imitation of him, should strive, by the 
efforts of his will, to attain to a similar apathy. He says character- 
istically: ‘It would be absurd to suppose, that in the case of our Sa- 
viour, the body, as such, required the necessary services for its support ; 
he ate, not for the body’s sake, for this was preserved by a holy power.’” 
Now this principle might have led him to a Docetism of his own. The 
contemplation of Christ, as he is presented in the gospel history, exer- 
cised, however, too great a power over him, — the historical truth was 
a thing of too much weight with him, to allow him to settle down on 
any such position as that. He would only say, that Christ was not, by 
any necessity of nature, subjected to those various wants and affections, 
—but subjected himself to them of his own free choice, out of volun- 
tary condescension for the well-being of man ;— to give a proof of the 
reality of his human nature, so that no room nor pretext might be left 
for Docetism.2, We must, however, do Clement the justice to acknowl- 
edge, that, along with this distempered element, there was much which 
was sound and healthy in his ethical tendencies, as they were influenced 
by his contemplation of the life of Christ? —as, for instance, when in 
another place, speaking against the ascetic contempt of the body, he 
says Christ would not with the health of the soul have restored that of 
the body also, if there ought to be any enmity between the body and 
the soul.4 

With this tendency of Clement, which caused him to overlook the 
purely human element in Christ, the other, which led him, by his exag- 
gerated notions of the servant-form, to imagine that Christ possessed an 
uncomely person, might seem to stand in direct contradiction ; — and 
undoubtedly he never would have arrived at any such view himself; 
but, transmitted to him by the church tradition, he contrived to bring it 
into harmony with his own peculiar bent of mind and habits of think- 
ing, by applying it in the following manner: — that, since the Godlike 
presents itself in this mean, uncomely shape, men should be led there- 
by to despise sensuous beauty, to soar by spiritual contemplation from 
the sensuous to the Godlike, which is exalted above all that partakes 


1’Ent τοῦ σωτῆρος τὸ σῶμα ἀπαιτεῖν ὡς 
σῶμα τὰς ἀναγκαίας ὑπηρεσίας εἰς διαμονὴν 
Mi ἂν εἴη, ἔφαγεν yap ob διὰ τὸ σῶμα, 
δυνάμιι συνεχόμενον ἁγίᾳ. ϑίτοτῃ.]. VI. f. 649. 

2 Accordingly he says of Christ: “Amag 
ἁπλῶς ἀπαϑὴς hv, εἰς ὃν οὐδὲν παρειςδύεται 
κίνημα παϑητικὸν, οὔτε ἡδονὴ οὔτε λύπη. 

ὃ Compare the remarks in vol. I. p. 279, 
on the reaction of the Christian spirit in 


Clement, against a one-sided ascetic ten- 
dency. 

4 Οὐκ ἂν δὲ, εἰ ἔχϑρα ἡ σάρξ ἣν τῆς ψυχῆς, 
ἐπετείχιζεν αὐτῇ τὴν ἐχϑρὰν δὶ ὑγιείας ἐπι- 
σκιάζων (probably itshould read, according 
to Hervet’s emendation, σκευάζων) ; he would 
not have taken the hostile σάρξ under his 
protection. Strom. |. IIL. f. 460. 


CLEMENT. ORIGEN. 638 
of sense.1_ No one should be misled to admire the beautiful form, and 
so give less heed to the substance of Christ’s discourses.” 

This view of Christ’s person, as one who appeared in the form of a 
servant, took a different shape with Origen, so as to harmonize with the 
whole connection of his system. We have stated on a former page, 
how his doctrine of the different stages in Christianity was connected 
with his idea of the different forms of manifestation of the divine Logos. 
The Logos becomes all things to all, in a still higher sense than that in 
which Paul would say this of himself; and this Origen applied also to 
Christ’s temporal appearance. He becomes all things to all men, ap- 
pears to them in different forms, suited to their recipiency. To some 
he reveals himself in his glory, in a celestial light which spreads from 
himself to his word; so that now, for the first time, after havmg come 
to the knowledge of Christ himself in this higher way, they can under- 
stand it in the plenitude of its meaning, — nay, in a light which re- 
flects itself back even on the Old Testament, which now becomes trans- 
figured in its relation to Christ become known in his glory. ‘To others 
he appears only in the form of a servant, as one without form and come- 
liness — namely, to those who are unable to elevate themselves, beyond 
the temporal appearance, to the contemplation of the Logos revealing 
himself in it. Accordingly, the Christ of the transfiguration and the 
Christ without form or comeliness, as men were used to represent him, 
would be nothing other than designations of two different ways — de- 
pending on the recipiency of the subject — of contemplating one and 
the same Christ, whom all were not in a condition to know in his divine 
exaltation. Thus to him it must have appeared necessary that the mass 
of believers should frame to themselves the conception of Christ, as of 
one who appeared without form or comeliness. Their whole view of 
Christ and Christianity, which, at the position they occupied, could be 
none other than it was, reflected itself under this particular form. And 
accordingly he could have considered the transfiguration of Christ in 
no other light than as a symbol of that higher form of beholding, in 
which Christ presented himself to his more advanced disciples.4 But 
if he regarded particular facts as symbols of universal ideas, or of a 
general stadium in the evolution of the spiritual life, yet he by no means 
denied, in so doing, the objective reality of such facts, which at the same 


1 The words of Clement respecting Christ 
are: Ἔν σαρκὶ μὲν ἀειδὴς (as the reading, 
beyond all doubt, should be, as may be 
gathered from the following context, and 
from the allusion to Isa. 53:2) διελήλυϑεν 
καὶ ἄμορφος, εἰς τὸ ἀειδὲς καὶ ἀσώματον τῆς 
ϑείας αἰτίας ἀποβλέπειν ἡμᾶς διδάσκων. 
Strom. |. III. f. 470. 

2 Οὐ μάτην ἠϑέλησεν εὐτελεῖ χρήσασϑαι 
σώματος μορφῇ, ἵνα μῆ τις τὸ ὡραῖον ἐπαινῶν 
καὶ τὸ κάλλος ϑαυμάζων, ἀφίστηται τῶν λε- 
γομένων καὶ τοῖς καταλειπομένοις (this latter 
word offers here no good sense. It can 
neither mean, — what should be left behind, 
nor what has been left behind. I have scarcely 
a doubt that the correct reading is κατα- 


βλεπομένοις. Moreover, the composition with 
kata has a force in this connection — the 
looking downward to the object of sense, 
instead of upward — ἄνω βλέπειν πρὸς τὰ 
νοητὰ) TPOCAVEXWY, ἀποτέμνηται TOV νοητῶν. 
Strom. 1. VI. f. 690. 

8 Ὁ σωτὴρ μᾶλλον ἸΤαύλου τοῖς πᾶσι πάντα 
γενόμενος, ἵνα τοὺς πάντας κερδήσῃ. In 
Joann. T. XX. § 28; and, in respect to the 
two-fold μορφῇ in which Christ appeared, in 
Matt. T. XII. § 37. 

4 See c. Cels. |. 1V. c. 16, where he says 
of those who received the account of Christ’s 
transfiguration too literally and sensuously ; 
Μὴ vonoavres τὰς ὡς ἐν ἱστορίαις λεγομένας 
μεταβολὰς ἢ μεταμορφώσεις Tov ᾿Ιησοῦ. 


634 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 

time answered to a more universal idea ---- and accordingly that more 
general view of the transfiguration of Christ in no wise precluded its 
historical reality. As Origen was prone to explain away the objective 
into the subjective, so, on the other hand, was he inclined to represent 
the subjective as something objective, — of which we have seen many 
examples. And thus it happened, that the profound idea-of the neces- 
sarily manifold gradations in the views entertained of Christ, were ob- 
jectively represented by him, as so many different forms which Christ 
assumed in relation to the different positions held by the men with 
whom he had intercourse. As the manifoldness of the forms of revela- 
tion (μορφαΐ) in which he presents himself to the spiritual world, be- 
longs to the essential character of the Logos, so Christ mirrored forth, 
in this respect also, the activity of the Logos himself in his own tempo- 
ral appearance. It pertains to his peculiar and essential character, 
that he had no unchangeable, determinate form; but appeared, accord- 
ing to the different characters of men, to some in the lower form of a 
servant ; — to others, divested of this form, and in a shape of light, in 
affinity with his godlike nature. Thus Origen explained to himself the 
fact of the transfiguration, and several other appearances in the gospel 
history. The whole view was closely connected with his notions of the 
stuff lying at the ground of the corporeal world, as something indeter- 
minate, and which could run through various metamorphoses from the 
higher to the lower.” 

The complete victory over Docetism implied the complete recognition 
of the purely human nature in Christ; and this could not be separated 
from the supposition that he possessed a human soul. Yet this particu- 
lar point did not immediately stand forth clearly developed in the dog- 
matic consciousness. In the first place it was only the two conceptions, 
the λόγος in his essential divinity, and the σάρξ, from which all the human 
characteristics proceeded, which were clearly separated and distin- 
guished. ‘True, men must necessarily have been driven, if they were 
disposed to carry through the identity in Christ’s person with the hu- 
man nature, to ascribe to him ἃ soul, also, with human feelings ; but 
still all this, as we see in the example of Irenzeus, was referred back 
simply to the σάρξ, the flesh taken from the earth. Although this 
same father says, that Christ gave his own body for our body, and his 
own ψυχή for our ψυχῆ; and we are constrained, in this distinction, to 


1¢, Cels. 1. VI. Ἂς. 77: Τὸ παραλλάττον τοῦ 
σώματος αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοῖς ὁρῶσι δυνατὸν καὶ 
διὰ τοῦτο χρήσιμον, τοιοῦτο φαινόμενον, ὁποῖον 
ἔδει ἑκάστῳ βλέπεισϑαι. This is applied to 
the transfiguration, of which he directly says: 
Ἔχει τι καὶ μυστικὸν ὁ λόγος, ἀπαγγέλλων τὰς 
τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ διαφόρους μορφὰς ἀναφέρεσϑαι ἐπὶ 
τὴν τοῦ ϑείου λόγου φύσιν, in the sense 
already expounded. In perfect harmony 
with this is the passage which has been pre- 
served to us only in the Latin translation: 
Quoniam non solum dus forms in eo fue- 
runt, una quidem, secundum quam omnes 
eum videbant, altera autem secundum quam 


transfiguratus est coram discipulis in monte, 
sed etiam unicuique apparebat secundum 
quod fuerat dignus. _Commentar. Series 
in Matth. ὁ 100. Ed. Lomm. T. IV. p. 446. 

2 Οὐ ϑαυμαστὸν τὴν φύσει τρεπτὴν Kal 
ἀλλοιωτὴν καὶ πάσης ποιότητος, ἣν ὁ τεχνίτης 
βούλεται δεκτικὴν ὁτὲ μὲν ἔχειν ποιότητα, Kad? 
ἣν λέγεται τὸ" οὐκ εἶχεν εἶδος οὐδὲ κάλλος, 
ὁτὲ δὲ οὕτως ἔνδοξον καὶ καταπληκτικὴν καὶ 
ϑαυμαστὴν, ὡς ἐπὶ πρόσωπον πεσεῖν τοὺς 
ϑεατάς. 6. Cels. 1. VI. § 77. 

8 The emotions excited at the approach 
of death are classed under the σύμβολα σαρ- 
κὸς τῆς ἀπὸ γῆς εἰλημμένης. Lib. IIL. ¢. 22. 


ORIGEN. TERTULLIAN. 635 
understand by the term ψυχῆ, not life, but the soul;! yet he at least 
makes no farther use of this distinction, in other cases, where he speaks 
of Christ as man. Justin seems to have applied the common trichoto- 
my of man’s nature to Christ, with the following modification: Christ, 
as the God-man, consisted, like every other man, of three parts; the 
body, the animal soul, (the lower principle of life,) and the thinking 
reason ; but with this difference, that in him the place of the fallible 
human reason, which is but aray of the divine reason, of the Aéyor,? was 
represented by the universal divine reason,* by the λόγος itself: 5 hence 
it was in Christianity alone that the universal revelation of religious 
truth, a revelation not disturbed by partial, one-sided representation, 
would be given.° 

Tertullian was the first to express distinctly and clearly the doctrine, 
that Christ possessed a proper human soul; having been led to this by 
the views which he entertained in general concerning the relation of 
the soul to the body, and by the tendency of his controversial writings, 
relating to the doctrine of the person of Christ in particular. He did 
not hold, like others, to the three parts of human nature mentioned 
above, but supposed it to consist of only two parts. He affirmed that 
it was not a mere animal soul, distinct from the reasonable soul in man, 
which was to be considered as the animating principle of the body ; but. 
that, in all living things, there is but one animating essence, although 
this, in the human nature, is endued with superior powers; that the 
thinking soul itself, therefore, is the animating principle of the human 
body.® If Tertullian, then, conceived of but one soul, as the medium 
between the divine Logos and the body of Christ, he must necessarily 
have conceived of it as a reasonable human soul in the proper sense. 
Again, he was engaged in controversy with a Valentinian sect, who 
taught that Christ, instead of veiling his soul in a gross material body, 
so modified the ψυχή itself that it could, like the body, be visible to men 
under the dominion of sense. Against these he maintained, that it 
was necessary to distinguish, in the person of Christ, as in the case of 
every man, soul and body, and what belongs to both; that Christ, in 
order to redeem men, was under the necessity of uniting to himself a 
soul of that kind which belongs peculiarly to man ;— and so much the 
more, as the soul constitutes man’s proper essence.’ 

But still greater than the influence of Tertullian was that of the sys- 
tematizing intellect and the conciliatory, apologetic bent of Origen, in 


1 See the words of Irenzus, |. V. c. 1. § 1: 
Τῷ ἰδίῳ αἵματι λυτρωσαμένου ἡμᾶς τοῦ κυρίου 
καὶ δόντος τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἡμετέρων 

υχῶν καὶ τὴν σάρκα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀντὶ τῶν 
ἡμετέρων σαρκῶν. As the thought here is, 
that Christ surrendered to Satan — who 
claimed a power over man’s soul and body 
— his own body, as a ransom for the men 
whom he held captive, the word here can 
hardly be understood otherwise than of the 
human soul. 
2 The σπέρμα λογικόν, the λόγος σπερματι- 
, the λόγος κατὰ μέρος. 
8 Λογικὸν τὸ ὅλον. 


La 


4 Apolog. II. § 10. One might be led to 
suspect, however, that the words, καὶ σῶμα 
καὶ λόγον Kai ψυχῆν, are the interpolation of 
a some later hand, who would make Justin 
orthodox on this article, since this precise 
definition occurs in Justin’s writings nowhere 
else, and stands here not exactly in its 
proper place. But we must admit, that the 
first reason is of little force, and the second 
of none at all in the case of such a writer.as 
Justin. 

5 Justin is, in time, before Apollinaris. 

6 De anima, c. 12. 

7 De carne Christi, c. 11, and onwards. 


636 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 


unfolding and establishing this doctrine in the church system of faith. 
He did not proceed here upon speculative principles, but upon an analogy 
drawn from the Christian consciousness. As the divine life in believers 
leads back to Christ as its original source, he endeavored to illustrate 
the union of the Logos with the human nature in Christ by the analogy 
of the union between Christ and believers. If believers, as Paul says, 
become of one spirit with the Lord, this is in a far higher sense the 
case with that soul which the Logos bad taken into indissoluble 
union with himself. According to the theory of Origen, it is in truth 
the soul’s original destination to surrender itself wholly to the Logos, 
and, by virtue of its communion with him, to live wholly in the divine 
element. Now that which, in the case of other souls, is found to be 
true only in the highest moments of the inner life, —namely, that they 
pass wholly ito union with the divine Logos, lose themselves com- 
pletely in the intuition of God, — was in the case of that soul a continu- 
ous and uninterrupted act, so that its entire life rose to the communion 
with the Logos: — it became wholly transformed into a divine being.! 

As Origen, again, distinguished, in every man,” the spirit (πνεῦμα) 
from the soul (ψυχῇ) in the more limited sense of, the word, so too he 
applied this distinction to the human nature of Christ.2 Human nature 
in general attains to a moral perfection just in proportion as everything 
in it is determined by the spiritual principle (the πνεῦμα) ; but this has 
been completely and perfectly realized only by Christ. ‘If this is so 
in the case of every holy man, how much more must we affirm it of 
Jesus, the forerunner and pattern of all saints, in whose case, when he 
assumed the entire human nature, the πνεῦμα was the moving spring of all 
the rest of the man! 

But, as we have said, it was a leading point in the system of Origen, 
that in the spiritual world everything depends on the moral bent of the 
will. Τὸ this general law in the divine order of the world, he could not 
allow that this highest dignity to which any soul had attained, formed 
any exception. ‘That soul had merited, by the true bent of its will, by 
the love whereby it had remained constantly united with the divine 
Logos, to become, in the manner above described, wholly one with him, 
wholly divine. He explained the words in Ps. 45: 5, as referring to 
such a fusion of this soul-with the Logos, deserved by its bent of will. 

But here arises a question of some importance in its bearing on the 


1 Οὐ μόνον κοινωνία ἀλλ᾽ ἕνωσις καὶ ἀνά- 
κρασις, τῆς ἐκείνου ϑεότητος κεκοινωνηκέναι, 
εἰς ϑεὸν μεταβεβηκέναι. 

2 See above. 


altogether foreign; viz. the “ ἐταράχϑη τῷ 
πνεύματι." John 13: 21. 

6 1, apy. 1. II. ὁ, δ. .c, Cela. LIL Ὁ. 
1. ΤΙ. 6.41. In Joann. T.1.§30; T. XTX. 


8 See above. 

4 In Joann. T, XXXIL.§ 11: Od τὸ πνεῦμα 
τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου ἐν TO ἀνειληφέναι αὐτὸν ὅλον 
ἄνϑρωπον τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ διέσεισε τὰ λοιπὰ ἐν 
αὐτῷ ἀνϑρώπινα. A dogmatico-ethical re- 
mark ; but which Origen — as often happens 
with him, in introducing his own doctrinal 
and speculative distinctions into the scrip- 
tures — would base upon a text, from which, 
according to the verbal sense, the remark is 


§ 5, where he says, quite in the Platonic 
manner: Ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ἐμπολιτευομένη 
τῷ ὅλῳ κόσμῳ éxeivw —the κόσμος νοητὸς, 
τῶν ἰδέων, synonymous with the νοῦς or the 
λόγος itself —xai πάντα αὐτὸν ἐμπεριερχομένη 
καὶ χειραγωγούσα ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τοὺς μαϑητευομέ- 
νους. In Joann. Τ. XX. § 17; T. III. opp. 
ed. de la Rue, f. 226. In Matth. f. 344 et 
423; T. XIIL § 26; T. XVI. ὁ 8. Com- 
mentar. ep. ad. Rom. lib. I. T. V. p. 250, ed. 
Lomm. In Jerem. Hom. XV. § 6. 


ORIGEN. . 637 
system of Origen. Had the intelligence which was taken into such 
indissoluble fellowship with the Logos, been affected by the general de- 
fection and fall of the creature; and did it differ from all the intelli- 
gences which had in some way departed from that original unity, only 
by the circumstance that, in surrendering itself to the divine Logos, the 
universal Redeemer, it had become not only freed from all the conse- 
quences of that defection, but elevated to a still higher unity with God 
than it possessed before, a unity which precluded the possibility of any 
future separation? Or did this intelligence have no part whatever in 
the defection of the others? Was it secured against this defection by 
the steadfast perseverance of its fellowship with the Logos; and by the 
same means did the divine life, which it first received into itself by the 
bent of its will, pass wholly into its essence? If the latter is assumed 
to be according to the spirit and sense of Origen, an important conse- 
quence would follow in relation to his principle of creaturely mutability. 
It would be evident, that he did not hold the defection from the original 
unity to be an absolutely necessary transition-link in all creaturely de- 
velopment; for at least the example of this one intelligence would be 
evidence to the contrary. 

Now when we reflect, that, according to Origin’s theory, the νοῦς 
became ψυχή first by the fall, we see no reason, especially as he is care- 
ful to distinguish, even in Christ, between the πνεῦμα and the ψυχή, why we 
are not warranted, according to his theory, to apply this principle also 
to the soul which, by its steadfast bent of will, had attained to that in- 
dissoluble union with the Logos. We must suppose, then, that as the 
spirit first became soul by its defection from the original unity, and the 
end of the recovery is that the souls, returning back to the original 
unity, should once more become divested of their psychical being and 
thoroughly penetrated with the pure life of the spirit,|}—so this par- 
ticular soul had, before all others, and in a higher manner than all others, 
already attained to this end, and hence would become the mediatory in- 
strument of conducting all other fallen souls to the same end. But it is 
nevertheless impossible to retain this view of the matter, consistently 
with the sense and spirit of Origen. For in this case it would all along 
be presupposed, that what in Christ is denominated a soul, is not a soul 
in the proper sense. We must all along assume, that the soul in Christ, 
which had returned back to the pure being of the νοῦς, had made itself 
like to the fallen souls, only in order to their recovery, — had appro- 
priated to itself an outward veil of psychical being, and entered into the 
contracted sphere and divided being of the psychical life, for the pur- 
pose of conducting it back again to that higher unity. And in truth 
we might find some confirmation of this view in the language of Ori- 
gen.2_ But when we have once assumed the necessity of such a pro- 


1 Οὐκέτι μένει ψυχὴ ἡ σωϑεῖσα ψυχῆ. ---- 2 Taya γὰρ ἡ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ψυχὴ ἐν τῇ ἑαυτῆς 
ἔσται͵ ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται ψυχῆ. De princip. 1. II. τυγχάνουσα τελειότητι ἐν ϑεῷ καὶ τῷ πληρώ- 
6. 8, ὁ 3. So he says. as an encouragement ματι ἣν εκεῖϑεν ἐξεληλυϑυῖα, τῷ ἀπεστώλϑαι 
to martyrdom: Εἰ ϑέλομεν ἡμῶν σῶσαι τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς, ἀνέλαβε τὸ ἐκ τῆς Μαρίας 
ψυχὴν, ἵνα αὐτὴν ἀπολάβωμεν κρείττονα σῶμα. In Joann. T. XX. § 18. 
ψυχῆς, μαρτυρίῳ ἀπολέσωμεν αὐτὴν. Ad 
Martyr. § 12. 

VOL. I. 54 


638 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 


cedure in the case of the soul of Christ, which had returned back to 
the pure life of the spirit, the reason grounded in the connection of Ori- 
gen’s ideas immediately disappears, which compelled us to suppose that 
the intelligence which the Logos had received into such a fellowship 
with himself, must also have shared in the general defection of the crea- 
ture. It is evident now, that Origen might have so conceived the mat- 
ter, as to suppose this intelligence to be one which from the beginning 
had not become a soul by falling, but which had only assimilated itself 
to the fallen souls by a voluntary humiliation. We should thus be forced 
to the other view, which in many respects would better harmonize with 
the system of Origen. It would now be quite consistent that this intel- 
ligence, which had ever persevered in the original unity, should, on this 
very account, deserve to be appropriated by the Logos, as an organ 
indissolubly united with himself, for the purpose of extending the re- 
demption, which it did not need itself, to other beings who were in need 
of it. This view is confirmed when we find Origen distinguishing this 
intelligence above all others, as one which from the beginning of the cre- 
ation had ever remained inseparably united with the Logos, — where, to 
be sure, we must understand by the creation, the original one, and not that 
which was first occasioned by the fall. Accordingly, he could designate 
this spirit as one which, free from all contact with the corporeal world, ever 
lived in the contemplation of the intelligible world, (the κόσμος νοητός, 
the latter being identical with the Logos ;? for with the defection from 
the original unity, is also supposed, according to Origen’s doctrine, some 
contact or other with the corporeal world. Thus Christ might be said 
to be without sin, in a sense in which no other creature could, since that 
intelligence had never been touched by evil.2 Although, by virtue of 
the creaturely mutable will, it was, like all others, subject to be tempted 
to evil, yet since it stood this test where the others fell, it attained, by 
its unalterable submission to the Logos, to a divine life exalted above 
all temptation to evil; and what was originally the work of its free will, 
now became a second nature.* Yet Origen, in saying this, meant by no 
means to assert, that the soul, when arrived at such an immutable state 
of the divine life, dispensed with the free will belonging to its own 
essence ; for so indeed, as must certainly. have been his opinion on the 
principles he held, this essence would itself be annihilated. He as- 


1 Ab initio creature et deinceps insepara- 
biliter ei inherens. De princip. 1. 11. ο. 5. 


§ 3. 

2 In Joann. T. XTX. ὁ 5; ed Lomm. T. 
II. p. 188. 

8 Τῇ Joann. T. XX. § 25. 

4 Quod in arbitrio erat positum, longi usus 
affectu jam versum in naturam. De prin- 
cipiis, 1. II. ο. 5, § 5. We may now refer 
also to those words of Origen, in -which he 
expressly guards against a conclusion which 
possibly might be drawn from his doctrine ; 
viz. that every rational creature must neces- 
sarily, at some time or other, succumb to the 
temptation to sin. Sed non continuo, quia 
dicimus, nullam esse creaturam, que non 
possit recipere malum, idcirco confirmamur, 


omnem naturam recepisse malum, id est 
malam effectam. L.c.].I.¢.8,§3. As 
the translation of Rufinus cannot be per- 
fectly relied on, we should not venture to 
make use of these words, to determine what 
was the opinion of Origen, unless what we 
would prove from them might be gathered 
also from his general train and connection 
of thought, as it has been shown in the text 
that it may. But in order to make every 
thing in Oriceh harmonize, we must sup- 
pose also, that he did not always use the 
ψυχῆ in the same sense, but sometimes in a 
more general sense, to denote the spirit or 
intelligence generally, and sometimes in a 
more limited sense, in contradistinction to 
νοῦς or πνεῦμα. 


ORIGEN. 639 


ceribed to this soul, even after the incarnation of Christ, a selfdeter- 
mining power,! — though persisting in union with the πνεῦμα, and thereby 
with the Logos. But here, if we examine into the connection of his 
ideas, the question will come up, how, supposing he conceived this soul 
to be one which had already attained to such perfection, he could still 
admit of any human development in Christ, in his earthly existence — 
how this in his case would be anything else than a mere appearance. 
And yet he believed he could fully receive the entire narrative in Luke 
2: 40, relating to the progressive development of the child Jesus ; and 
he considered this progress as having its ground in the free will of 
Christ.2_ But there was a similar difficulty, according to Origen’s doc- 
trine, with regard to the earlier, conscious, personal existence of the 
soul generally, in the case of every human development. 

We have to mention one other particular point, in which the connec- 
tion between Origen’s doctrine concerning man, and his doctrine con- 
cerning Christ, is very clearly exhibited. Holding it as a general prin- 
ciple, that the character of the instrument or organ given it as a body, 
corresponded exactly to the work of each soul, which stamped on it the 
form and pressure of its own peculiar essence, he applied the same prin- 
ciple to the relation between the body and soul of Christ. The most 
exalted of all souls was veiled im the most glorious of all bodies ;— 
only this glory was, during its earthly existence, still hidden — broke 
forth on such individuals as were capable of receiving it only at indi- 
vidual moments — fore-tokening what should one day appear. By virtue 
of Christ’s exaltation to heaven, this body, —a thought perfectly har- 
monizing with Origen’s doctrine of matter, already described as an 
element in itself undetermined and capable of endless modification of 
form, —this body is now freed from all the defects and limitations 
of the earthly existence, transfigured to an ethereal character, more 
nearly akin to the essence of the Spirit and of the divine life.® 

By this exposition of Origen’s theory, one difficulty which must have 
struck reflecting minds in considering the doctrine of the incarnation of 
the Logos, though many never became conscious of it, was removed ; — 
the difficulty, to wit, of conceiving how the divine Logos could become 
united with a human body; how the purely human nature could be 
transferred tohim. ‘This difficulty now vanished, since it was assumed, 
that the Logos did not directly appropriate to himself the body, but that 
he appropriated to himself the soul as his natural organ. Thus it was 
made possible, also, to conceive of everything that belongs to human 
nature existing in Christ unalloyed. But, in place of the former, an- 
other difficulty now arose ;— namely, to conceive how the unity of 
Christ’s person and life could be maintained, in this combination with 
a human soul persevering in its own individuality. We have seen in 
what way Origen supposed that it was possible to surmount this diffi- 


1 By the ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τῆς ψυχῆς. In Matth. 8 See ὁ. Cels. 1. I. c.32; 1. 11. c. 23; 1. TIL 
T. XIII. § 26; ed. Lomm. p 257. c. 42; 1. 1V.c¢. 15; 1. VI.c. 75, et seqq. On 
2L. ¢.: Ὥς yap ἐκ τοῦ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τῆς ψυχῆς the ubiquity of the glorified body of Christ, 
αὐτοῦ ἣν ἡ ἐν σοφίᾳ προκοπὴ Kal χάριτι, οὕτως 5866 in Matth. T. IV. f. 887, ed. de la Rue. 
καὶ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ. By which last, Origen means 
the ἡλικία πνευματικῆ. 


640 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 


culty also. Yet this view of the matter seems to have given umbrage 
to many, and he drew upon himself the accusation from such persons, 
that, like many of the Gnostics, he distinguished from each other a 
superior and an inferior Christ, or a Jesus and a Christ; or that he 
represented Jesus as a mere man, who differed from other men only in 
possessing a higher degree of fellowship with the Logos, and therefore 
only in degree.! Thus we see here, also, the germ of a controversy 
which reached into the following period. 

As it regards the work of Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, we 
find already in the language used by the church fathers on this point, in 
the period under consideration, all the elements which lie at the basis 
of the doctrine as it afterwards came to be defined in the church — 
elements grounded in the Christian consciousness itself, and indicating 
how Christ manifested himself to the religious feelings and to the intui- 
tions thence resulting, as a deliverer from sin and its consequences, a 
restorer of harmony in the moral order of the universe, a bestower of 
divine life to human nature. Buton this point no antagonisms were as 
yet presented, by which men would be constrained to distinguish and 
separate more accurately what lay in their conceptions. We, for the 
most part, hear only the language of immediate religious feeling and 
Intuition; and hence, in comparing the expressions of these church- 
teachers with the later doctrines of the church, men were liable to err 
on both sides, in ascribing to them more, and in findmg im them less, 
than they really contained. 

The doctrine of redemption has a negative and a positive moment: the 
former relates to the removing of the disturbance introduced into the mo- 
ral order of the universe, the raising-up of humanity out of its schism with 
God ;—the second, to the glorifying or rendering godlike of human nature 
when delivered from this schism. Asit respects the first, there was here 
presented in particular a certain peculiarity in the mode of thinking, 
which, as we see it expressed under different modifications in men of 
the most diverse principles and tendencies, —in a Marcion, an Irenzeus, 
and an Origen, —we may consider as a more general expression of the 
Christian consciousness of this period. It is this idea: Satan hitherto 
ruled mankind, over whom he had acquired a certain right, because 
the first man fell under the temptation to sin, and was thereby brought 
under servitude to the evil one. God did not deprive him of this right 
by force, but caused him to lose it in a way strictly conformable to law. 
Satan attempted to exercise the same power which he had thus far ex- 
ercised over mankind, on Christ, a perfectly holy being, meaning to treat, 
him like the others, as a man in all respects the same with them; but 
here his power was baffled, and he must find himself overmatched. 
Christ, being perfectly holy, could not remain subject to the death which 
Satan, by means of sin, had brought on mankind. ΒΥ him, the repre- 


1 See the Apology of Pamphilus in behalf _ siders it necessary to guard against any such 
of Origen, T. IV. f. 35, and several of the misinterpretation of his doctrine; as, for 
passages above cited, in reference to his doc- instance, in Matth. T. XVI. § 8, towards the 
trine on the union of the Logos with the end, where he adds: Πλὴν σήμερον οὐ λύω 
soul in Christ, —in which passages he con- τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 


ORIGEN. IRENAUS. 641 


sentative of human nature, the latter has been delivered, on grounds of 
reason and justice, from the dominion of Satan —he has no more claims 
upon it.! Marcion simply transferred, as we have seen above, that 
which in the church view of the matter was true of Satan, to the Demi- 
urge. At the bottom of this whole theory, lies the idea of a real objec- 
tive might, which the ungodly principle in humanity, that had made 
itself a slave to that power, had acquired, and of a real, objective over- 
coming of this might, the redemption, as a legal process in the history 
of the world, corresponding to the requisitions of the moral order of 
the universe. We ought here surely to distinguish the inadequate form, 
in which the idea at bottom has enveloped itself, from this idea itself. 
Combined with this negative moment, we find in Irenzeus the positive 
one, in which the original picture of humanity is represented in a per- 
fectly holy life, and in the communication to it of a divine life, which 
should sanctify and refine it in all the stages of its development. His 
ideas, dispersed through his writings, amount, when we bring them to- 
gether, to what follows: ‘‘ Only the Word of the Father himself could 
declare to us the Father; and we could not learn from him, unless the 
teacher himself had appeared among us. Man must become used to 
receive God into himself, God must become used to dwell in humanity. 
The Mediator betwixt both must once more restore the union between 
both, by his relationship to both; he must pass through every age, in 
order to sanctify every age, in order to restore the perfect likeness with 
God, which is perfect holmess.?- In a human nature which was like to 
that burdened with sin, he condemned sin, and then banished it, as a 
thing condemned, out of human nature, Rom. 8: 8; but he required 
men to become like him. Men were the prisoners of the evil one, of 
Satan; Christ gave himself a ransom for the prisoners. Sin reigned 
over us, who belonged to God; God delivered us, not by force, but in 
a way of justice, masmuch as he redeemed those who were his own. If 
he had not, as man, overcome the adversary of man; if the enemy had 
not been overcome in the way of justice ; and, on the other hand, if he 
had not, as God, bestowed the gift of salvation, we should not have that 
gift in a way which is secure. And if man did not become united with 
God, he could have no share in an imperishable life. It was through 
the obedience of one man that many must become justified, and obtam 
salvation ; for eternal life is the fruit of justice. The import of the 
declaration, that man is created in the image of God, had hitherto not 
been clear,* for the Logos was as yet invisible. Hence man too easily 


1 This is what Ireneeus refers to, whenhe tri; sed secundum suadelam, quemadmo- 


says (l. V. c. 1): Rationabiliter redimens 
nos, redemptionem semetipsum dedit pro 
his, qui in captivitatem ductisunt. Et, quo- 
niam injuste dominabatur nobis apostasia, 
et, cum natura essemus Dei omnipotentis, 
alienavit nos contra naturam, suos proprios 
faciens discipulos, potens in omnibus Dei 
verbum et non deficiens in sua justitia, juste 
etiam adversus ipsam conversus est aposta- 
siam ; non cum vi, sed secundum suadelam, 
quemadmodum illa initio dominabatur nos- 
* 


dum decebat Deum suadentem, et non vim 
inferentem, accipere que vellet, ut neque 
quod justum est confringeretur, neque an- 
tiqua plasmatio Dei deperiret. 

2 See the remarks on a former page re- 
specting the relation of the εἰκών to the 
ὁμοίωσις τοῦ ϑεοῦ. 

8. The communication of a divine life to 
mankind through Christ, the ἕνωσις πρὸς 
ἀφϑαρσίαν. 

4 Two ideas are here to be taken together; 


642 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 
lost his likeness with God. But when the Logos became man, he set 
the seal to both. He truly revealed that image, by becoming, himself, 
that which was his image ; and he exhibited incontestably the likeness 
of man to God, by making man like to God, who is invisible.” 4 

In Irenzeus, the sufferings of Christ are represented as having a 
necessary connection with the rightful deliverance of man from the 
power of Satan. ‘The divine justice is here displayed, in allowing even 
Satan to have his due. Of satisfaction done by the sufferings of 
Christ to the divine justice, as yet not the slightest mention is to be 
found ; but doubtless there is lying at bottom the idea of a perfect ful- 
filment of the law by Christ; of his perfect obedience to the holiness of 
God in its claims to satisfaction due toit from mankind. But in Justin 
Martyr may be recognized the idea of a satisfaction rendered by Christ 
through suffering, — at least lying at the bottom, if it is not clearly 
unfolded and held fast in the form of conscious thought; for Justin 
says:? ‘The law pronounced on all men the curse, because no man 
could fulfil it, in its whole extent (Deut. 27: 26). Christ delivered us 
from this curse, in bearing it for us.’ His train of thought here can 
be no other than this: Crucifixion denotes curse, condemnation: no- 
thing of that sort could touch Christ, the Son of God, the Holy One: 
in reference to himself, this was only in appearance.? The significancy 
of this curse related to mankind, who were guilty of violating the law, 
and hence involved in condemnation. Christ, in suffering, took this 
condemnation resting on mankind, upon himself, in order to free man- 
kind from it. The for, in this case, passes naturally over to the instead. 
The author of the letter to Diognetus thus brings together the active 
and the passive satisfaction, yet with predominant reference to the for- 
mer, when he reduces the whole to the love of God, which im itself re- 
quired no reconciliation, and was itself the author of the reconciliation : 
“God, the Lord and Creator of the universe, is not only full of love to 
man, but full of long-suffering. Such he ever was and is, and such he 
will ever continue to be ;—vsupremely kind, without anger, true, the 
alone good. He conceived a vast and ineffable counsel, which he 
communicated to none but his Son. So long as he reserved this 
as a hidden counsel in his own mind, he seemed to have no con- 
cern for us. He left us, during the ages past, to follow our hists at 
will, not as though he could have any pleasure at all in our sins, but in 
order that we, having in the course of that time, by our own works, 
proved ourselves unworthy of life, might be made worthy by the grace 
of God; and that we, having shown our own inability to enter mto the 
kingdom of God, might be enabled to do so by the power of God. But 
when the measure of our sins had become full, and it had been made - 


one, which we find already in Philo, that 
man, as the image of God, was created after 
the image of the Logos ; the other, that God 
designed to represent in the person of the 
God-man, as the original type of humanity, 
the ideal of the entire human nature. Limus 
ille jam tum imaginem induens Christi futuri 
in carne, non tantum Dei opus, sed et 


pignus filii, qui homo futurus certior et 
verior. ‘Tertull. de carne Christi, c. 6; adv. 
Praxeam, ¢c. 12. 

1 Vid. Iren. 1. II]. c. 20, Massuet (accord- 
ing to others, 22) ; 1. 111, c. 18 (20), 31; 1. V. 
c. 16. ; 

2 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. e. 30, f. 322. Ed. Col. 
ὃ Δοκοῦσα κατάρα. f. 817. ' 


IRENAUS. JUSTIN MARTYR. ORIGEN. 643 


perfectly manifest that punishment and death were ready to be our 
reward, he neither hated us nor spurned us, but showed us his long- 
suffering. He even took upon himself our sins, he even gave his own 
Son a ransom for us, the Holy One for sin ; for what else would cover 
our sins but his righteousness ? ”’ 

According to the connection of ideas which has just been exhibited 
as peculiar to Origen, the highest end of the earthly appearance and 
ministry of Christ is to represent that divine activity of the Logos, 
which, without being confined to any limits of time or space, aims to 
purify and restore fallen beings. Accordingly, all his actions possess a 
higher symbolical import, to master which is the great problem of the 
Gnosis ; but thereby, as is shown in the case of his miracles, the saving 
effect which they are calculated of themselves to produce, is by no 
means excluded ; and in this way he could also appropriate to himself 
what was contained in the consciousness of all Christians, relative to 
the redeeming sufferings of Christ. We find here a great deal which 
he could not have been led to adopt by the general ideas of his system, 
unless he had been first led to such a conviction mm some other way, in- 
dependent of his system. ΤῸ speak of a feeling of sin, a sense of 
being forsaken of God, in the case of the soul of Christ, which he re- 
garded as perfectly holy, exalted above all contact with evil, is what he 
could find no ground or reason for in the speculative ideas of his sys- 
tem. But in many of the facts of the gospel history he came to per- 
ceive such a connection between Christ and the whole spiritual life 
of humanity estranged from God, by virtue of which connection Christ 
felt its trespass as his own, — and what no conception could grasp, he 
was enabled to construe to himself by an intuition springing out of the 
inmost depth of his being. Thus could he affirm of Christ, that which 
is intelligible only to him who is at home in, and familiar with, the world 
of Christian consciousness: “‘ He bore in himself our infirmities, and 
carried our sorrows ; the infirmities of the soul, and the sorrows of the 
inner man ; on account of which sorrows and infirmities, which he bore 
away from us, he says that his soul is troubled and full of anguish ;” 1 
and in another place: “This man, the purest among ‘all creatures, 
died for mankind ; he who took on himself our sins and infirmities, 
because he could take on himself and destroy the sins of the whole 
world.” 2 . 

Origen believed that by a hidden law, pertaining to the moral order 
of the universe, the self-sacrifice of a perfectly holy being must serve 
to cripple the power of evil, and to free therefrom the beings subjected 
to it. He found proof of this in the prevailing belief of mankind, that 
innocent individuals, by a voluntary sacrifice of themselves, had saved 
whole populations and cities from threatening calamities.? It was not 
to God, but to Satan, that the ransom for those held in captivity 
by him was paid; according to the prevailing views of this period, 


1 With reference to Isa. ὅ8: 4,5. Αὐτὸς ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν περίλυπον ἔχειν τὴν ψυχὴν ὁμολογεῖ 
ἐβάστασε ἀσϑενείας τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ νόσους καὶ τεταραγμένην. In Joann. T. II. § 21. 
τὰς τοῦ κρυπτοῦ τῆς καρδίας ἡμῶν ἀνϑρώπου, 2 Το. T. XXVIIL § 14. 
δι’ ἃς ἀσϑενείας καὶ νόσους βαστάσας αὐτὰς 8L.c. T. VI. § 34; T. XXVIII. § 14. 


644 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 


which have been already explained. In lighting upon this holy soul, 
which could not be held in the bonds of death, the power of Satan must 
necessarily be broken. 3 

The peculiar manner of Christ’s death serves to satisfy him, that it 
proceeded from an act wholly voluntary. He died at the precise point 
of time when he chose to die, not succumbing to an outward force, like 
those whose limbs were broken. From this circumstance, he endeavors 
to explain the unusual suddenness of his death.? 

A necessary connection between redemption and sanctification was 
involved in the whole Christian mode of contemplating the work of re- 
demption, and the nature of the union with Christ. We need only 
make clear to ourselves the relation of the conceptions which here 
grew out of the Christian consciousness, to perceive that this was so. 

Godlike life and a holy life — these were inseparable notions at the 
Christian point of view. Both were comprehended in one in the notion 
of ἀφϑαρσία, immortal life. Now the Logos was regarded as the source 
of this life ; Christ, as the appearance of the Logos in humanity ; as 
the Mediator of this higher life to human nature ; as the one through 
whom, in every stage of its development, it became pervaded and ren- 
dered holy by such a divine life. By the faith in Christ, by baptism, 
each individual became incorporated into the fellowship with Christ, 
and consequently penetrated by this divine life, the principle of holi- 
ness. Christ was understood to be the destroyer of Satan’s kingdom, 
and to this kingdom was reckoned everything partaking of the nature 
of sin. It was by becoming united to Christ through faith, that each 
was bound to make this triumph of Christ over Satan’s kingdom his 
own. Hence the Christian was converted from a miles Satanee into a 
miles Christi.2 Moreover, the idea of the universal priesthood of all 
Christians had its root in this conviction. 

We may here introduce a few examples, to illustrate how some of the 
church-teachers conceived this connection between redemption and 
sanctification, faith and life. Clement, bishop of Rome, after having 
emphatically borne his testimony to the truth, that no man can be justi 
fied by his own righteousness and his own works, but that every man 
must be justified by the grace of God and by faith alone, goes on to 
say : —‘* What are we to do, then, my brethren? Shall we be weary 
in well-doing, and leave off charity ? The Lord forbid that this should 
ever be done by us; but let us, with unremitted zeal, strive to accom- 
plish all the good we can; for the Creator and Lord of all takes pleas- 
ure in his own works.’ ‘The author of the letter to Diognet remarks, 
after the beautiful passage above cited concerning the redemption: 
« With what joy wilt thou be filled, when thou hast come to the knowl- 
edge of this ; and how wilt thou love Him who so much earlier loved 


1 Tive ἔδωκε THY ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ 2 Ὥς βασιλέως καταλιπόντος τὸ σῶμα καὶ 
πολλῶν; οὐ δὴ τῷ Gea" μῆτι οὖν τῷ πονηρῷ; ἐνεργήσαντος μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἐξουσίας. 
οὗτος γὰρ ἐκράτει ἡμῶν, ἕως δοϑῇ τὸ ὑπὲρ In Joann. T. ΧΙΧ. ὁ 4; ed. Lomm. T. II. 
ἡμῶν αὐτῷ λύτρον, ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψυχὴ, ἀπατη- p. 172. In Matth. Lat. ed. Lomm. T. IV. 
ϑέντι, ὡς δυναμένῳ αὐτῆς κυριεῦσαι, καὶ οὐχ  p. 73, et 5664. 
ὁρῶντι ὅτι οὐ φέρει τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ κατέχειν 8 See vol. I. p. 309. 
αὐτὴν βάσανον. In Matth. T. XVI. § 8. 4 Vid. ep. I. ad Corinth. § 32, 33. 


DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 645 


thee! But if thou lovest him, thou wilt be an imitator of his good- 
ness.” Irenzeus thus draws the contrast between that voluntary obedi- 
ence which flows from faith, and the slavish obedience under the law: 
«The law, which was given to bondmen, disciplined the soul by means 
of outward and sensible things, dragging it, as it were, with chains to 
the obedience of its commands ; but the Word, which wate us free, in- 
culcated a voluntary cleansing of the soul, and thereby of the body. 
After this has been done, the chains of bondage, to which man had 
become inured, must indeed be removed, and he must follow God with- 
out chains. But the requisitions of freedom must extend all the 
further, and obedience to the King must become a fuller obedience ; 
so that no one should turn back again, and prove himself unworthy of 
his Deliverer ; for he has not freed us that we might go away from him; 
since no one that forsakes the fountain of all good, which is with the 
Lord, can by himself find the food of salvation ; but he has freed us for 
this, that the more we have obtained, the more we might love him. To 
follow the Saviour is the same as to partake of salvation, and to follow 
the light is the same as to partake of the light.’ 1 

But as the confounding of the Jewish “with the Christian point of 
view, and the consequent outward and material way of conceiving 
spiritual things, was found to be the main cause of the corruption of 
the Christian consciousness generally, so the influence of this disturb- 
ing element is discernible also in the prevailing notion of faith. By 
degrees, that view of it which the Apostle Paul had set forth in opposi- 
tion to the Jewish principle, became more and more obscured, and 
instead thereof appeared the Jewish notion of a certain faith on out- 
ward authority; not one which was suited to produce out of itself, 
through a necessary inner connection, all the fruits of the Christian 
life, but one which was only to draw after it, in an outward way, by 
means of new moral precepts and new motives addressed to the under- 
standing, the new habits of Christian living. We have already noticed, 
how this notion of faith led to the undervaluing of the stage of mere 
faith (πίστις among the Gnostics, and in part among the Alexandrians 
also; and how the reaction of Marcion tended to the re-establishment 
of the Pauline view. But to the material and outward conception of 
faith, on this side, was united also a material and outward conception 
of the system of morals, which was rent from its inner connection with 
the system of faith; whence followed, side by side with an outward 
system of faith, a legal system of duties and good works, in which the 
ascetic element had by far the ascendancy over the assimilating princi- 
ple. And in connection with this, might arise the notion of a supererog- 
atory righteousness, a perfection surpassing the requisitions of the law, 
which strove to fulfil the so-called counsels of Christ, (concilii evange- 
lici,) by the renunciation of all earthly goods.” 

A great influence to confirm this outward and material view of faith 
must have been especially exerted, by the manner in which the fellow- 
ship of life with Christ, instead of ‘being considered to flow from the 


1 Lib. IV. ο. 13, 14, 2 See vol. I. p. 277. 


646 DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENTS. 


Inner appropriation of Christ alone, was made to depend on the out- 
ward mediation through the church — a point on which we have spoken 
already in the section relating to the church constitution. ΤῸ this out- 
ward mediation of the church belonged the sacraments. As the essen- 
tial character of the invisible and that of the visible church were not 
earefully discriminated, a little confusion of the divine_thing and 
its outward sign must, from the same cause, take place in respect to the 
doctrine of the sacraments. ‘This, in the case of baptism, is shown in 
the prevailing notion of a divine power which was imparted to the water, 
and of a sensible union, brought about by means of it, with the whole 
nature of Christ, for the deliverance of the entire spiritual and mate- 
rial nature of man. ‘As the dry wheat,’’ says Irenzeus, ‘ cannot be- 
come one mass of dough and one loaf of bread without moisture, so 
neither can we all become one in Christ without the water which is 
from heaven. And as the parched earth cannot yield fruit unless it 
receive moisture, so neither can we, who at first are but sapless wood, 
ever produce living fruit, without the rain which is freely poured out 
from above ; for our bodies through baptism, but our souls through the 
Spirit, have obtained that communion with the imperishable essence.” 1 
Tertullian finely remarks, concerning the effects of baptism:? ““ When 
the soul attains to faith, and is transformed by the regeneration of 
water and the power from above, the covering of the old corruption 
having been removed, she beholds her whole light. She is received 
into the communion of the Holy Spirit; and the soul which unites 
itself with the Holy Spirit is followed by the body, which is no longer 
the servant of the soul, but becomes the servant of the Spirit.” But 
even Tertullian did not understand here how to distinguish rightly be- 
tween the inward grace and the outward sign. In maintaining against 
a sect of the Cainites (see section second) the necessity of outward bap- 
tism, he ascribes to water a supernatural, sanctifyimg power. Yet we 
see, even in the case of Tertullian, the purely evangelical idea break- 
ing through this confusion of the inward with the outward, and directly 
contradicting it; as when he says, it is farth which in baptism obtains 
the forgiveness of sm; and when, in dissuading against haste in bap- 
tism, he remarks, that true faith, wherever present, is sure of salva- 
tion.2 Even in the spiritual Clement of Alexandria we may discern 
the influence of that outward and material conception of spiritual mat- 
ters, when he agrees with Hermas 5 in thinking that the apostles per- 
formed in hades the rite of baptism® on the pious souls of the Old 'Tes- 
tament who had not been baptized. 

We have already, in the history of the forms of worship, taken notice 
of the injurious practical consequences which resulted from this con- 
fusion of the inward grace and the outward sign in the case of bap- 


1 Lib. III. ο. 17. The divine principle of | % Fides integra secura de salute. 
life for soul and body in Christ, the ἕνωσις 4 Lib. III. S. LX. Fabric. Cod. apocryph. 
πρὸς ἀφϑαρσίαν. ΠῚ 1009. 
2 De anima, 6. 41. Compare above the 5 Strom. lib. 11. f. 379. 
passage concerning the corruption of human 
nature, 


THE SACRAMENTS. 647 
tism. It was by confounding regeneration with baptism, and thus look- 
ing upon regeneration as a sort of charm completed at a stroke, by 
supposing a certain magical purification and removal of all sin in the 
act of baptism, that men were led to refer the forgiveness of sins ob- 
tained through Christ only to those particular sins which had been com- 
mitted previous to baptism ; imstead of regarding all this as something 
which, with the appropriation of it by faith, must go on developing 
itself through the whole of life. After this was presupposed, the ques- 
tion must have arisen, How are we to obtain forgiveness for the sins 
committed after baptism? And the answer was: Although we have 
obtained once for all, by the merits of Christ, the means of satisfaction 
for the sins committed before baptism ; yet, in order to make satisfaction 
for the sins after baptism, it 1s necessary that, m addition to this, we 
should have recourse to voluntary exercises of penitence and to good 
works.! This mode of conception is clearly exhibited in the following 
words of Cyprian:? ‘ When our Lord came, and had healed the 
wounds of Adam, he gave to the restored a law, bidding him sin no 
more, lest a worse evil should befall him. By the injunction of imno- 
cence, we were circumscribed to a narrow circle ; and the frailty of hu- 
man weakness would have been at a loss what to do, unless divine grace 
had once more come to its aid, and, pointing out to it the works of 
mercy, paved the way for it to secure salvation; so that we might 
cleanse ourselves from all the lingering remains of impurity by the 
practice of alms. The forgiveness of sin having been once obtained at 
baptism, we earn by constant exercise in well-doing, which 15, as it were, 
a repetition of baptism, the divine forgiveness anew.” Here, if we 
only add what was remarked on an earlier page on the subject of the 
sacerdotal absolution, we have the germ of the catholic doctrine re- 
specting the sacrament of penance. 

To the doctrine concerning the Lord’s Supper, may be applied, in 
general, the same remarks which have been made in relation to the 
doctrine concerning baptism; but with this difference, that we may ob- 
serve three different grades in the outward and material conception of 
this ordinance. The most common representation was that which we 
find in Ignatius of Antioch,® in Justin Martyr, and in Ireneus. It is 
a conception of it most nearly related to that view just noticed of bap- 
tism, as the means of a spiritual-corporeal communion with Christ. . It 
was supposed, for instance, that as the Logos in Christ became man, 
so here also he immediately appropriated to himself a body — this 
body, by virtue of the consecration, became united with the bread and 


1See Tertullian’s work, de pcenitentia. 
This writer, it is true, brought over with 
him from his legal studies, the expression, 
satisfactio, into the doctrine of repentance; 
yet we should not be warranted, on this ac- 
count, to ascribe to his legal habits of think- 
ing and conceiving, nay, we should not be 
warranted to ascribe to the ideas of any in- 
dividual, so great an influence on the pro- 
gress of error in the doctrinal notions of 
the church on this point; for, the πρῶτον 


ψεῦδος having been once established, all the 
consequences involved in it must of neces- 
sity unfold themselves, especially as these 
consequences find so many points of at- 
tachment in human nature. 

2 De opere et eleemosynis. 

8 Hence, in Ignatius, ep. ad Ephes. ec. 20, 
the holy supper is called: φάρμακον ἀϑανα- 
σίας, ἀντίδοτον Tov μὴ ἀποϑανεῖν͵ ἀλλὰ ζῇν 
ἐν Ιησῷ Χριστῷ διὰ παντός. 


648 THE SACRAMENTS. 
wine, and thus entered into the corporeal substance of those partakers 
of it, who thereby received into themselves a principle of imperishable 
life! In the North-African church, on the other hand, neither Ter- 
tullian nor Cyprian seems to have entertained the notion of any pene- 
tration of this sort. Bread and wine were represented rather as sym- 
bols of the body and blood of Christ, though not as symbols without 
eficacy. Spiritual communion with Christ at the holy supper was 
made the prominent point; yet, at the same time, those that partook 
were supposed to come into a certain sanctifying contact with Christ’s 
body. The practice of the North-African church shows, moreover, 
that, according to the prevailing belief, a supernatural, sanctifying 
power resided in the outward signs of the supper: hence the daily 
communion ;? hence also the communion of infants in connection with 
infant baptism.* The passage in John 6: 53 being incorrectly under- 
stood as referring to the outward sensible participation of the supper, 
the inference was drawn, that without this outward and sensible par- 
ticipation none could be saved ;° as it had been inferred from the pas- 
sage inJohn 3: 0, that none could be saved without outward baptism. 

By the Alexandrians, especially by Origen, the distinction was 
clearly drawn, in the doctrine concerning the sacraments, as through- 
out his entire system of belief, between the inner divine thing, the 
invisible spiritual agency of the Logos,® and the sensible objects by 
which it is represented.’ ‘ Outward baptism,” says he, ““ considered 
as to its highest end, is a symbol of the inward cleansing of the soul 
through the divine power of the Logos, which is preparatory to the 
universal recovery ;— that commencing in the enigma and in the glass 
darkly, which shall afterwards be perfected in the open vision, face to 
face ; but at the same time, by virtue of the consecration pronounced 
over it, there is connected with the whole act of baptism a supernatural 
sanctifying power; it is the commencing point of gracious influences 
bestowed on the faithful, although it is so only for such as are fitted, 
by the disposition of their hearts, for the reception of those influ- 
ences.’”® 

He makes the same distinction also in regard to the holy supper ; 
separating what is called, in a figurative sense, the body of Christ, 
from the true spiritual manducation of the Logos,"— the more divine 


1 That which distinguishes this mode of orat. c. 6: The perpetuitas in Christo, con- 


conceiving the matter from a later one, is, 
that the Christ who has ascended to heaven 
is not considered to be present here; but 
the Logos, in this case, directly produces for 
himself a body. This we find more dis- 
tinctly expressed, it is true, in the next fol- 
lowing period ; but it lies at the basis of the 
following language of Justin: Τὴν δ ev- 
χῆς λόγου τοῦ παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ εὐχαριστη- 
ϑεῖσαν τροφὴν, ἐξ ἧς αἷμα καὶ σάρκες 
κατὰ μεταβολὴν τρέφονται ἡμῶν, ἐκείνου τοῦ 
σαρκοποιηϑέντος ᾿Ιησοῦ καὶ σάρκα καὶ αἷμα 
ἐδιδάχϑημεν εἶναι. Apolog. I. § 66. 

2 Tertull. c. Mare. 1. 1V. ¢. 40: corpus 
meum, i. e. figura corporis mei. De res. 
carn. c. 8: anima de Deo saginatur. De 


stant, spiritual fellowship with him, and in- 
dividuitas a corpore ejus. 

3 See vol. 1. p. 332. 

4 See Cyprian. sermo de lapsis. 

5 See Cyprian. Testimonior. 1. IIT. ο, 25. 

6 Comp. above, what is said of the ἐπι- 
δημία αἰσϑητῆ, and the ἐπιδημία νοητὴ Χρισ- 
τοῦ. 

7 The νοητόν or πνευματικόν and the aio- 
ϑητόν. 

8 See in Joann. T. VI. § 17; in Matth. 
T. XV. § 28. 

2 TO σῶμα Χριστοῦ τυπικὸν καὶ συμβολι- 


κον, 
10 The ἀληϑινὴ βρῶσις τοῦ λόγου. 


DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 649 


promise, from the common understanding of the holy supper,— adapted 
to the capacities of the simple.*| The former refers to the spir- 
itual communication of the Word made flesh, which is the true 
heavenly bread of the soul. Of the outward supper the worthy 
and the unworthy may partake alike ; but not of that true heavenly 
bread; since otherwise, it could not have been said, that whoever eats 
this bread shall live for ever. Origen says therefore, that Christ in the 
true sense called his flesh and blood the word, which proceeds from the 
word, and the bread which proceeds from the heavenly bread — 
the living word of truth, by which he communicates himself to the souls 
of men ; as the breaking of the bread and the distribution of the wine 
symbolize the multiplication of the word, by which the Logos commu- 
nicates himself to many souls. He supposed, moreover, that with the 
outward supper, as with outward baptism, there was connected a higher 
sanctifying influence by virtue of the consecrating words ; yet in the 
sense, that nothing divine could be united with the earthly material 
signs, in themselves considered ; and that, as in the case of baptism, 
none could participate in the higher influence, unless made susceptible 
of it by the inward disposition of the heart. As not that which enters 
into the mouth defiles the man,— though by the Jews it is considered 
unclean ; so nothing which enters into the mouth sanctifies the man ; 
though by the simple, the so-called bread of the Lord is supposed to 
possess a sanctifying power. We neither lose anything by failing to 
partake of the consecrated bread, by itself considered ; nor do we gain 
anything by the bare partaking of that bread; but the reason why one 
man has less and another more, is the good or bad disposition of each 
individual. The earthly bread is by itself in no respect different from 
any other food. It was Origen’s design here, no doubt, to controvert 
particularly the erroneous notions which attached to the supper a sort 
of magical advantage, independent of the disposition of the heart — 
notions which the other fathers also were far from entertaining ; but 
yet, at the same time, his objections applied also to every representation 
which attached to the outward signs any higher importance or efficacy 
whatever, and even to those views which were received in the North- 
African Church.? 

It remains that we should speak of the prevailing ideas in this 
period, respecting the ultimate end of the whole earthly development 
of humanity. The teleological point of view was, in this regard, insep- 
arable from the Christian mode of contemplation. The kingdom of 
God, and each individual life thereto pertaining, was to be conducted 
onward to a completion: it was this certain prospect which formed the 
contrast between the Christian view of life, and the Pagan notion of a 
circle aimlessly repeating itself by a blind law of necessity. But the 
intermediate links of the chain, up to that ultimate end, were still hid- 
den from the ken of contemplation: this belonged to the prophetic ele- 


1 The κοινοτέρα περὶ τῆς εὐχαριστίας éxdo- 2 γιά. Origen, Matth. T. XI. § 14; in 
χὴ τοῖς ἁπλουστέροις and κατὰ τὴν ϑειοτέραν Joann. T. XXXII. § 16; in Matth. f. 898, 
ἐπαγγελίαν, corresponding to the two posi- V. IIL. opp. 
tions of the γνῶσις and of the πίστις. 


VOL. I. 


650 DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 


ment, which must ever remain obscure till its fulfilment. To the earnest 
expectation of the pilgrim, as he cast a glance over the windings 
of the way, the end appeared at first near at hand, which, the farther 
he advanced, retreated to a greater distance. The signs in the course 
of history alone would shed more light on the darkness, which the Lord 
himself was unwilling to clear up by his prophetic intimations. 

The Christians were certainly convinced, that the church would come 
forth triumphant out of its conflicts, and, as it was its destination to be 
a world-transforming principle, would attain to the dominion of the 
world ; but they were far from understanding at first the prophetic 
words of Christ intimating how the church, in its gradual evolutions, 
under natural conditions, was to be a salt and a leaven for all human 
relations. They could at first, as we have before remarked, conceive 
of it no otherwise than this, that the struggle between the church and 
the pagan state would endure till the triumph brought about from with- 
out, by the return of Christ to judgment. Now it was here that many 
seized hold of an image which had passed over to them from the Jews, 
and which seemed to adapt itself to their own present situation, — the 
wdea of a millenmal reign, which the Messiah was to set up on earth 
at the end of the whole earthly course of the world, where all the 
righteous of all times should live together in holy communion. As the 
world had been created in six days, and, according to Psalm 90: 4, a 
thousand years in the sight of God is as one day, so the world was to 
continue in its hitherto condition for six thousand years, and end with a 
thousand years of blessed rest corresponding to the sabbath. In the 
midst of persecutions, it was a solace and a support to the Christians, to 
anticipate that even upon this earth, the scene of their sufferings, the 
church was destined to triumph in its perfected and glorified state. As 
the idea was held by many, it contained nothing in it which was un- 
christian. They framed to themselves a spiritual] idea of the happiness 
of this period, perfectly corresponding with the essence of the gospel, 
conceiving under it nothing else than the universal dominion of the 
divine will, the undisturbed and blissful reunion of the whole commu- 
nity of the saints, and the restoration of harmony between a sanctified 
humanity and all nature transfigured ixto its primitive mnocence.! 

/But the crass images, too, under which the earthly Jewish mind had 
‘depicted to itself the blessings of the millennial reign, had in part 
passed over to the Christians. Phrygia, the natural home of a sensual, 
enthusiastic religious spirit, was inclined to the diffusion also of this 
grossly conceived Chiliasm. ‘There, in the first half of the second cen- 
tury, lived Papias, bishop of the church in Hierapolis ; a man, it is true, 
of sincere piety, but, as appears from the fragments of his writings, and 
from the accounts which we have of him, of a very narrow mind and 
easy credulity. He collected from oral traditions, certain narratives 
concerning the life and sayings of Christ and of the apostles ;? and 
among these he received a great deal that was misconceived and un- 


1 So Barnabas, c. 15. 
2In his book, λόγων κυριακῶν ἐξηγῆσεις, receive tales of the marvellous, has been 
from which a fragment on Judas Iscariot, published in J. A, Cramer Catena in Acta 
which serves to illustrate his propensity to Apostolorum. Oxon. 1838, pag. 12. 


SUPPRESSION OF CHILIASM. 651 


true. Thus by his means were diffused abroad many strange, fantas- 
tic images of the enjoyments to be expected in the thousand-years’ 
reign. The injurious consequence of all which was, to foster among 
Christians the taste for a gross sensual happiness, incompatible with the 
spirit of the gospel, and to give birth among the educated heathens to 
many a predjudice against Christianity.! 

But he who knows anything about the hidden depth of the spiritual 
life, in which religion has its seat and its laboratory, will be cautious 
how he pronounces judgment, from such appearances on the surface, 
against the entire religion of a certain period, in which these disturb- 
ing mixtures of a sensuous element were still to be found, when in such 


a man as Irenzeus we find vital Christianity and an exalted idea of the — 


blessedness of fellowship with God, united with these strange subordi- 


nate notions. The thousand-years’ reign he regarded as only a pre- | 


paratory step for the righteous, who were there to be trained for a more 


exalted heavenly existence, for the full manifestation of the divine © 


glory.” 

What we have just said, however, is not to be so understood as if 
Chiliasm had ever formed a part of the general creed of the church. 
Our sources of information from different parts of the church, in these 
early times, are too scanty, to enable us to say anything on this point 
with certainty and positiveness. Wherever we meet with Chiliasm, in 
Papias, Irenzeus, Justin Martyr, everything goes to indicate that it 
was diffused from one country and from a single fountain-head. We 
perceive a difference in the case of those churches where originally an 
anti-Jewish tendency prevailed ; as in the church at Rome (see above.) 
We find subsequently in Rome an anti-Chiliast tendency. Might not 
this have existed from the first, and only have been called out more 
openly by the opposition to Montanism? ‘The same may be said also 
of an anti-Chiliast tendency which Irenzeus combats, and which he ex- 
pressly distinguishes from the common anti-Chiliastic tendency of Gnos- 
ticism. It was natural, however, that the zealots for Chiliasm should in 
the outset be disposed to represent all opposition to it as savoring of 
Gnosticism.* 

Two causes cooperated to bring about the general suppression of 
Chiliasm: on the one hand, the opposition to Montanism ; on the other, 
the influence of the spirit proceeding from the Alexandrian school. As 
the Montanists laid great stress upon the expectations connected with 
the millennium, and although their conception of it was by no means 
grossly sensual,‘ yet as they contributed, by their enthusiastic visions, 
to spread many fantastic pictures of the things which were then to hap- 
pen,’ the whole doctrine of Chiliasm by this means lost its reputation. 


1 Vid. Orig. Select. in ¥. f.570. T. ΤΙ. * Tertullian, at least, places the happiness 
2 Tren. 1. V. c. 35: Crescentes ex visione of the millennial reign in the enjoyment of 
Domini et per ipsum assuescent capere all manner of spiritual blessings, spiritalia 
gloriam Dei et cum sanctis angelis conver- bona. 
sationem. — Paullatim assuescent capere 5 Of the wonderful city, for instance, the 
Deum. c. 32. heavenly Jerusalem, which should come 
8 Tren. 1. V. c. 32: Transferuntur quorun- down from above. See Tertullian. 
dam sententiz ab hereticis sermonibus. 


652 DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 


An anti-Chiliast party, which had sprung up doubtless before, were 
thus presented with an opportunity of pushing home their attacks; and 
the more zealous opponents of Montanism seem to have combated this 
error in connection with the other Montanistic doctrines. Caius, a 
presbyter of Rome, in his controversial tract against the Montanist 
Proclus, endeavored to stigmatize Chiliasm as a heresy set afloat by the 
detested Gnostic, Cerinthus; and it is not improbable, though not 
wholly certain, that he considered the Apocalypse as a book which had 
been interpolated by the latter, for the express purpose of giving cur- 
rency to this doctrine. 

Next, the more intellectual and scientific direction of the Alexan- 
drian school, which had so great an influence generally in spiritualizing 
the system of faith, must have contributed also to spiritualize the ideas 
concerning the kingdom of God and of Christ. Origen in particular 
was a zealous combatant of these sensual notions of the millennium, and 
sought after a different explanation of those passages of the Old and 
New Testament, on which the Chiliasts depended, and all of which they 
took in the most literal sense. Add to this, that the allegorical method 
of interpretation, peculiar to the Alexandrian school, was generally in 
direct opposition to the grossly literal interpretations of the Chiliasts. 
The moderate Alexandrians, who were no friends to expurgatory criti- 
cism, did not reject the Apocalypse at once, as an unchristian book, 
with a view to deprive the Chiliasts of this important support ; — they 
only combated the literal interpretation of it. It was natural, how- 
ever, that the spirit of the Alexandrian school did not so easily spread 
from Alexandria into the other districts of Egypt, which, in point of 
intellectual cultivation, fell so far behind that flourishing seat of the sci- 
ences. Nepos, a pious bishop, belonging to the nome of Arsenoe in 
Egypt, was a devoted friend of this sensual Chiliasm ; and wrote in de- 
fence of it a book against the Alexandrian school, entitled, a Refutation 
of the Allegorists;1 in which probably he set forth a theory of Chili- 
asm in accordance with his own anti-allegorical method of decyphering 
the Apocalypse. This book seems to have found great favor with the 
clergy and laity in the above-mentioned district. Great mysteries and 
disclosures of future events were supposed to be found here; and many 
engaged with more zeal in the study of the book and theory of Nepos, 
than in that of the bible and its doctrines. By their zeal for these 
favorite opinions, which had no connection whatever with the essence of 

\ the gospel, men were led astray, as usually happens, from that which con- 
\stitutes the main element of practical Christianity, the spirit of love. 
They affixed the charge of heresy on those who would not embrace 
these opinions ; and matters went so far, that whole churches sepa- 
rated themselves, on this account, from their communion with the 
mother church at Alexandria. A country priest, named Coracion, took 
the lead of this party, after the death of Nepos. Had the bishop Dio- 
nysius of Alexandria now been disposed to exercise his ecclesiastical 
authority, had he condemned the erroneous dogma by an absolute de- 


1 Ἔλεγχος τῶν ἀλληγοριστῶν. 


SUPPRESSION OF CHILIASM. 653 


cree, such a proceeding would have laid the foundation of a lasting 
schism ; and Chiliasm, which it was intended to crush by words of au- 
thority, would in all probability have become only the more fanatical. 
But Dionysius, that worthy disciple of the great Origen, showed in this 
case, how charity, moderation, and the true spirit of liberty, which 
dwells only with love, can accomplish what exceeds the power of force 
or of law. Not, like others, forgetting the Christian in the bishop, he 
was moved by the love of souls to repair in person to those churches. 
He called together those of the parochial clergy who supported the 
opinions of Nepos, and, moreover, allowed all laymen of the churches, 
who were longing after instruction on these points, to be present at the | 
interview. The book of Nepos was produced ; for three days the bishop | 
disputed with those pastors over the contents of the book from morn to 
eve; he patiently listened to all their objections, and endeavored to 
answer them from the scriptures ; he entered fully into the explanation 
of every difficulty, taking the scriptures as his guide; and as the 
issue of the whole —a result which had seldom before followed theo- 
logical disputations — the clergy thanked him for his instructions, and 
Coracion himself honestly recanted, in the presence of all, his former 
views, and declared himself convinced of the soundness of the opposite 
doctrine. This happened in the year 255.1 , 
Dionysius, having thus restored the unity of faith among his own 
churches, wrote, for the purpose of confirming those who had been con- 
vinced by his arguments, and for the instruction of others, who still 
held fast to the opinions of Nepos, his work on the Promises. In this 
instance also, the Christian gentleness and moderation with which he’ 
speaks of Nepos is well worthy of notice. ‘On many accounts,” says | 
he, “41 esteemed and loved Nepos;— on account of his faith, his untir- | 
ing diligence, his familiar acquaintance with the holy scriptures; and 
on account of the great number of church hymns composed by him, 
which to this day are the delight of many of the brethren. And the 
more do I venerate the man, because he has already entered into his 
rest. But dear to me, and prized above all things else, is the truth. 
We must love him, and, wherever he has expressed the truth, agree 
with him; but we must examine and correct him in those passages of 
his writings where he seems to be in the wrong.” ᾿ 
The millennial reign was regarded by Chiliasm as forming, in the 
grand development of the kingdom of God, an intermediate point of 
transition to a higher state of perfection ; and, answering to this, a simi- 
lar intermediate point was conceived to exist also in the development 
of each individual. It was here the doctrine concerning Hades, as the | 
common receptacle of all the dead, found its point of attachment. To- — 
gether with Chiliasm, this doctrine also had to be defended against 
the Gnostics ; for by Hades the latter understood the kingdom of the 


1 Kuseb. 1. VII. c. 24. I have rendered it, as referring to the many 
2 Περὶ ἐπαγγελιῶν. hymns composed by him, which perhaps is 
3 Τῆς πολλῆς ψαλμῳδίας, Ὦ μέχρι νῦν πολλοὶ the most natural way; or as referring to 
τῶν ἀδέλφων εὐϑυμοῦνται. The passage may the variety of church melodies introduced 
be understood in two ways; either in the way _ by him. 
* 


654 DOCTRINE OF THE 
Demiurge, on this earth. It was to this kingdom Christ descended —it 
was out of this he delivered those who were capable of fellowship with 
him, so that after death they could be received immediately to heaven. 
Yet, as we remarked certain indications that Chiliasm had other oppo- 
nents to contend with besides the Gnostics, so the same may be said of 
this doctrine also, which was connected with a mode of thinking not 
essentially different. Here, too, we find indications of antagonists other 
than the Gnostics, but yet in whom their opponents might easily be led 
to believe they perceived a relationship to the Gnostics.1 They were 
such as taught that Christ, by his descent to Hades, delivered the faith- 
ful from the necessity of passing into the intermediate state after death,” 
and opened for them an immediate entrance into heaven. Accord- 
ing to the doctrine of the Montanist Tertullian, those only who had 
been thoroughly cleansed by the bloody baptism of martyrdom were to 
constitute an exception—were to be raised immediately, if not to 
heaven, at least to an exalted state of blessedness, under the name of 
Paradise. All others would need to pass through that intermediate 
stage, in order to be freed from the defects and stains which remained 
still cleaving to them, and then, according to the measure of their at- 
tainments, would come sooner or later to participate in the millennial 
reign.’ It 1s easy to see how this notion would stand connected with 
the opinion of which we have already pointed out the grounds, that a 
particular satisfaction and penance were required for sins committed 
after baptism. And this notion, of such an intermediate state for the 
purpose of purification in Hades, passed over, at a later period, into the 
doctrine of purgatory. ‘This sprung in the first place out of a mixture 
of Persian and Jewish elements. It was the idea of a fire-current at 
the end of the world to purge away everything unclean ;— to which 
we may observe some allusion in the Clementines and in the Pseudo- 
Sibylline writers. Thence arose the notion of a purgatory after death* 
— the ignis purgatorius of the Westerns.® 

The doctrine of the resurrection, inasmuch as it relates to the per- 
sistence and exaltation of the entire being of the individual, is most 
intimately connected with the peculiar essence of Christianity, and, on 
account of the importance which it gives to the individual existence im 
its totality, forms a strong contrast with the ancient pantheistic view of 
the world; ὁ as we saw in fact very clearly exhibited in the pagan 
attacks on Christianity. The dignity of the body as a temple for the 
Holy Spirit, and the command that it should be appropriated to this 


1 As Irenxus describes them, l. V. ο. 31: 
Quidam ex his, qui putantur recte credi- 
disse, supergrediuntur ordinem promotionis 
justorum et motus meditationis ad incorrup- 
telam ignorant, hereticos sensus in se 
habentes. 

2 In hoe, inquiunt, Christus inferos adiit, 
ne nos adiremus. Tertullian, de anima, ο. 55. 

8 Modicum quoque delictum mora resur- 
rectionis illic luendum; where he refers to 
the novissimus quadrans, Matth. 5: 28, af- 
terwards understood of the ignis purgato- 
rius. L.c. c, 58. 


4 Τὴν διὰ πυρὸς κάϑαρσιν τῶν κακῶς βε- 
βιωκότων. Strom. |. V. f. 549. 

5 The earliest trace of it would be found 
in Cyprian, ep. 52, if the words, “ missum 
in carcerem non exire inde, donee solvat 
novissimum quadrantem, pro peccatis longo 
dolore cruciatum emundarié et purgari diu 
igne,” (instead of which another reading 
has diutine,) are to be understood of the 
state after death, which is certainly the more 
probable meaning, and not of penance in 
the present life. 

6 See vol. I. p. 11. 


RESURRECTION. 655 
end, being grounded in this doctrine, there necessarily arises out of 
it an opposition to the Oriental, dualistic contempt of the body; and 
hence it was no accidental thing that the Gnostics furiously assaulted 
it; while, on the other hand, we may remark, in the zeal with which 
it was defended by the church fathers, a right Christian instinctive 
feeling — though not always accompanied with clear knowledge — of 
the connection of this doctrine with the essence of Christianity. But 
their cautious adherence to the letter, as well as their opposition to the 
Gnostics, led them not seldom to apprehend the doctrine of the resur- 
rection in too crass and material a way, and to form too narrow and 
limited conceptions of the earthly body. Origen endeavored here also 
to strike a middle course between these opposite tendencies, making 
more use of what the Apostle Paul says (1 Corinth. 15) concerning 
the relation of the earthy to the glorified body; and distinguishing, 
from the mutable phenomenal form, the proper essence lying at the 
foundation of the body, which remains the same through all the 
changes of the earthly life, and which, moreover, is not destroyed at 
death. This proper essence lying at the foundation of the body would, 
by the operation of the divine power, be awakened to a nobler form, 
corresponding to the ennobled character of the soul; so that, as the 
soul had communicated its own peculiar stamp to the earthly body, it 
would then communicate the same to the transfigured body.! In proof 
of this he alleges, that the identity of the body in this life consists not 
in its momently changing phenomenal form, which had been fitly com- 
pared to a flowing stream,” but in the peculiar stamp which the soul 
impresses on the body, whereby it becomes the proper form of mani- 
festation of this or that particular personality. 

Natural as it would be to the Christian feelings of those who had 
been converted from Heathenism, to seek —by entering more deeply into 
the whole connection of the work of redemption, into the spirit of the 
gospel, into the sense of single passages often too superficially under- 
stood — some ground of consolation with respect to the fate of their ances- 
tors who had died without faith in the gospel; yet they were deterred 
from it by a mistaken adherence to the letter in the understanding of 
scripture, and by the stern, uncompromising opposition to Paganism. 
And the outward, materialized view of regeneration which arose out 
of the habit of confounding it with baptism, also contributed to promote 
these narrow views, which afterwards, carried to the extreme, issued in 
the notion of absolute predestination. Marcion alone did, on this side, 


also to be reduced to his doctrine of a ὕλη 
lying at the ground of the corporeal world, 
and susceptible of the whole manifold vari- 
ety of properties. See 7m. apy. 1. 11. c. 10; 
δ. Cela 1 ¥ ei 57. 


1The εἶδος χαρακτηρῖζον in the σῶμα 
πνευματικόν, just as in the σῶμα ψυχικόν. 
To illustrate this point, he had recourse 
sometimes to his own doctrine concerning 
the ὕλη, in itself undetermined, but capable 


of receiving, through the plastic power of 
God, qualities of a higher or lower order ; 
and sometimes to the doctrine of a dynamic 
essence, underlying the body, a λόγος σπερ- 
ματικός (ratio ea que substantiam continet 
corporalem, qu semper in substantia cor- 
poris salva est,) which, however, is itself 


2 Selecta in Psalmos: Οὐ κακῶς ποταμὸς 
ὠνόμασται τὸ σῶμα, διότι ὡς πρὸς τὸ ἀκριβὲς 
τάχα οὐδὲ δύο ἡμερῶν τὸ πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον 
ταὐτόν ἐστιν ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν. 1. ΧΙ. 
Ρ. 388. ed. Lomm. 

ὃ “Ὅπερ ἐχαρακτηρίζετο ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ, τοῦτο 
χαρακτηρισϑῆσεται ἐν τῷ πνευματικῷ σώματι. 


656 EMINENT CHURCH TEACHERS. 

enter more profoundly into the spirit of the evangelical doctrine; and 
here he was joined by the Alexandrians, who, to explain this matter, 
had recourse to the doctrine of a progressive development and course 
of purification after death, and moreover found, or supposed they found, 
an allusion to this in the descent of Christ to Hades. With great zeal 
Clement maintained this doctrine, as one necessarily grounded in the | 
universal love and justice of God, with whom is no respect of persons. 
The beneficent power of our Saviour—he affirms —is not confined 
barely to the present life, but operates at all times and everywhere.! 
But the Alexandrians, as might be gathered from what has already 
been said respecting their doctrine concerning the δικαιοσύνη σωτήριος, (sav- 
ing justice,) went still further, and supposed, as the ultimate end of 
all, a universal redemption, consisting in the annihilation of all moral 
evil, and a universal restoration to that original unity of the divine life 
out of which all had proceeded (the general ἀποκατάστασις.) Yet, in the 
case of Origen, this doctrine lost its full meaning, by reason of the con- 
sequences which he was pleased to connect with it. His theory con- 
cerning the necessary mutability of will in created beings, led him to 
infer, that evil, ever germinating afresh, would still continue to render 
necessary new processes of purification, and new worlds destined for 
the restoration of fallen beings ; until all should again be brought back 
from manifoldness to unity; so that there was to be a constant inter- 
change between fall and redemption, between unity and manifoldness. 
Into such a comfortless system was this profound thinker betrayed, by 
carrying through with rigid consistency his one-sided notion of crea- 
turely freedom and mutability, and thus marring the full conception of 
redemption. This doctrine he had expressed with great confidence in 
his work περὶ ἀρχῶν; but it may be questioned whether this also was not 
one of those points upon which his views became changed at a later 
period of his life; yet traces of it are still to be found (though not so 
certain and distinct traces) in his later writings.” 


IV. Notices of the more Eminent Church Teachers. 


The ecclesiastical writers who followed next after the apostles, are 
the so-called Apostolic Fathers, (patres apostolici,) who lived in the 
age of the apostles, and are supposed to have been their disciples. A 
phenomenon singular in its kind, is the striking difference between the 
writings of the apostles and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, who 
were so nearly their contemporaries. In other cases, transitions are 
wont to be gradual; but in this instance we observe a sudden change. 
There are here no gentle gradations, but all at once an abrupt transi- 


1 Οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦϑα μόνον ἡ δύναμις ἡ εὐερ- 
γητικὴ φϑώνει, πάντῃ δέ ἐστι καὶ ἀεὶ ἐργάζε- 
ται. Strom. ]. VI. f. 638 et 639. He also 
makes use of the legend noticed on a for- 
mer page— which legend itself perhaps 
grew out of the felt need of some solution 
of this question — that the apostles descend- 
ed, like Christ, to the place of the dead, and 
bestowed on them baptism. 


2 Orig. 7. apy. 1. II. ο. 3; 6, Cels. 1. IV. 
c. 69, he barely says: Et μετὰ τὸν ἀφανισ- 
μὸν τῆς κακίας λόγον ἔχει, TO πάλιν αὐτὴν 
ὑφίστασϑαι ἢ μὴ, ἐν προηγουμένῳ λόγῳ τὰ 
τοιαῦτα ἐξετασϑῆσεται. There is an obscure 
hint in Matth. f. 402. After the ἀποκατά- 
στασις has been completed in certain AZons, 
he speaks of πάλιν ἄλλη ἀρχῆ. 


APOSTOLIC FATHERS. CLEMENT. 657 


tion from one style of language to another ; a phenomenon which should 
lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit 
in the souls of the apostles. After the times of the first extraordinary 
operations of the Holy Ghost, followed the period of the free develop- 
ment of human nature in Christianity ; and here, as in all other cases, 
the beginnings must be small and feeble, before the effects of Chris- 
tianity could penetrate more widely, and bring fully under their influ- 
ence the great powers of the human mind. It was to be shown first, 
_ what the divine power could effect by the foolishness of preaching. 

The writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers have unhappily, for 
the most part, come down to us in a condition very little worthy of con- 
fidence, partly because under the name of these men, so highly vene- 
rated in the church, writings were early forged for the purpose of giv- 
ing authority to particular opinions or principles; and partly because 
their own writings which were extant, became interpolated in subservi- 
ence to a Jewish hierarchical interest, which aimed to crush the free 
spirit of the gospel. 

In this connection, we should have to notice first Barnabas, the well- 
known companion of the Apostle Paul; if a letter, which in the second 
century was known under his name in the Alexandrian church, and 
which bore the title of a catholic epistle,! really belonged to him. But 
we cannot possibly recognize in this production, the Barnabas who was 
deemed worthy to take part as a companion in the apostolical labors of 
Paul, and who had derived his name from the great power of his dis- 
courses in the churches.? It breathes a spirit widely different from 
what might be expected of such an apostolic man. We see here a 
Jew of the Alexandrian school, who had embraced Christianity, and 
was prepared by his Alexandrian training for a more spiritual concep- 
tion of Christianity ; but who, at the same time, attached too much im- 
portance to the Gnosis of the Alexandrian Jews —a man who sought 
in the mystic allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, — more 
consonant with the spirit of Philo than that of Paul, or even of the 
epistle to the Hebrews, —a peculiar wisdom, in which he seems to 
take a vain sort of pleasure. We meet nowhere in this letter with 
those views of the Mosaic ceremonial law, as a religious means of culture 
adapted to a certain stage of human development, which we meet with 
in Paul; but such views as evince an altogether peculiar, Alexandrian 
turn of mind — views which are not found to recur in the following 
church-teachers, and which sprang from the wildest class of idealists 
among the Alexandrian Jews.? Moses spake everything in the spirit 
(ἐν πνεύματι :) --- that is, he had only presented universal, spiritual 
truths under a symbolical form. But the carnal Jews, instead of pene- 
trating into the meaning of these symbols, understood and believed 
everything in the literal sense, and supposed they must observe the law 
according to the letter. Thus the entire ceremonial religion had sprung 


1’EmoroAn καϑολικὴ, i. 6. a letter intend- a character which answers to the contents 
ed for general circulation, and containing of this epistle. 
matter of general interest, —an exhortato- 2 Ὑἱὸς παρακλήσεως, υἱὸς προφητείας. 
ry writing destined for several churches, — 8 See above, vol. I. p. 49. 


658 APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 


out of a misconception of the carnal multitude. A bad angel, it is said,2 
had led them into this error; just as in the Clementines, and other 
writings of that stamp, it is a favorite hypothesis that original Judaism 
had been adulterated by the spurious additions of wicked spirits. The 


author of this epistle is even unwilling to admit, that circumcision was _ 
a seal or sign of the covenant; alleging, as evidence to the contrary, — 
that circumcision was practised also among the Arabians, the Syrians, © 


and the idolatrous priests Gn Egypt.) But it 15 made out, that Abra-. 


the crucifixion of Jesus; IH (18) being the imitial letters of the name 
Jesus, and T (300) the sign of the cross. These characters and nu- 
merals, peculiar to the Greek language, could have occurred to no one 
but an Alexandrian Jew, who had lost his knowledge of, or perhaps had 
never been acquainted with, the Hebrew, and who was familiar only 
with the Alexandrian version — certainly not to Barnabas, who could 
have shown no such ignorance of the Hebrew tongue, even if it were 
possible to suppose him guilty of such egregious trifling. Yet the tri- 
fler himself looks upon it as a remarkable discovery, as is evident from 
the pompous remark, which so exactly characterizes the mystery-traf 
ficking spirit of the Alexandrian-Jewish Gnosis: ‘* No one ever learned 
from oe genuine doctrine ; but I know that ye are worthy 
of it.” 

The prevailing drift of the epistle 15 in opposition to carnal Judaism, 
and to Judaism in Christianity. We recognize the polemical aim 
against the latter, the dogmatic influence of which extended to the 
views entertained concerning the person of Christ, when, m chap. 12, 
it is emphatically observed, that Christ is not merely the Son of man 
and the Son of David, but also the Son of God. The epistle is all of 
a piece, and cannot possibly be separated into two parts,’ of which Bar- 
~ nabas was the author of one, and somebody else of the other. 

For the rest, there is no hint which intimates that the author of the 
epistle wished to have it supposed he was Barnabas. But his spirit 
and style being in accordance with the Alexandrian taste, it may have 
come about, that, as the author’s name was unknown, and it was wished 
to give credit and authority to the document, the report found currency 
in that city, that Barnabas was the author. 

Next to Barnabas we place Clement; perhaps the same whom Paul 
mentions in Philipp. 4: 38. About the end of the first century, he was 
bishop of the church at Rome. We have, under his name, an epistle 
to the church of Corinth, and the fragment of a second. The first of 
these was, in the first centuries, read at public worship in many of the 
churches, along with the scriptures of the New Testament. It con- 
tains an exhortation, interwoven with examples and general maxims, 
recommending concord to the Corinthian church, which was rent by 
divisions. This epistle, although genuine in the main, is still not exempt 
from important interpolations. We detect a palpable contradiction, 


1 Cap. 9. 
2 Οὐδεὶς γνησιώτερον ἔμαϑεν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ λόγον" ἀλλὰ οἶδα ὅτι ἄξιοί ἐστε ὑμεῖς. 
8 As Schenkel has asserted. 


ΠῚ 
& 
9 


ham circumcising the 818 men, Gen. c. 17, and 14: 14, prefigured | 


-* 


¥ 


7 


cs CLEMENT. : 659 


Hien, for example, we observe, gleaming through the surface of the 
whole epistle, the simple relations of the oldest constitution of the 
Christian church, where bishops and presbyters were placed wholly on 
a level, and then in one passage, § 40 and onward, find the whole 
OF stom of the Jewish priesthood transferred to the Christian church. 
The epistle which passes under the name of the second, is manifestly 

~ nothing but the fragment of a homily. 

Under the name of this Clement, two other epistles have been pre- 

~ served in the Syrian church, which were published by Wetstein, in an 
appendix to his edition of the New Testament. They are circular let- 
ters, addressed particularly to those Christians of both sexes who lived 
in the state of celibacy. ‘The praise which these writings bestow on 
the unmarried life, is by no means sufficient to prove that Clement was 
not their author ; this high estimation of celibacy! having become com- 
mon at a very early period. There are several things in favor of the 
high antiquity of these epistles: they nowhere indicate the presence 
of a hierarchical effort; they do not, like other writings of this kind, 
apply the Old-Testament ideas of the priesthood to the Christian 
church ; they make no prominent distinction between clergy and laity, 
nor between bishops and presbyters ; they represent the gift of healing 

_ diseases, especially demoniacal possessions, as a free gift, not attached 
to any particular office. Still, however, these considerations do not 
amount to a certain proof of the high antiquity of the writings; the 
whole admitting of an easy explanation, even on the supposition of 
their later origin, from the tendencies peculiar to certain countries of 
the East. * 

As these epistles must have been quite agreeable to the ascetic ten- 
dency of the Western, particularly of the North-African church; as, 
in similar writings of a practical character, (aimed against the same 
abuses which are reproved in these epistles,) there was frequent occa- 
sion for alluding to them, it must appear the more singular, that they 
are found nowhere cited before the fourth century ;? a fact sufficient of 
itself to excite suspicion with regard to their authenticity. 

These epistles bear every mark of having been forged in some Hast- 
ern church, in the last times of the second or im the third century, 
partly with a view to exalt the merits of the unmarried life, partly to 
counteract the abuses which, under the show of celibacy, began to gain 
ground, particularly the irregular connections of the συνείσακτοι ὃ 

Under the name of this Clement, various other writings were forged, 
subservient to some hierarchical or dogmatic interest; as, for example, 
the tract which relates to the history of Clement himself, who is repre- 
sented to have been a convert of the Apostle Peter, together with his 
father, whom he lost and afterwards finds again ; 4 the Clementines, 
whose peculiar style of thought, resembling that of the Ebionites, we 





: 





1 See vol. I. p. 277. the synodal letter against Paul of Samosata. 
.? The first allusions to it are in Epipha- Euseb. 1. VII. c. 30. 
nius and Jerome. 4 Hence the title to one of the revisions 


8 Which abuse had spread in the church preserved to us in the version of Rufinus, 
of Antioch, as well as of North Africa. See ἀναγνωρισμοί, Recognitiones. 





660 APOSTOLIC FATHERS. HERMAS. IGNATIUS. + 










ε 
have already described; finally, the collection of apostolical constitu- 
tions, (διατάξεις Or διαταγαὶ ἀποστολικαί,.) and the apostolical canons, (xa EC 
ἀποστολικοί.) τε 

The origin of these two collections may be explained in the saw 


way as that of the so-called Apostles’ Creed. As men originally spok 
of an apostolical tradition relating to matters of doctrine, without i 
ever having occurred to them that the apostles had drawn up a confes- — 
sion of faith ; so they were accustomed to speak of an apostolical tra- 
dition relating to the constitution and usages of the church, without 
ever having supposed that the apostles had given any written laws on 

the subject. The expressions “ apostolical traditions, apostolical ordi- 
nances,’ having thus once become familiar, a foothold was furnished 
for the opinion, or the pretence, that the apostles, having prepared a 
written confession of faith, had also drawn up a collection of ecclesias- 
tical laws. Hence, to subserve different interests, different collections 
of this kind may have sprung into existence, since the one which 
Epiphanius cites im many places is evidently not the same with our 
present Apostolical Constitutions. These latter appear to have been 
formed gradually, in the Eastern church, out of different fragments, dur- 
ing a period reaching from the close of the second into the fourth century. 

Hermas would follow the next in this series, were he same with the 
one mentioned in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chap. 16, as many 
among the ancients supposed. We have, under this name, a work en- 
titled The Shepherd, (ποίμην ;) so called, because in the second book an 
angel, the appointed guardian of Hermas, is introduced in the character 
of a shepherd. 

It cannot be certainly determined whether the author had, or imag- 
ined he had, the visions which he describes; or whether he invented 
them to procure a more favorable reception for the doctrines, chiefly 
practical, which he advances. The work was written originally in 
Greek, but has been preserved to us, for the most part, only in a Latin 
translation. It stood in high repute among the Greek writers of the 
second century, a distinction, perhaps, to which the name of the sup- 
posed author, and his famous visions, not a little contributed. Irenzeus 
cites the book under the title of the scripture. Yet 1t may be very 
much doubted whether the Hermas of the Apostle Paul was really its 
author ; although the other tradition, also, (cited in the poem against 
Marcion, ascribed to Tertullian, and in the fragment on the canon of 
the New Testament, published by Muratori,') which ascribes it to the 
brother of Pius, bishop of Rome, about the year 156, is no less doubt- 
ful ; since it is impossible to determine how much credit is due to these 
two documents; and the high reputation of the book in the times of 
Trenzeus and Clement of Alexandria, can hardly be reconciled with the 
hypothesis of so late an origin.” ? 

Ignatius, bishop of the church at Antioch, is said, in the reign of 


1 Antiq. ital. jud. evi, T. 1Π. stroying the authority of the book were led 
2 It may have been, that the Roman for this very purpose to fix on so late an 
Bishop Pius actually had a brother of this author. 
name; and those who were desirous of de- 


v3 
ae 











4 POLYCARP. THE APOLOGISTS. 661 
᾿ ‘ 


jan, to have been conveyed as a prisoner to Rome, where he was 
ecting to be thrown to the wild beasts. On the way, he is said to 
ve written seven epistles; six to churches of Asia Minor, and one to 
_. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. These letters, it must be allowed, con- 
in passages which at least bear throughout the stamp of antiquity. 
Such especially are the passages directed against Judaism and against 
Docetism; but even the briefer revision, which is the one most entitled 

to confidence, has been very much interpolated. As the account of 
4 the martyrdom of Ignatius may be justly suspected,! so too the 

letters which presuppose the correctness of this suspicious legend, do 
not wear at all a stamp of a distinct individuality of character, and of a 
man of these times addressing his last words to the churches. A hie- 
rarchical purpose is not to be mistaken. 

The letter to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wears very much the ap- 
pearance of an idle compilation That to the Roman church possesses 
more decided marks of originality than the others. 

Of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, we have already spoken. To him 
is ascribed an epistle to the church at Philippi; nor are there any suf- 
ficient reasons for doubting that he was the author of it. 

Immediately after the apostolical fathers, we place the Apologists, 
who follow next in the order of time. The existing scientific culture 
would first be made subservient to the defence of Christianity under 
the government of Hadrian ; and the Apologists, who began to appear 
about this period, are therefore to be considered as the earliest repre- 
sentatives of such a combination. 

Among these, the first to be noticed is Quadratus. He was known 
as an evangelist,? and stood in high repute on account of his prophetic 
gifts. He must not be taken for the same person as a Quadratus, who, 
in the time of Marcus Aurelius, was bishop of the church at Athens, 
and with whom Jerome has confounded him. It is to be regretted, 
that his Apology has not come down to us. Eusebius has preserved 
the following remarkable passage from it: “‘ The works of our Saviour 
were always to be seen, for they were real ---- those that were healed, 
and those that were raised from the dead, were seen, not only when 
they were healed or raised, but they were always there ; not only whilst 
he dwelt on the earth, but also after his departure, which they long sur- 
vived ; so that some of them have lived even to our own times.” ὃ 

The second, Aristides, still retained, after he became a. Christian, 
the philosopher’s cloak, (τρίβων, pallium,) so that he might be able to 
present Christianity to the educated Heathen as the new philosophy 
from heaven.+* 8 

Justin Martyr is worthy of notice, as being the first among these 


7 


1 See vol. I. p. 191. 4 Hieronym. de vir. illustr. c. 20, ep. 83, 

2 This word is to be understood in the ad Magnum: Apologeticum contextum phi- 
sense of the New Testament, i.e. as desig- losophorum sententia. The traveller De 
nating a teacher, not connected with any la Guilletiere says, that in a cloister, about 
particular church, but travelling about asa twenty-four miles from Athens, they pretend 
missionary to preach the gospel. still to be-in: possession of this Apology. 
agi L ΠῚ ὁ 37 fe ara: Geek V. 
6. 17. Ὶ 


VOL. I. 56 


Re 
: 


re: 


662 THE APOLOGISTS. ¥ 


apologists whose writings have come down to our times, and the first 
Christian father, intimately known to us, in whom we observe Christian- 
ity in contact with the Hellenic culture, and more particularly with the 


Platonic philosophy ; in which respect, he is the precursor of the Alex- _ 


andrian church-teachers. The accounts of his life and education we 


must derive for the most part from his own writings; andt will bethe _ 


ἃ 


safest course to confine ourselves in the first place to his two Apologies; — 
inasmuch as these are the undoubted productions of Justin, and bear 
indubitable marks of a decided intellectual bent. As to his other 
writings, they must first be compared with these, before we can decide 
about their genuineness. 

Flavius Justinus was born in the city of Flavia Neapolis, the ancient 
Sichem in Samaria: it was at that time a Roman-Greek colony, in 
which the Greek language and culture predominated. Probably it was 
not a decided taste for speculative inquiries, which in truth he did not 
possess, but the longing after some stable ground of religious convie- 
tion, that led him, with many others of his age, to the study of philoso- 
phy ; and precisely for this reason the philosophy of Plato would pre- 
sent the most attractions for him. It was not so much true that he 
became a systematic follower of this philosophy, as that he adopted 
many of its ideas, and particularly such as were suited to meet the 
spirit of an age which felt the necessity of religion. But the spirit of 
this philosophy could not so pre-occupy his mind, as to unfit it, as it did 
many other minds, for other spiritual impressions. He informs us him- 
self how he came to be a Christian.! ‘TI also,” says he, ‘‘ was once 
an admirer of the doctrines of Plato; and I heard the Christians 
abused. But when I saw them meet death, and all that is accounted 
terrible among men, without dismay, I knew it to be impossible that 
they should live in sin and lust. I despised the opmion of the multi- 
tude ; I glory in being a Christian, and take every pains to prove my- 
self worthy of my calling.” 

After becoming a Christian, Justin still retained the mantle? which 
he had worn as a pagan philosopher and ascetic, availing himself of his 
former garb and mode of life as a means which enabled him easily to 
introduce, in his intercourse with men, religious and philosophical sub- 
jects, and through these to prepare the way for bringing home the gos- 
pel to their hearts. ‘Thus he may be regarded as an itinerant preacher 
in the garb of a philosopher.? From one of his remarks im the second 
Apology, where, describmg the Christian cultus, he says, “ We conduct 
the convinced, after we have baptized them, to the assembled brethren,” 
it has been too hastily inferred,* that he was ordained to the spiritual 
office. Nosuch distinction was made, as yet, between clergy and laity, 
as renders it improbable that Justin expressed himself in this way on 
the principle of the universal Christian priesthood. But whether he 


1 Apolog. I. p. 50, 51. since we might at least assume that the 
2 See vol. I. p. 275. author was acquainted with the history of 
3 Even if the Dialogue with Trypho were Justin’s life. 

not genuine, yet on this point we might 4 By Tillemont. 

avail ourselves of the accounts it contains; 


JUSTIN MARTYR. | 663 
had been solemnly ordained, in the name of the church, to the office 
of an evangelist or not, — a question of little importance, — his gifts as 
a teacher would hardly be suffered to lie idle, when they could be so 

_ usefully employed, both in spreading the gospel among the Heathen, 
and in giving instruction to the churches themselves. If any reliance 
can be placed on the story of Justin’s martyrdom, it would appear from 

- this narrative, that, while he resided at Rome, a portion of the church, 

_ who understood the Greek language, were accustomed to meet and hear 

‘qi him discourse in his own house. 

We remarked in the first section of this history,! that, soon after the 
death of the Emperor Hadrian, and at the beginning of the reign of 


Pius, the Christians were persecuted. 


It was on this occasion that 


Justin, who happened to be then living at Rome, felt himself called 


upon to present to the emperor a written defence of their cause. 


As 


the name of Marcus Aurelius with the title of Czesar does not appear 
at the head of this document, it was probably written before Aurelius 
had been nominated to that dignity, which happened in the year 139.2 

It is more difficult to determine at what time the work which goes by 


the name of the first Apology of Justin was written. 


The immediate 


occasion of his writing in defence of the Christians was an incident, 
which presents a striking illustration of the working of Christianity and 


of the persecutions. 


led an abandoned life, became a convert. 


A woman of Rome, who with her husband had 


She now refused to share 


any longer in the vices of her husband, and used all her influence to 


reclaim him. 


Being unsuccessful in this, and finding it impossible to 


remain connected with her husband without participating in his sins, she 
availed herself of the privilege allowed in such cases according to the 


doctrine of our Lord, and procured a divorce. 
band accused her of being a Christian. 


In revenge, her hus- 
The woman now petitioned 


the emperor, that she might first be allowed to arrange her domestic 
affairs, when she would submit the matter to a judicial investigation. 
The husband, perceiving that his vengeance against his wife was thus 
likely to be delayed, turned his malice upon her Christian teacher, whose 


name was Ptolemzeus. 


The latter was seized by a centurion, and car- 
ried before the przefect of the city. 


Having boldly declared before 


the prefect that he was a Christian, he was condemned to death. 


1 See vol. I. p. 103. 

2 The superscription runs as follows: Αὐ- 
τοκράτορε Titw Αἰλίῳ ’Adpiarvw ᾿Αντωνίνῳ 
Εὐσεβθεῖ Σεβάστῳ Καίσαρι καὶ Οὐηρισσίμῳ 
υἱῷ Φιλοσόφῳ καὶ Λουκίῳ φιλοσόφῳ (accord- 
ing to Eusebius, φιλοσόφου) καίσαρος φύσει 
υἱῷ καὶ Ἐὐῤσεβοῦς εἰσποιῆτῳ, ἐραστῇ παιδείας, 
ἱερᾷ τε συγκλήτῳ καὶ δήμῳ παντὶ Ῥωμαίων. 
The first named is the Augustus Antoninus 
Pius, who had then entered upon his reign ; 
the second, M. Antoninus Philosophus, to 
whom the Emperor Hadrian (at whose re- 
quest Antoninus Pius adopted him) had 
given the name Annius Verissimus; the 
third, Lucius Verus Antoninus, who after- 
wards was co-regent with M. Aurelius. He 


was son of Lucius Alius Verus, whom Tra- 
jan had adopted, and nominated Cesar. 
After the early death of Lucius, he also, in 
compliance with the wish of Hadrian, was 
adopted by Antoninus Pius, who took the 
place of his father. The reading found in 
Eusebius is most probably the correct one ; 
for it can hardly be supposed that Lucius 
Verus would have two epithets. The sur- 
name “ philosopher” is quite incongruous 
applied to a youth but nine years old; while 
he might be styled, with perfect propriety, 
the ἐραστὴς παιδείας. The surname “ philo- 
sopher ” would sooner be given to the now 
deceased /Elius Verus, whom Spartianus 
calls “ eruditus in literis.” 


664 THE APOLOGISTS. 


Another Christian by the name of Lucius, on hearing this decision, 
said to the prefect: “ Why do you condemn to death a man who is 
guilty neither of murder, nor theft, nor adultery, nor any other crime, 
but merely because he has called himself a Christian? Such a pro- 
ceeding does not become the pious emperor, nor the philosopher, the 
emperor’s son.””4 From these words, the prefect gathered that the 
speaker was also a Christian, and, upon his avowing that it was so, con- 
demned him likewise to death. A third met with the same fate. 

The question now arises, whether these events agree best with the 
reign of Antoninus Pius, or with that of Marcus Aurelius. We find 
nothing here which might not have happened under the reign of the 
former ; for, as we have said,? the law of Trajan was in fact by no 
means repealed by the rescripts of Hadrian and of Antoninus Pius: the 
public confession of Christianity might still be punished with death, 
although the clemency of the emperor left it in the power of every well- 
disposed magistrate to exercise great indulgence. But is it probable, 
that a Christian would thus address the prefect, if the reigning empe- 
ror himself had issued a severe edict against the Christians as such ? 8 
Moreover, the Apology itself contains no allusion whatever to the exist- 
ence of a new law against the Christians, for the repeal of which Jus- 
tin was petitioning the emperor. It may be said that it is only to the 
times of M. Aurelius the language of Justin is applicable, where he 
speaks of confessions extorted by the rack from slaves, women and 
children, in which those popular rumors about the unnatural crimes, 
said to be committed in the Christian assemblies, were acknowledged 
to be true. Beyond question,* we find examples of such proceedings 
against the Christians first ‘cited under the reign of M. Aurelius; but 
as popular fanaticism had already, from the time of Nero, set in circu- 
lation such reports against the Christians, the same fanaticism may have 
found many a magistrate, previous to the time of which we are speak- 
ing, disposed both to credit it and to administer to it. Besides, in the 
Apology which by universal consent is placed in the reign of Antoninus 
Pius, Justin only asks that men would cease to place reliance on the 
blind reports of the populace against the Christians. He says, it is 
true, that the things which happened at Rome in the time of Urbicus 
were everywhere occurring; that other governors acted in the same 
unreasonable manner ; that generally, where an individual was reformed 
by Christianity, one of his most intimate relations or friends would ap- 
pear as his accuser, —all which seems to agree chiefly with the times 
of general persecution under M. Aurelius. But in the times of Anto- 
ninus Pius also, the Christians in many districts were furiously attacked 
by the populace, whence the emperor was moved to publish those 
edicts which were designed to quiet the minds of the people. 170 is 


1 Οὐ πρέποντα Ἑσεβεῖ αὐτοκράτορι, οὐδὲ such law, are far from being satisfactory. 
φιλοσόφῳ (according to Eusebius; the com- The ade. at co problem is solved in the 
mon reading, φιλοσόφου.) way I have shown in my account of this 

2 See vol. I. p. 105. persecution. It might be conceded, how- 

8 The reasons alleged by Hr. Semisch ever, that the words may possibly have been 
(Studien und Kritiken, J. 1835, p. 939) spoken before the publication of such ἃ law. 
against believing in the existence of any  §* See vol. I. p. 108. 


JUSTIN MARTYR. ᾿ 665 


singular too, that, in the above-cited titles of the reigning princes by the 
Christian Lucius, the surname “ philosopher” should not be given to 
M. Aurelius, to whom it properly belonged, but should be transferred 
to Verus, to whom it did not belong and was never applied; while that 
of Antoninus Pius should be given to M. Aurelius, who in his lifetime 
was never known by that title. Even if we rejected the reading in 
Eusebius, it would not help the matter; for, at the end of the Apology, 
the same predicates are once more subjoined to the names of the two 
emperors.” These reasons concur to show, that this Apology ought not 
to be placed, as it is by the common hypothesis, supported by the 
weighty authorities of Pagi, Tillemont, and Mosheim, in the reign of 
M. Aurelius; but in the times of Antoninus Pius, as is maintained by 
Valesius and Longuerue. 

It is remarkable,* again, that Justin twice refers,‘ in this Apology, to 
something he had said before, which nevertheless does not occur in this 
Apology, but which is found in the first. He uses the same phrase, 
ὡς προέφημεν, which he employs elsewhere, when he refers to passages in 
the same document ;— and this hardly admits of being reconciled with 
the long interval of time by which, on the other hypothesis, we must sup- 
pose the two Apologies were separated from each other. 

With all this, we shall not deny that the authority of Eusebius is 
against us; for we must allow, that he seems to consider the first-cited 
Apology as the first, composed under the reign of Antoninus Pius, and 
to place the second under that of M. Aurelius.® It would be neces- 
sary, then, in retaining our own view of the matter, to suppose that the 
right relation of the two Apologies to each other had, in the time of 
Eusebius, already become confused ; which assuredly is possible. But 
we should not omit also to remark, that, if this Apology was written in 
the reign of Antoninus Pius, it must seem strange that Lucius did not 
appeal to the laws enacted by that emperor against the popular attacks 
on the Christians, and favorable to their interests; though we must ad- 
mit that in such laws the Christians were ever disposed to find more 
than they really contained.® 

We have had occasion to speak already of Justin’s peculiar idea with 


1 Comp. the reasons, certainly not with- 
out weight, which Semisch has-presented in 
favor of the common explanation of these 
titles, in the Studien und Kritiken, J. 1835, 
S. 921. 

2 Ein οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀξίως εὐσεβείας καὶ 
φιλοσοφίας τὰ δίκαια ὑπὲρ ἑαυτῶν κρῖναι. 
That the epithet φιλόσοφος, which occurs at 
the beginning of the Apology of Athenag- 
oras, whether applied to L. Verus or to 
Commodus, cannot serve to relieve this dif- 
ficulty, is plain; since it may be easily shown, 
that the predicate, belonging properly to 
only one of the emperors, is attributed to 
them both in common, as the case there 
stands. 

8 As the Benedictine editor long ago 
noticed. 

* According to the Benedictine edition, 


§ 4, where he speaks of enmity to God; § 6, 
where he speaks of the incarnation of the 
Logos; and § 8, where he speaks of Hera- 
clitus. 

5 By comparing II. 13 and IV. 16 (IV. 11 
is less clear), and by comparing ὁ. 17 with 
what precedes, we can scarce doubt that 
either the reading πρότερα is corrupt, or 
Eusebius so wrote through a mere oversight. 

6 Though I cannot think the difficulty so 
great as it is considered to be by Hr.Semisch 
(1. c. p. 920), who does not believe that a 
prefect under this reign would have acted 
in this manner; for Trajan’s rescript was 
certainly still in full force, and a Christian 
who, before the civil magistrate, professed a 
religio illicita, and declared himself opposed 
to the state religion, had to be punished for 
his obstinacy (obstinatio.) 


666 THE APOLOGISTS. 


regard to the spermatic Word, (λόγος σπερματικός,) as related to the abso- 
lute, divine Logos, and constituting the transition-link betwixt Christianity 
and everything true and good in the times antecedent to Christianity — 
an idea which was laid hold of and prosecuted still farther by the Alex- 
andrians. It is singular, however, that in Justin’s other writings not a 
hint is to be found respecting this idea, so predominant in. the Apolo- 
gies. It might be said, indeed, Justin simply made use of this idea in 
accommodation to his particular purpose, which was, to render the 
philosophical emperor more favorably inclined to his propositions ; but 
the supposition is an unnatural one. Forming our estimate of Justin 
especially from his own writings, we could hardly give him eredit for 
possessing versatility of mind enough, to range so freely in a circle of 
ideas which had been merely borrowed from abroad to answer a present 
purpose. That more candid and liberal judgment of the Greek philo- 
sophy, and that impartial and fair statement even of opinions which he 
censures, we must regard rather as the expression of his real views. 
But in his other writings, which aimed at the conversion of the Heathens, 
he might beyond doubt have employed the same method with as good 
effect as in the Apologies. Why, then, did he not employ it? The 
case would appear still more singular, if we supposed, according to the 
common view, that Justin wrote the two Apologies in times so widely 
different. 

We have a production, under the name of Justin, entitled an Admo- 
nition to the Gentiles, (παραινετικὸς πρὸς "EAAqvac,) the design of which is to 
convince the Heathens of the insufficiency of their popular religion, as well 
as of their philosophical doctrines of religion, and of the necessity of a 
higher instruction from God himself. It is most probably the same 
treatise which we find cited by Eusebius and Photius under the title of 
The Refutation, (ἔλεγχος,) a title well suited to the contents.! 

In this treatise, we find no trace of that milder and more liberal way 
of thinking which we observe in the Apologies,—no trace of that pe- 
culiar circle of ideas of which we have spoken, but rather the reverse. 
All true knowledge of God is here represented as derived solely 
from revelation. It is admitted, indeed, that among the Heathen there 
were many feeble though misunderstood echoes of the truth ; yet these 
were derived from a misunderstood and corrupt tradition ; — which 
agrees with the idea prevailing among the Alexandrian Jews, that 
a knowledge of the doctrines communicated by divine revelation to the 
Jews, had come to the Greeks through Egypt. While, in the Apolo- 
gies, men are acknowledged to have existed among the Heathen, who, 
following the revelation of the λόγος σπερματικός, were witnesses for the 
truth before the appearance of Christianity, it is here asserted,” on the 
contrary: ‘* Your own teachers have been constrained, even against 
their will, to say a great deal for us concerning divine providence ; and 
particularly those of them who have resided in Egypt, and profited by 
the religion of Moses and his fathers.” 


1 Comp. Semisch’s thorough investigation “ Monographie,” p. 105, where also will be 
respecting this writing in the first vol. of his found a list of the authors on this subject. 
2 Cohortat. p. 15. 


JUSTIN MARTYR. » 667 

We cannot possibly suppose, that this treatise sprung from a mind of 
the same way of thinking, as that which produced Justin’s A polo- 
gies. Yet, if we are disposed to ascribe it to him, we must at least 
not follow the common hypothesis, and consider it the first production of 
his after his conversion, but, on the contrary, one of his latest. We 
must suppose, that the mild and liberal way of thinking which he 
originally indulged, became afterwards more narrow and rigid; and 
that those views, resulting from the peculiar direction of his mind, and 
originally predominant with him, concerning the relation of the revela- 
tions of the λόγος σπερματικός to the revelation of the absolute Logos, 
which we find predominant in the Apologies, had at some later period 
been wholly suppressed by the notions which he had imbibed from the 
Alexandrian Jews concerning a source of outward tradition! Such a 
change is indeed possible, and examples of the same kind are doubt- 
less to be met with; but it may be a question, whether this treatise 
contains sufficiently decisive evidence of having proceeded from Justin, 
to make such an hypothesis necessary. 

We have next, under the name of Justin, a short address to the 
Gentiles, (λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας.) with which indeed no title mentioned in 
the indexes to the writings of Justin among the ancients corresponds, but 
which, however, if we cannot consider it a production of Justin be- 
cause it differs from the style of his writings,” bears at least the stamp 
of the same age. It is a rhetorical exhibition of the untenableness of 
the pagan doctrine concerning the gods, in which the finest passage is 
the conclusion: ‘* The power of the Logos does not produce poets; it 


1 Tt is not to be denied, that these notions 
occur also in the Apologies; but they are 
kept more in the background, while the 
other view predominates. Apovog. II. p.81: 
“ All that philosophers and poets have said 
about the immortality of the soul, about 
punishments after death, about the intuition 
of heavenly things, or about similar doc- 
trines, they have been enalled to know, and 
have unfolded, because they have been fur- 
nished with a clue to them by the prophets. 
Hence there seems to be one and the same 
sun of truth for them all; and it is plain, 
that they have not correctly understood it, 
if they contradict one another.” So too, p. 92, 
Plato’s doctrine of the creation is traced to 
Moses. 

2 Although I agree with Semisch in the 
result, yet I cannot approve the reasons 
which he adduces (p. 166) for deciding that 
the writing is not Justin’s. The difference 
between the Admonitions and the Apologies 
is in fact greater than that which he makes 
so prominent between this writing and the 
other writings of Justin. What Justin says 
in the Apologies, respecting the motives 
which led him to abandon Paganism, may 
be easily reconciled with what he alleges 
here, when he speaks of his abhorrence of 
the immoralities in the pagan mythology; 
for although he had learned already, in the 


philosophical schools, to give another sense 
to the mythological narratives, yet this arti- 
ficial concealment of the breach with the 
traditional religion could not satisfy him. 
He might then very justly mention this as 
one thing which led him to Christianity, 
though it was not the only one. In truth, 
one is not always under the necessity of 
expressing in full every thing that has con- 
tributed to induce a change in his convic- 
tions and mode of conduct. The manner, 
however, in which Christianity operated on 
him, he describes here not otherwise than 
he does in his other writings. Hr. Semisch 
labors under a mistake, when he supposes 
that in this writing he finds, it made the 
boast of Christianity, that it does not form 
philosophers. Z’his is not what is said; but 
that it makes men more than philosophers, 
— that it converts mortals into gods; and 
this, too, Justin might have said. Nor does 
it admit of being proved from this writing, 
that the author supposed no intermediate 
state after death, — no Hades as a transition 
stage ; for, when he speaks of the return of 
redeemed souls to God, the reference is here 
to the ultimate end —the final goal; and, 
moreover, the expression is too general and 
vague to furnish any grounds for deciding 
as to what the author’s views were on this 
point. 


668 THE APOLOGISTS. 

does not create philosophers, nor able orators; but, by forming us 
anew, it makes of mortal men immortal, converts mortals into gods. It 
transports us from the earth beyond the limits of Olympus. Come, and 
submit yourselves to its influence. Become as I am, for I too was as 
you are: this has conquered me, the divinity of the doctrine, the power 
of the Logos ; for as a master serpent-charmer lures out and frightens 
away the hideous reptile from his den, so the word drives the fearful 
passions of our sensual nature from the most secret recesses of the soul. 
And the cravings of lust having once been banished, the soul becomes 
calm and serene ; and, delivered from the evil which had cleaved to it, 
returns to its Creator.” 1 

The largest and most important work we have from Justin, is, next 
to the Apologies, his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew— the object of 
which is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Old Testa- 
ment, and to refute the objections then commonly urged by the Jews 
against Christianity. Justin comes, probably to Hphesus, in company 
with Trypho a Jew, whom the war excited by Barcochba had driven 
from Palestine, and who was traveling about Greece ; having there 
studied, and become enamored of the Greek philosophy. The phi- 
losopher’s cloak, which Justin wore, led Trypho to accost him as he was 
taking a solitary walk; and a conversation arose between them about 
the knowledge of God, which Justin finally turns to the subject of 
Christianity. The conversation is supposed to be here put down in 
writing. 

The unanimous testimony of the ancients assigns this Dialogue to 
Justin. ‘The author intimates that he is the same Justin who wrote 
the Apologies, by citing a passage from the so-called second Apology, 
as his own production.” He describes himself in the introduction as 
one who had left Platonism for Christianity — which applies perfectly 
well to Justin. No unprejudiced reader can deny, that the writing 
must have beeh composed by a contemporary of Justin, or at least by 
aman who lived very near to those times. Such being the case, no 
good reason can be imagined, why a man, who, as appears evident from 
this book, was by his own personal qualifications entitled to rank as 
high as Justin himself, should, instead of writing it in his own name, 
cause it to appear under that of a contemporary. Besides, the book 
is wholly free from those marks of studious design, so apparent in other 
forgeries of the same period, written for the purpose of giving spread 
to certain favorite opinions. The prevailing aim is a polemical one 
against Jews and Judaizing Christians; and here nothing was to be 
gained in the estimation of either party by using the name of the Sa- 
maritan pagan, and former Platonist.® 


1 Respecting the treatise “on the Unity of 
God,” (περὶ wovapxiac,) incorrectly ascribed 
to Justin, see the remarks of Semisch, 1. ὁ. 

. 167. 
Pe Vid. Simon Magus, Dial. Tryph. f. 349. 

8 The arguments brought against the 
genuineness of this book by Wetstein, Pro- 
legomena in Novy. Test., and Semler in his 


edition of the same, 1764, p. 174, are drawn 
from the mode of citation from the Alexan- 
drian version. Comp., on the other side, 
Stroth, in the Repertorium fiir bibl. u. mor- 
genlind. Literatur, Bd. IL. 5. 74; next Roch, 
Justini M. Dial. c. Tryph. secundam regulas 
criticas examinat. et vodeborme convictus, 
1700, — a work which I have not seen; and 


JUSTIN MARTYR. © 669 


We may be struck, it is true, at meeting here with the same phe- 
nomena which we remarked in speaking of the “ Refutation of the 
Gentiles ;”? but here the case is altered. We saw, in fact, that Justin 
is seeking to point out, on the one hand, the affinity of Christianity 
with the better sort of Greek philosophy, and, on the other, the unsatis- 
factory nature of that philosophy so far as it respects religion. Now, 
if in the Apologies, directed to the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, par- 
ticular prominence would necessarily be given to the former point of 
view ; in a work, on the contrary, which is aimed against Jews, who 
sought in the Greek philosophy a supplement to the religious instruc- 
tion of the Old Testament, this point of view would necessarily be kept 
wholly in the back ground. Yet, at the same time, there is an evident 
affinity of ideas between the Dialogue and the Apologies, even im that fa- 
vorite thought of the Apologies relating to the λόγος σπερματικός. In like 
manner as in the first Apology, he says that men would have had some 
excuse for their sins, if the Logos had first revealed himself to man- 
kind but a hundred and fifty years ago; if his agency had not been 
felt at all times among men through the medium of that λόγος σπερματικός : 
so, in the present treatise, he makes the same remark in reference to 
the moral ideas (φυσικαὶ évvoca) inseparable from human nature, which 
force men everywhere to recognize sin as sin, and which, by the imflu- 
ence of the evil spirit, by bad education, manners and laws, were capa- 
ble of being extinguished and suppressed rather than totally destroyed. 
What he says here also concerning that which had revealed itself at all 
times and by its own nature, as the goodness whereby alone men could 
please God,—in contradistinction to the ceremonial law, which was 
valid only as a means of discipline and culture for the Jewish hardness 
of heart, or as typical of the future,! — naturally leads to the idea of 
that λόγος σπερματικός, by which a moral consciousness was given to all 
mankind. 

It is very true, that in the Apologies we find no trace of Chiliasm ; 
but the spiritual ideas of eternal life and of the kingdom of Christ, 
which are so clearly displayed in the Apologies, stand in no manner of 
contradiction with this doctrine ; and we should not forget that the 
Chiliasts themselves regarded the millennium as being but a medium of 
transition to a higher stage of existence. It may perhaps be explained, 
that this doctrine, which could not fail to be peculiarly offensive to the 
educated Heathen, was not mentioned by him in his Apologies, because, 
although important according to his own views, yet it did not belong to 
the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which latter, we must allow, 
he exhibited without the least disguise, even when they were offensive 
to the Heathen. In a dialogue designed to vindicate the Christian 
doctrine against the objections of the Jews, he had special occasion, on 
the contrary, to make this a prominent point, in order to show, that the 
Christians were orthodox in this particular, even according to the Jew- 


Lange in the first vol. of his Dogmenge- ed. Rosenmueller, Fuldner, et Maurer. T. I. 

schichte, — an excellent refutationof Muen- P. II. 

scher. Vid. Commentationes theologice, 1Ta φύσει καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ δὶ ὅλου καλὰ καὶ 
δίκαια καὶ ἀγαϑά. See p. 247, 264, 320. 


670 THE APOLOGISTS. 


ish representations. The antipathy to Gnosticism and to the doctrines 
of Marcion is strongly marked in both works ; and with this spirit, Chili- 
asm at that time readily sympathized. 

In respect to the doctrine of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, we 
find in the Apologies and in the Dialogue a striking coincidence. More- 
over, the thoughts and expressions which occur in both productions, ex- 
hibit still more evident marks of their having proceeded from the same 
author.} 

We cannot determine with certainty, whether Justin actually had 
such a disputation with a Jew by the name of Trypho ; but it is at least 
quite probable that various disputations with Jews furnished him an in- 
ducement to write such a Dialogue, as he had thereby acquired so inti- 
mate a knowledge of the Jewish theology of the age. He was always 
ready to give Jews and Gentiles the reasons of his faith. As we are 
not able to distinguish what is mere drapery in this Dialogue from what 
is fact, so neither can we find in it any sufficient marks by which to de- 
termine its exact chronology ; but it is certain, from the citation out of 
the first Apology, that it was composed at a later period than the lat- 
ter, and probably, when we take into consideration all that has been 
said, later than either of the Apologies. 

Justin speaks of the power of the gospel, from his own experience, 
in the Dialogue, as well as in the Apologies. “I found in the doctrine 
of Christ,” says he, “‘ the only sure and salutary philosophy; for it has 
in it a power to awe, which restrains those who depart from the right 
way; and the sweetest peace is the portion of them that practise it. 
That this doctrine is sweeter than honey is evident; since we who 
have been formed by it, refuse to deny his name, even to death.” 

We have to regret the loss of a work which Justin wrote against all 
the heretical sects of his day, and of his book against Marcion. 
Whether the fragment of a work on the resurrection, which John of 
Damascus in the eighth century published under Justin’s name, really 
belongs to him, is extremely doubtful: Husebius, Jerome, and Photius, 
knew nothing of any such work. Their silence, however, is no proof 
that it was not his.” 

Among the finest remains of Christian antiquity belongs the letter to 
Diognetus on the characteristics of the Christian worship compared 
with Paganism and with Judaism, which is found among the works of 
Justin. It contains that noble description of the Christian life, from 


1 The mystical interpretation of the Mes- 
sianic passage, Gen. 49: 11. Apolog. II. p. 
74: Τὸ γὰρ “ πλύνων THY στολὴν αὐτοῦ 
ἐν αἵματι σταφυλῆς" προαγγελτικὸν ἣν 
τοῦ πάϑους, οὗ πάσχειν ἔμελλε, δ’ αἵματος 
καϑαίρων τοὺς πιστεύοντας αὐτῷ" yap κε- 
κλημένη ὑπὸ τοῦ ϑείου πνεύματος διὰ τοῦ 
προφῆτου στυλὴ, οἱ πιστεύοντες αὐτῷ εἰσιν 
ἄνϑρωποι, ἐν οἷς οἰκεῖ τὸ παρὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ 
σπέρμα, ὁ Adyoc, τὸ δὲ εἰρημένον αἷμα τῆς 
σταφυλῆς, σημαντικὸν τοῦ ἔχειν μὲν αἷμα τὸν 
φανησόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐξ ἀνϑρωπείου σπέρ- 
ματος, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ ϑείας δυνάμεως. Comp. with 
this the passage in Dial. Tryph. 273, which 


betrays the same author; only that, in the 
former passage, he makes use of expressions 
which were borrowed more from the Greek 
philosophy, as his purpose required that he 
should: Τὸ τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ ἀποπλύνειν 
μέλλειν τοὺς πιστεύοντας αὐτῷ ἐδήλου. Στο- 
λὴν γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐκάλεσε τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα τοὺς 
δι αὐτοῦ ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν λαβόντας, ἐν οἷς 
ἀεὶ δυνάμει μὲν πάρεστι, καὶ ἐνεργῶς δὲ 
παρέσται ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ αὐτοῦ παρουσίᾳ. Td 
δὲ αἷμα σταφυλῆς εἰπεῖν τὸν λόγον, δεδήλωκεν, 
ὅτι αἷμα μὲν ἔχει ὁ Χριστὸς οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρώπου 
σπέρματος" ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ϑεοῦ δυνάμεως. 
2 Comp. Semisch, 1. ο. I. 5, 146. 


JUSTIN MARTYR. ᾿ 671 
which we have already made a brief quotation. Its language, its 
thoughts, and the silence of ancient writers, prove, that the letter did 
not come from the hand of Justin. But the Christian simplicity which 
pervades it is an evidence of its high antiquity ; to which may be add- 
ed, that the author places Judaism and Paganism in the same cate- 
gory ; that he seems not to consider the Jewish ritual as of divine 
origin — and yet nothing properly Gnostic is to be found in the compo- 
sition. Such an appearance can be explained only on the supposition 
of its belonging to a very early date. 

The circumstance, however, that the author speaks of the Jewish 
sacrificial worship as an institution still m existence, would not warrant 
us to infer that it was written before the destruction of the temple at 
Jerusalem ; for in a lively description, he might naturally represent as 
actually existing, an institution belonging to the past. Nor does he fur- 
nish us with any certain chronological mark, when he styles himself a 
disciple of the apostles; for so he might call himself as a follower of 
their writings and doctrines. There is some doubt, however, whether 
this passage in the beginning of the eleventh paragraph belongs to the 
genuine part of the letter. 

What follows after this, came evidently from another hand. The 
remarks which here occur respecting the Jewish people, respecting the 
divine authority of the Old Testament, and the orthodoxy attaching 
itself to the decisions of the fathers, are not in harmony with the pre- 
vailing turn of spirit and mode of thinking which we find in this letter. 

Justin expected, as he informs us himself in the Apology last cited, 
that a certain individual, Crescens by name, and a cynic by profession, 
— who belonged to one of the then famous classes of pretended saints, 
and used his great influence with the populace in stirring them up 
against the Christians, — would be the means of his death; for he had 
drawn on himself the particular hatred of that man by unmasking his 
hypocrisy. According to Eusebius, Crescens actually accomplished 
what he had threatened: but, in evidence of this, Eusebius adduces a 
passage from Tatian, Justin’s disciple, which yet amounts to no proof; 4 
for Tatian simply says that Crescens sought to destroy Justin, from 
whence certainly it does not follow that he actually accomplished his 
purpose.” | 

Eusebius may be right, however, in saying that Justin suffered mar- 
tyrdom under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This account agrees 
with a report of the martyrdom of Justin and his companions, which 
comes to us, it is true, through a suspected channel,’ but yet possesses 
many internal marks which are more in favor of than against its 
authenticity.* 


1 § 19, orat. contra Grecos. 

2 Θανάτῳ περιβαλεῖν πραγματεύσασϑαι. 

8 Τὴ the collection of the Metaphrast Sy- 
meon. 

4 The fact that no wonderful stories, 
nothing strained or exaggerated, occurs in 
it; that it contains nothing inconsistent with 
the simple relations existing among Chris- 


tian communities in that age; that it makes 
no mention of Crescens, whereas we should 
expect, if such a tale of martyrdom had been 
invented by some Greculus, that Justin’s 
death would be ascribed to the contrivance 
of Crescens, and the latter, as a principal 
character, be made the subject of many 
fables. 


fe 


672 THE APOLOGISTS. 


Next after Justin follows his disciple, Tatian of Assyria, of whom 
we have already spoken in our account of the Gnostic sects.1_ He has 
himself furnished us, in the only work of his, soon to be mentioned, 
which we possess, the means of tracing the history of his religious de- 
velopment. He was educated a Heathen; and his extensive travels 
afforded him an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the multifa- 
rious kinds of heathen worship which then existed in the Roman em- 
pire. Not one among them all appeared to him to be a reasonable 
worship. He saw religion everywhere made an instrument for the ser- 
vice of sin. Nor could he be satisfied with the fine-spun allegorical 
interpretations of the ancient fables, which represented them as sym- 
bols of a speculative system of nature; and it seemed to him dishonor- 
able for one to join in the popular worship, who could not fall in with 
the common religious persuasion, nor see in the doctrine of the gods 
anything else than symbols of the elements and agencies of nature. 
The mysteries, also, into which he became initiated, seemed to him not to 
answer the expectations which they excited; while the conflicting sys- 
tems of the philosophers furnished no certain ground of religious con- 
viction. The contradiction which he often observed in pretended phi- 
losophers, between the affected gravity of their costume, of their looks 
and discourses, and the frivolity of their conduct, filled him with dis- 
trust. While in this state of mind, he happened to light upon the Old 
Testament, to which his attention had been drawn by what he had heard 
concerning the high antiquity of these writings compared with the re- 
ligion of the Greeks — as might very naturally happen toa Syrian. As 
to the impression made on his mind by the perusal of the Old Testa- 
ment, he remarks himself: ‘‘ These writings won my confidence by the 
simplicity of their style, the unaffected directness of the speakers, the 
intelligible account of the creation; by the predictions of future events, 
the salutary tendency of the precepts, and the prevailing doctrine of 
one God.’’? The impression which he received from the study of the 
Old Testament, seems, accordingly, to have prepared the way for his 
belief in the gospel. Having made a visit to Rome while in this state 
of mind, he was there converted to Christianity through the instrumen- 
tality of Justin, of whom he speaks in terms of high veneration. 

After the death of the latter, he wrote his Discourse to the Gentiles, 
in which he vindicates the “ philosophy of the barbarians” (φιλοσοφία τῶν 
βαρβάρων) against the contempt of the Greeks, who nevertheless had re- 
ceived the germs of all science and arts originally from the barbarians. 
In the view he takes of the relation of the Greek philosophy as well as 
religion to Christianity, we recognize the later much more than the earlier 
Justin. We have remarked on a former occasion,* that in this work 
the germ already appears of that speculative and ascetic way of think- 
ing, which he had probably brought along with him from Syria; as we 

1 See vol. I. p. 456. Tatian should subsequently become an anti- 

2 Tatian had therefore already been con- Jewish Gnostic; but we have already ob- 
vinced of the untenableness of polytheism, served (p. 456-7) that we are by no means 
and indeed become satisfied that no religion warranted to adopt this supposition. 


but a monotheistic one could be true. * See p. 456. 
8 It would be very strange, then, that 


% 
me 


TATIAN. ATHENAGORAS. HERMIAS. 673 


may also perceive in it some obscurity of style which was peculiar to 
the Syrians. He says to the Heathens: ‘‘ Wherefore would you excite 
the religions of the state toa conflict with us? And wherefore, if I 
am unwilling to follow your religious laws, should I be hated as the 
most impious of men? ‘The emperor commands us to pay tribute; I 
am ready to pay it. The Lord commands us to serve him; I know 
how I am bound to serve him: for men are to be honored after the 
manner of men; but that God only is to be feared, who can be seen by 
no human eye, and comprehended by no human art. Only when bid- 
den to deny him, shall I refuse to obey, but choose rather to die, that 
I may not appear both false and ungrateful.” | 

Next after Tatian, follows Athenagoras, who addressed his Apology 
(πρεσβεία rept χριστιανῶν.) to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Com- 
modus.!_ Of his personal history we have no definite accounts. Only 
two of the ancient writers name him,— Methodius, and Philip of Sida. 
This Philip of Sida, the last head of the Alexandrian catechetical 
school, is the only individual who enters into any details respecting the 
life of Athenagoras;? but the known incredibility of this author, the 
discrepancy between his statements and other more authentic reports, 
and the suspicious condition in which his fragment has come down to 
us, render these details unworthy of confidence. Neither the remarks 
of Athenagoras concerning the second marriage, nor what he says of 
the ecstacy of the prophets, whom he represents as blind organs of the 
activity of the Holy Spirit, would suffice to prove that he was a Mon- 
tanist ; for, as we have remarked before, the Montanists said nothing 
on these points that was altogether new: they only pushed to the ex- 
treme a way of thinking on religious subjects and on ethics which was 
already existing. 

Of this Athenagoras, we have still remaining a work in Defence of 
the doctrine of the Resurrection. 

In connection with the Apologists, we may notice a certain Hermias, 
of whom we know nothing, save that he wrote a short satire against the 
heathen philosophers (διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω φιλοσόφων.) His aim is, to bring 
together a number of absurd and contradictory opinions from the Greek 
philosophers, without presenting anything positive of his own ; — a pro- 
cedure which could hardly serve any useful purpose ; for, to convince 
those who had been philosophically educated, something more was 
necessary than this sort of declamation ; and the uneducated needed 
no such precautions against the errors of the philosophers, and no such 
negative preparation for the reception of the gospel. We see in Her- 
mias one of those bitter enemies to the Greek philosophy, attacked by 
Clement of Alexandria, who, following the idle Jewish legend, pre- 
tended that the Greek philosophy had been derived from fallen angels. 
In the title of his book, he is called the philosopher: perhaps before 


1 See the treatise of Mosheim concerning Ireneum. He reports that Athenagoras 
the time when this Apology was composed, _ lived in the times of Hadrian and of Anto- 
in the first vol. of his Commentationes ad ninus Pius; that he presented his Apology 
hist. eccles. pertinentes. to these emperors ; and that he was cate- 

2 Published by Dodwell, Dissertat. in chist before Clement at Alexandria. 


VOL. I. 57 


674 THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH. 
his conversion he wore the philosopher’s mantle ; and, after it, passed 
from an enthusiastic admiration of the Greek philosophy to extreme 
abhorrence of it. It turns on the differences of natural disposition and 
of the mode of conversion, whether the new Christian principle will 
seek after what is related to it in the earlier per rw τος or rather 
present itself only in stern hostility to it. 

The community in the great capital of Roman Asia in the East — 
that flourishing seat of learnmg—could not fail to be supplied with 
church-teachers of a regular scientific education; and the contact into 
which these were thrown with educated Heathens, and with the Gnos- 
tics, whose native country was Syria, would naturally stimulate their 
literary activity. Under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Theophilus 
became bishop of this community. After the death of this emperor, 
and in the reign of Commodus, he wrote an apologetical work in three 
books, addressed to Autolycus, a Heathen, whose objections against 
Christianity moved him to compose this treatise, in which he displays 
great erudition and power of thought. From this work we have already 
made some extracts. It is worthy of notice, that this Theophilus, who 
wrote against Marcion and Hermogenes, had also composed commenta- 
ries on the sacred scriptures. We may here observe the germ of that 
exegetical bent of the church at Antioch, of which we shall again have 
occasion to speak at the close of this section.t 

We have before observed, how a tendency, antagonistic to the 
germinant Gnosis, grew out of the reactions of the Johannean spirit 
in Asia Minor—a tendency which sought to preserve uncorrupted 
and in its practical significancy the historical and objective side of 
Christianity ; but we have seen also how this tendency might be mis- 
led, by its opposition to Gnosticism, to surrender itself too much to the 
influence of a material Jewish element. And owing to the common in- 
terest of Christianity and the church in the struggle with Gnosticism, 
spiritual elements among which very important differences otherwise 
existed, here came to be combined. Thus might even those with whom 
the Jewish element more strongly predominated, find in this common 
opposition, which caused all other differences to be overlooked, a point 
of agreement; as we see, for example, in the case of Justin, who cer- 
tainly was far from being inclined to Ebionitism, and yet judged far 
more mildly of those who “bordered on this position, provided only they 
did not refuse to acknowledge the Gentile Christians as brethren in the 
faith, than he judged of the Gnostics. ‘Thus it may be explained, why 


1 Jerome cites, c. 25 de vir. ill. a commen- _ possible, indeed, that all this refers only to 


tary of his in evangelium (which may de- 
note the entire corpus evangeliorum) and 
on the Proverbs; but adds, qui mihi cum 
superiorum yoluminum elegantia et phrasi 
non videntur congruere. But, in the preface 
to his commentary on Matthew, he cites, 
very distinctly, commentaries of Theophilus ; 
and in his letter to Algasia, tom. IV. ἢ 
197, he cites, as it seems, an explanatory 
harmony or synopsis of the evangelists by the 
same author (qui quatuor evangelistarum 
in unum opus dicta compingens.) It is 


one and the same work. We have nothing 
more of his, (as the Latin fragments which 
go under the name of Theophilus do not 
belong to the present Theophilus,) unless 
other fragments may still be found in the 
Catene. The examples which Jerome gives 
of his method of interpretation, are remote 
from the spirit of the later Antiochian 
school; for they savor of an allegorizing 
fancy, which, however, might be expected 
from his Alexandrian education, — so easy 
to be recognized in the first-cited work. 


HEGESIPPUS. | 675 


Hegesippus, a church-teacher, of strong Jewish coloring and Jewish 
origin, who lived under the reigns of the emperors Hadrian and Anto- 
ninus Pius, and from whom proceeded the first attempt to compose a 
church history, should show himself inclined to favor the anti-Gnostic 
tendency of the church. In the reign of the lastnamed emperor, this 
father — perhaps for the purpose of reconciling the differences existing 
between the communities which followed Jewish and those which fol- 
lowed Gentile customs, or to convince himself by personal observation 
of the agreement in essentials among all the ancient churches — un- 
dertook a journey to Rome, where he spent some considerable time. 
The result of his inquiries and collections: was embodied in five books 
of ecclesiastical events (πέντε ὑπομνήματα ἐκκλησιαστικῶν πράξεων.) In prose- 
cuting such a work, we may well suppose that he would adopt many 
corrupt traditions of Jewish origin, and be influenced by various errors 
growing out of the low, sensual conception of a Jewish Christian. The 
sketch he gives of James, who was called the brother of our Lord, is 
drawn quite after the Ebionitic taste! From a quotation made by 
Stephanus Gobarus,? a monophysite author who lived near the close of 
the sixth century, we might conclude indeed, that, as a decided Ebion- 
ite, he was opposed to the Apostle Paul; for in the fifth book of his 
History of the Church, after citing the words in 1 Corinth. 2: 9, 
“ What eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the 
heart of man,’ — he remarks this is false, and those who use such 
language contradict the sacred scriptures and the Lord, who says, 
“Blessed are your eyes, that they see; and your ears, that they hear,” 
Matth. 13: 16.° If we refer these words of Hegesippus to the above- 
cited passage from Paul, it would seem to follow, that he accused the 
latter of a false doctrine, or, at least, charged him with having quoted 
something as scripture, which is not to be found in the scriptures. But 
the concurrence which Hegesippus expresses in the universal tradition 
of the church, and his connections with the church of Rome, are against 
this supposition; according to which, he must necessarily have been 
opposed to them both. 

By several critics of church history in recent times, the matter 
has been represented in a directly opposite way. Proceeding on 
the assumption that Hegesippus was given to the above-mentioned 
anti-Pauline Lbionitism, they have thought themselves warranted 
to infer from his testimony of concurrence just alluded to, that 
in the greater portion of the church, and in the Roman church particu- 
larly, a kindred spirit prevailed. But our opinion is, that this argu- 
ment proves too much, and therefore nothing at all; for, if this result 
were a correct one, it would follow that we must just reverse the whole 
church history of the first centuries, and suppose changes, of which 
there is not the slightest indication, but which only would be sufficient 
to account for the more general recognition of the apostolical authority 
of Paul. That the Roman church did not take its departure from a 


1 Euseb. 1. IL. c. 23. 8 Μάτην μὲν εἰρῆσϑαι ταῦτα καὶ καταψεύ- 
2 Tn Photius, cod. 235. δεσϑαι τοὺς ταῦτα φαμένους τῶν τε ϑείων 
γραφῶν καὶ τοῦ κυρίου λέγοντος κτλ. 


676 HEGESIPPUS. 

fundamental Jewish principle, we believe has been proved by our ex- 
position of the facts. What shall we say of a method of scientific inves- 
tigation, which erects a theory on some obscure, isolated passage, in 
conflict with the more certain results which flow from the investigation 
of the credible and plenteous sources of the ancient church? And as 
Hegesippus believed that he found the pure doctrine of Christ in the 
first epistle of Clement to the Cormthians,! where the Pauline element 
is not to be mistaken, he cannot have been an opponent to Paul, as he 
necessarily must have been, if it were really his intention, by the words 
above quoted, to controvert this apostle. 

So far as we can judge, (without knowing in what connection those 
words of Hegesippus occurred,) we may rather conjecture, therefore, 
that he made this remark, not in opposition to Paul,? but, in his flaming 
zeal against the adversaries of the sensual Chiliasm, who doubtless 
might employ the above-cited passage from Paul, and others of the like 
character, to controvert the sensual representations of future happiness. 

The controversy respecting the time of the Haster festival,’ and re- 
specting the prophetic spirit of Montanism, furnished afterwards, in 
addition to the disputes with the Gnostics, and the Apologies against 
the Gentiles, new materials for the literary activity of these church- 
teachers. The catalogue of the writings drawn up by Melito, bishop 
of Sardis, whom we have already cited as the author of an Apology 
addressed to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, shows on what sort of mat- 
ters the attention of the church-teachers of Asia Minor was at that 
time employed. We find among them the following :— Rules of life, 
and of the prophets; of prophecy ; of the Church; of the Revela- 
tion of John (writings which, collectively, may have had reference to 
the great point of the Montanistic controversy ;) the Key (ἡ κλεις) (per- 
haps also referring to the same subject, and alluding to the key of the 
church in the disputes about penitence :) a discourse on the Lord’s day 
(perhaps with reference to the controversies between Jewish and Gen- 
tile Christians on the observance of the Sabbath or of Sunday ;) of the 
corporeity of God;* in defence of the material, anti-Gnostic views. 
The contents of the following writings might also relate to the contro- 
versy with Gnosticism :— Of the nature of man; of the creation ; of 
the soul, whether from the body or from the spirit; of the birth 
of Christ; of truth; of faith; of the senses in obedience to faith.® 
The importance of these topics, which entered so deeply mto the life 
of the church in this period, gives us the more occasion to regret the 
loss of such writings.® 


1 Euseb. |. IV. ο. 22. 

2 It may be a question in fact from what 
source he took these words, as it is still an 
unsettled point from whence Paul himself 
made the citation. 

8 See above, vol. I. p. 298. 

4 Tlepi ἐνσωμάτου ϑεοῦ. These words, it 
is true, may be understood, — of God who 
appeared in the body; therefore, of God 
who became man: but the comparison with 
the account which the trustworthy Origen 


gives of the contents of this book (fragment. 
commentar. in Genes. vol. II. opp. fol. 25) 
compels us to adopt the interpretation given 
above. 

5 For the catalogue of these writings, see 
Euseb, 1. IV. c. 26. 

6 Comp. on this point the learned and 
thorough disquisition of my worthy col- 
league and friend Prof. Piper, in the Studien 
und Kritiken, J. 1838, Istes Heft. Would 
that the author might be induced to furnish 


IREN AUS. 677 

A contemporary of Melito was the Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of 
Hierapolis in Phrygia, whom we have mentioned on a former occasion. 
His writings, although not so voluminous, treated on many of the same 
topics.} 

Prom the school of these church-teachers of Asia Minor proceeded 
Trenzeus, who, after the martyrdom of Pothinus, became bishop of the 
community at Lyons and Vienna. He still remembered in his old age 
what he had heard in his youtlr from the lips of the venerable Poly- 
carp, concerning the life and the doctrines of Christ and of the apos- 
tles. In a writing addressed to Florinus, a false teacher with whom, 
in his youth, he had enjoyed the society of Polycarp, he says: ‘‘ These 
doctrines, the elders who preceded us, who associated also with the 
apostles, did not teach thee; for while I was yet a boy, I saw thee in 
company with Polycarp in Asia Minor; for I bear in remembrance 
what happened then, better than what happens now. What we have 
heard in childhood, grows along with the soul and becomes one with it; 
so that I can describe the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and 
spake ; his going in and out; his manner of life, and the shape of his 
person; the discourses which he delivered to the congregation ; how 
he told of his intercourse with John and with the rest, who had seen 
the Lord ; how he reported their sayings, and what he had heard from 
them respecting the Lord, his miracles and his doctrine. As he had 
received all from the eye-witnesses of his life, he narrated it in accord- 
ance with scripture. These things, by virtue of the grace of God im- 
parted to me, I listened to, even then, with eagerness ; and wrote them 
down, not on paper, but in my heart; and by the grace of God, I 
constantly bring them up again fresh before my memory. And I can 
witness before God, that if the blessed and apostolic presbyter had 
heard such things, he would have cried out, stopped his ears, and, ac- 
cording to his custom, said, ‘O my good God! upon what times hast thou 
brought me, that I must endure this!’ and he would have fled away 
from the place where, seated or standing, he had heard such dis- 
courses.” ‘The same spirit which expresses itself here, passed over 
to Irenzeus. Of his peculiar practical turn of mind, in his mode of 
conceiving and treating the doctrines of faith ; of his zeal for the essen- 
tials of Christianity, and his moderation and liberality of mind in all 
controversies about unessential outward things, we have spoken before. 
We have also remarked, that he probably stood forth as a peacemaker 
between the Montanists and their fierce adversaries. This supposition 
accords most fully with the spirit of his writings; for that he held 
many opinions and tendencies which coincided with the spirit of Mon- 
tanism, and therefore contributed also to make Tertullian especially 


soon a more ample work relating to these 
matters, as the fruit of his zealous researches 
during a series of years in this wide field of 
the ancient fathers! 

1 Τ in the Catenze— especially the Catenz 
published at Leipsic, 1772, of Nicephorus 
on the Octateuchus — the fragments belong- 
ing to this Apollinaris were duly separated 

* 


from those belonging to Apollinaris of Lao- 
dicea; and the fragments which are found 
in Eusebius, and in the Chronicon Paschale 
Alexandrinum, were compared with them, 
we should have better means of determining 
the characteristics of this church-teacher. 

2 See above, vol. I. p. 84. 

8 Euseb. 1. V. c. 20. 


678 IREN US. 


dear to him, is a circumstance which, after what has been said before 
respecting the relation of Montanism to the views of the church, can- 
not possibly serve to prove that he was a Montanist himself. If he 
had been a zealous Montanist, he would hardly have refrained, when 
touching upon any favorite theme of Montanism, to have appealed 
himself also to the new disclosures imparted by the Paraclete ; but he 
uniformly appeals to the scriptures alone, or to the traditions of those 
elders of Asia Minor. We cannot possibly suppose indeed, that, where 
he speaks of the condemnation of false prophets,! he means by these 
the Montanistic prophets ; for he probably cherished too high a regard 
for the Montanists to do that: but if he were an ardent Montanist, he 
would hardly have omitted in this case to mention, in connection with 
the false prophets, the opponents also of the true prophets, since he 
reckons together here all that was worthy of condemnation. Instead 
of this, there immediately follows a passage which marks the spirit of 
Irenzeus,? as being far rather that of a lover of peace, who sought to 
prevent the schism between the Montanistic communities and the other 
churches, who even hushed the disputes in the controversy about Eas- 
ter. ‘The Lord,” he says, “‘ will judge those also who excite divi- 
sions, who are destitute of the love of God, and seek their own profit, 
but not the unity of the church, — who, for slight and frivolous rea- 
sons, rend, and, so far as in them lies, destroy the great and glorious 
body of Christ; strainmg in truth at a gnat, and swallowing a 
camel. But all the good they can do, can never compensate the evil of 
schism.” 

Any stamp of Montanism it would be impossible to find, except in 
those words of Irenzeus where he combats the extreme antimontanis- 
tic tendency of those adversaries of John’s gospel, who have been men- 
tioned on a previous page. When he speaks with so much heat and 
acrimony against those who refused to acknowledge the prophetic gift 
in the church, but looked on everything that pretended to be prophecy 
as nothing but the inspiration of fanaticism or of the evil spirit, charg- 
ing them with the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, he departs 
widely indeed from that character of moderation which he uniformly 
displays, except where he has anything to do with the Gnostics. But 
this simply shows the great importance which he attached to the extra- 
ordinary phenomena of Christian inspiration, as marking the continued 
communication of life to the church by the Holy Spirit; a remark 
which is confirmed, moreover, by many expressions in his writings. In 
this is involved no essential character of Montanism ; for on this point, 
too, Montanism simply exhibited, as may be gathered from what has 
already been said, the extreme position of a tendency of the religious 
spirit which had been existing long before in the church. Moreover, 
if Irenveus lays stress on the fact, that the prophetic spirit was poured 
out on women as well as men; and if he assumed and believed that 


1 Lib. IV. ec. 33, § 6. otherwise Tertullian would have called 
2 From the very manner in which Tertul- him, as he does Proculus just afterwards, 
lian, adv. Valentinian, ¢. 5, notices Irenzeus, “ noster.” 


we may infer that he was no Montanist; 3 See above, pp. 526, 583. 


IRENAUS. ΄ 679 


he found proof in 1 Corinth. 11: 4, 5, that the prophetic calling, by 
an exception to the general rule, authorized women to speak in the 
church assemblies; even this would afford no conclusive evidence 
of his connection with Montanism. But he remarks, at the same time, of 
his opponents, that they reduced to nothing those spiritual gifts, which, 
by the good pleasure of the Father, had been poured out in the last 
times on the human race.! And the question now is, whether he in- 
tended here the effusion of the Holy Spirit connected with the first 
appearance of Christianity, or one which laid the foundation of a new 
special epoch in the progressive development of the church. If the 
latter is the case, he would thus have recognized the mission of the new 
prophets, but at the same time have sought to prevent a schism be- 
tween the communities adhering to these prophets and the rest of the 
church. 

The principal work of Irenzeus, which, for the most part, has come 
down to us only in the old verbal Latin translation, together with several 
important fragments of the Greek original, is his Refutation of the 
Gnostic System, in five books ; a work which presents us with the most 
faithful transcript of his mind. 

Many writings of Irenzeus, we know only by their names. He him- 
self cites a work, wherein he had treated a topic which seems to he re- 
mote from the direction of mind common to these church-teachers ; 
viz., “ the peculiarities of the style of Paul,’ his frequent use of hy- 
perbata. The work, as we may conjecture, did not relate particularly 
to the peculiar style and phraseology of this apostle ; but the topic 
might be occasionally touched upon by Irenzeus, in attacking the arbi- 
trary method of the Gnostic exegesis. He attributes this peculiarity 
of Paul’s style to the crowd of thoughts pressing for utterance from his 
ardent mind ;?— an important remark in its bearing on the development 
of the notion of inspiration; for it in fact implies a distinction of the 
divine and the human element, — the consciousness that all is not to be 
traced in like manner to the actuation of the Holy Spirit; but that 
some regard is to be had also to the form, conditioned by the charac- 
teristic individuality and self-activity of the man. Such a mode of ap- 
prehending the notion of inspiration, by which the informing agency of 
the Holy Spirit is not conceived to preclude the natural evolution in 
entire harmony with psychological laws, but rather gives that evolution the 
form in which it works, is clearly implied also in many of the expres- 
sions of Tertullian; as when he assumes that the Apostle Paul did not 
always follow the same method in his apostolical work — supposes in 
him a progressive development of the Christian spirit — asserts that he 
was at first, when the life of grace began in him, stern and uncompro- 
mising ; but afterwards became milder ;—at first, like the Neophyte, 
pronounced with more emphasis his opposition to former principles ; 
but afterwards learned to moderate this, to become all things to all 


1 Ut donum Spiritus frustrentur, quod in et alibi ostendimus hyperbatis eum uten- 
novissimis temporibus, secundum placitum tem. 
Patris, effusum est in humanum genus. 8 Propter velocitatem sermonum suorum 
? Lib. III. c.7: Quemadmodum de multis et propter impetum, qui in ipso est, spiritus. 


680 IRENAUS. 

men.1 Two opposite elements, that is to say, came together here in 
the case of these church-teachers: the exclusively supranaturalistic 
view of inspiration, derived from the Jews, and specially applied by 
them to the prophetic element of the Old Testament, —which supposed 
an altogether passive state of the soul; and the conception which, after 
the analogy of the Christian consciousness, was derived from contem- 
plating the apostolical writings in their characteristic individuality, — 
a conception, however, which uttered itself only in single occasional 
remarks, but without attaining to any systematic and matured form. 
We should remark, however, that Montanism, in giving special promi- 
nence to the former notion, yet applying it only to the properly pro- 
phetic states, led the way, by this very means, to a mode of distinguish- 
ing, from this extreme point of ecstatic inspiration, lower stages in which 
consciousness was filled by the divine Spirit, but the human self-activity 
operated, as it was animated by that Spirit.? 

Of the writings belonging to this Father, which we find noticed among 
the ancients, we shall mention, besides those already named, only two 
letters, possessing an historical importance on account of their object ; 
for they are said to have been the means of healing certain divisions in 
the Roman church. One of these is addressed to Blastus, who was 
probably a presbyter in the church of Rome. The fact stated in the 
appendix to Tertullian’s Prescriptions may have been not without some 
foundation; that Blastus had occasioned a division im the Roman 
church, by adhering to the custom of Asia Minor with regard to the 
time of holding Easter. This accords fully with the times of the Ro- 
man bishop Victor. Perhaps to this he united also several other Judaiz- 
ing notions. 

The other letter was addressed to Florinus, a presbyter, with whom 
Trenzeus, in early youth, had lived in the society of the venerable Poly- 
carp, and who, as it seems, had pushed Monarchianism, or the doctrine 
of one only Creator of all existence, to such an extreme, as to make 
God the author of evil.® 


1 Paulus adhuc in gratia rudis, ferventer, 
ut adhuc Neophytus, adversus Judaismum ; 
postmodum et ipse usu omnibus omnia 
futurus, ut omnes lucraretur. ὁ. Marcion, 
lib. I. c. 20. 

2 Thus Tertullian distinguishes what Paul 


(1 Corinth. 7) set forth, on the ground of 


the common principles of Christianity, as 
human counsel, and what he taught as revela- 
tion of the divine Spirit: Cum ergo, qui se 
fidelem dixerat, adjecit postea, Spiritum Dei 
se habere, quod nemo dubitaret etiam de 
fideli, idcireo id dixit, ut sibi apostoli fas- 
tigium redderet: proprie enim apostoli Spir- 
itum Sanctum habent, in operibus prophetiz 
et efficacia virtutum documentisque lin- 
guarum, non ex parte, quod cexteri. Ex- 
hortat. castitatis, c. 5. 

8 Fyrom the title of the book, as it is cited 
by Eusebius, |. V.c. 26, it is difficult to make 
out what there was peculiar in the opinions 
of Florinus. The title is as follows: Περὲ 


μοναρχίας, ἢ περὶ τοῦ μὴ εἷναι τὸν ϑεὸν ποιη- 
τὴν κακῶν. The first part of this title ma 

doubtless be understood to mean, that Flori- 
nus, as a Gnostic Dualist, had denied the doc- 
trine of the μοναρχία: but with this, the 
second part does not agree; for the words 
cannot refer to any such fact, as that Flori- 
nus held to an absolutely evil principle, or 
a Demiurge, as the author of an imperfect 
system of the world. In this case, the title 
must have run thus: Περὲ τοῦ μὴ εἷναι ϑεὸν 
τὸν ποιητὴν κακῶν. Nothing else, therefore, 
can be understood, than that it was the de- 
sign of Irenzeus to show how the Monarchian 
doctrine ought to be maintained, so as not 
to make the μία ἀρχῇ the ἀρχὴ τῶν κακῶν ; 
and that Florin, therefore, had made God 
the author of evil, either by teaching a system 
of absolute predestination, — which many 
uneducated Christians derived from passages 
of the Old Testament, too literally under- 
stood, (according to Origen, Philocal. c. 1, 


HIPPOLYTUS. 681 


One of Irenzeus’ disciples, according to Photius,! was Hippolytus, 
who took an important place among the ecclesiastical writers belonging 
to the first half of the third century. Of his works, however, but a 
few fragments still remain. ‘True, the testimony of Photius does not 
suffice of itself to establish beyond a doubt, that he was a disciple of 
Irenzeus: but since, as appears evident from his citation, he had be- 
fore his eyes certain statements of Hippolytus himself respecting his 
relations to Irenzeus; since there is nothing in this writer’s theological 
drift, so far as we can understand it from the fragments and titles of 
his works, —if we may form any judgment, from these titles, of the sub- 
ject-matter and tendency of his labors as an author, — which contradicts 
this supposition, but, on the contrary, much which favors it, we may 
allow the fact to have been so. 

Hippolytus was a bishop. But as neither Eusebius nor Jerome was 
able to name the city in which he was bishop, we can say nothing more 
definite on the matter; and neither those later accounts, which transfer 
his bishopric to Arabia,” nor the others, which place it in the neighbor- 
hood of Rome,’ deserve consideration. Certainly, there is much in 
favor of the supposition, that his field of labor was in the East; but, on 
the other hand, much also which seems to show that it was in the West. 
Both of these suppositions easily admit of being reconciled with each 
other, by distinguishing the different periods of his life; and the very 
circumstance, that his field of labor was at different times in different 
countries, may have been the occasion of the indefiniteness which we 
observe in the ancient accounts. 

The complete list of his writings is obtained by comparing the testi- 
monies in Eusebius and Jerome; the notices of his works which are 
found on his statue,* dug up in the year 1551, near Rome, on the road 
to Tivoli; the accounts of Photius; and the catalogue of Ebedjesu,® a 
Nestorian author in the thirteenth century. From this list we see that 
he composed works on a variety of subjects, exegetical, dogmatic, po- 
lemical, and chronological ; besides homilies. 

We shall mention none of his writings, except those which, on account 


f£.17: Τοιαῦτα ὑπολαμβάνοντες περὶ τοῦ Yeod, 
ὁποῖα οὐδὲ περὶ TOV ὠμοτάτου καὶ ἀδικωτώτου 
ἀνϑρώπου,) ---- or by making God the creator 
of an absolutely evil being, whether a 
conscious or an unconscious one (a ὕλη.) 
Again, if Florin had barely entertained one 
of the common Gnostic doctrines concerning 
the origin of evil, Irenzeus would not have 
said, that no other heretic had ever as yet 
ventured to bring forward such views. And, 
moreover, when Eusebius says, that Florin 
subsequently had allowed himself to be car- 
ried away by the doctrines of Valentine, 
and Irenzeus had been induced by this fact 
to write his book, περὶ oydoddoc, against him, 
(see above the account of the Gnostic sys- 
tems,) it seems certainly to follow from this, 
that the previous doctrines of Florin were 
not Gnostic. We may conceive, then, that, 
when Florin perceived the untenableness of 
a theory which placed the cause of evil in 


God, he fell into the other extreme, and 
supposed an independent principle of evil 
existing out of God. ; 

1 Cod. 121. 

2 According to the conjecture of some 
authors, Portus Romanus, or Aden in Ara- 
bia; — ἃ report which perhaps originated in 
a misconception of the passage in Eusebius, 
1. VI. ec. 20. 

3 Portus Romanus, Ostia. 

4 He is represented sitting on his episco- 
pal chair, κάϑεδρα or Ypdvoc: under him 
is the Easter-cycle of sixteen years, which 
he prepared, κανὼν ἑκκαιδεκαετήρινος, upon 
which there is a critical essay in the second 
vol. of Ideler’s Handbuch der Chronologie, 
p- 214. An engraving of the monument 
itself is to be found in the first vol. of Fab- 
ricius’ edition of the works of Hippolytus, 

5 In Assemani Bibliotheca orientalis, T. 
ie. ὃ 


682 HIPPOLYTUS. 


of the topics they discuss, are worthy of notice in an historical point 
of view. In respect to those of an exegetical character, Jerome signi- 
fies, that he anticipated Origen in giving the example of more full and 
copious expositions of scripture, and that Origen’s friend Ambrosius 
had advised the latter to follow the same plan. He must also have 
somewhere met with Origen, cither at Alexandria, in Palestine, or Ara- 
bia; since Jerome cites a homily of Hippolytus in praise of the 
Saviour, which he had pronounced in Origen’s presence.1 His exege- 
sis, if we may judge from the few remaining fragments, was of the alle- 
gorizing kind. 

In the catalogue of his writings found on the ancient monument 
occurs a work: Ὑπὲρ τοῦ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγελίου καὶ ἀποκαλύψεως, This can 
hardly be a commentary on these two books of scripture, though Je- 
rome seems to cite a commentary of Hippolytus on the Apocalypse ; 
but the title denotes rather a treatise in defence of these books. The 
title which Ebedjesu gives to the work also agrees with this supposition. 
We must conceive it, then, to have been the design of this treatise to 
defend the genuineness of these scriptural books, and to vindicate them 
against the objections of the Alogi. If, in this case, it would appear 
that Hippolytus was an opponent of the ultra-Antimontanists, yet with 
this accords the fact, also, that he had written a work on the charis- 
mata.2. It might be taken into consideration, moreover, that by 
Stephanus Gobarus the judgments of Hippolytus and of Gregory of 
Nyssa, respecting the Montanists, are set one against the other; so 
that we may conclude the former belonged with the defenders of the 
Montanists. Whether the κεφάλαια πρὸς Γαῖον, which Ebedjesu ascribes 
to him, ought here to be brought also into the account, Cupon the sup- 
position, namely, that this Caius was the warm opponent fo Montanism, ) 
cannot be certainly determined. 

A work against thirty-two heresies is cited as belonging to Hippoly- 
tus. It ends, according to Photius, with the heresy of Noetus. He 
stated, as Photius cites, that he had availed himself in this work of a 
series of discourses by Irenzeus against these false teachers.’ His trea- 
tise against Noetus, which has been preserved, and probably formed the 
conclusion of the work, we have alluded to on a former occasion. 

We have besides from him a writing of little importance, concerning 
Antichrist, with which also Photius was acquainted. The same com- 
piler cites from him a commentary on Daniel, from which he adduces 
the noticeable fact, that Hippolytus set the end of the world at five 
hundred years after the birth of Christ. In the circumstance of his 
fixing on a period more remote than it was commonly represented to be 
in the early church, we discern the effect of the tranquil times which 
the church then enjoyed under Alexander Severus. 

1 Perhaps much light would be thrownon __ the exhibition of the apostolic tradition were 
the history of the Epiphany and Christmas two different productions. 
festivals, if these homilies had been preserved 8 The words of Photius are: Ταύτας 
to our times. ᾿ ; (796 αἱρέσεις) δὲ φησὶν ἐλέγχοις ὑποβληϑῆναι 
2 It cannot be determined with entire cer- ὁμιλοῦντος Ἐϊρηναίου" ὧν καὶ σύνοψιν ὁ Ἵπ- 
tainty, whether this work bore the title: πόλυτος ποιούμενος τόδε τὸ βιβλίον φησι 
᾿Αποστολικὴ παράδοσις περὶ χαρισμάτων, or συντεταχέναι. 
whether the work on the charismata and 4 Cod. 202. 


TERTULLIAN. © 683 


In the list of the writings of Hippolytus, found on the monument of 
which we have spoken, occurs a προτρεπτικὸν πρὸς Σεβήρειναν. Τὺ is scarce- 
ly to be doubted, that this is the same treatise from which Theodoret, 
in his ἐρανίστης, quotes several passages, under the title of a letter to a 
queen or empress, (πρὸς βασιλίδα, ) which passages Fabricius has collec- 
ted in his edition of Hippolytus. The subject-matter of them cor- 
responds with the title which the work bears on the monument. It is 
an exposition of the doctrines of the Christian faith for the use of a 
heathen lady. The Severina referred to must therefore have been a 
queen or empress. But the name Severina can hardly be quite 
correct ; — it should be Severa ; — and there is every reason to sup- 
pose it was Severa, the wife of the emperor Philip, the Arabian.’ 


The theological development of the North-African Church preserved 
a character altogether peculiar to itself. The theological spirit that 
prevailed here was continually shaping itself into a more settled form, 
from the time of Tertullian to that of Augustin; and afterwards, 
through Augustin, acquired the greatest influence over the whole West- 
ern church. 

Tertullian presents special claims to attention, both as the first rep- 
resentative of the theological tendency in the North-African church, 
and as a representative of the Montanistic mode of thinking. He was 
aman of an ardent and profound spirit, of warm and deep feelings; 
inclined to give himself up, with his whole soul and strength, to the 
object of his love, and sternly to repel everything that was foreign from 
this. He possessed rich and various stores of knowledge; which had 
been accumulated, however, at random, and without scientific arrange- 
ment. His profoundness of thought was not united with logical clear- 
ness and sobriety: an ardent, unbridled imagination, moving in a world 
of sensuous images, governed him. His fiery and positive disposition, 
and his previous training as an advocate or rhetorician, easily impelled 
him, especially in controversy, to rhetorical exaggerations. When he 
defends a cause, of whose truth he was convinced, we often see in him 
the advocate, whose sole anxiety is to collect together all the arguments 
which can help his case, it matters not whether they are true arguments 
or only plausible sophisms ; and in such cases the very exuberance of 
his wit sometimes leads him astray from the simple feeling of truth. 
What must render this man a phenomenon presenting special claims to 
the attention of the Christian historian is the fact, that Christianity is 
the inspiring soul of his life and thoughts ; that out of Christianity an 
entirely new and rich inner world developed itself to his mind : but the 
leaven of Christianity had first to penetrate through and completely 
refine that fiery, bold, and withal rugged nature. We find the new 
wine in an old bottle ; and the tang which it has contracted there, may 
easily embarrass the inexperienced judge. ‘Tertullian often had more 
within him than he was able to express: the overflowing mind was ata 
loss for suitable forms of phraseology. He had to create a language 


1 See vol. I. p. 126. 


684 TERTULLIAN. 

for the new spiritual matter, — and that out of the rude Punic Latin, — 
without the aid of a logical and grammatical education, and as he was 
hurried along in the current of thoughts and feelings by his ardent 
nature. Hence the often difficult and obscure phraseology ; but hence, 
too, the original and striking turns in his modes of representation. And 
hence this great church-teacher, who unites great gifts with great fail- 
ings, has been so often misconceived by those who could form no friend- 
ship with the spirit which dwelt in so ungainly a form. 

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born, probably at 
Carthage, in the later times of the second century. His father was a 
centurion in the service of the proconsul at Carthage. He was, at 
first, an advocate, or perhaps a rhetorician ; nor did he embrace Chris- 
tianity until he had arrived at the age of manhood. He then obtained, 
if Jerome’s account is correct, the office of presbyter; whether at 
Rome or at Carthage is, however, doubtful. The latter place is, in it- 
self, the most probable ; since in different writings, composed at differ- 
ent times, he discourses like one who was settled in Carthage ; though 
the reports of Eusebius and Jerome speak for the former.1 Tertul- 
lian’s conversion to Montanism may be satisfactorily explained from its 
affinity with the original bent of his mind and of his feelings. 

His writings run through the widest range of topics relating to Chris- 
tian doctrine and to Christian life ; and it is here particularly important 
to distinguish those of his works which bear the stamp of Montanism, 


from those in which there are no traces of that error.? 


1 The words of Eusebius, 1. II. ¢. 2: τῶν 
μάλιστα ἐπὶ Ῥώμης λαμπρῶν, do not say 
directly, that when a Christian he took an 
important place in the Roman church; but, 
according to the connection, may very well 
mean, that, before his conversion to Chris- 
tianity, he stood in high repute at Rome as 
a jurisconsult (for the arbitrary translation 
of Rufinus — “inter nostros scriptores ad- 
modum clarus” —must at all events be 
rejected:) but we might then, to be sure, 
still infer, that, if Tertullian lived at Rome 
when a Heathen, and enjoyed there so high 
a reputation, it is also probable that he was 
there first clothed with a spiritual office. 
Jerome says that he had been moved to 
embrace Montanism, by the envy and calum- 
nies of the Roman clergy. But such stories, 
with which the ancient fathers were so apt 
to impose on themselves, are always very 
suspicious ; beeause the inclination was but 
too strong to ascribe invariably to some out- 
ward cause any defection from the Catholic 
church to the heretics ; and Jerome, in par- 
ticular, although he respected the cathedra 
Petri in the Roman church, was yet inclined 
to repeat over bad stories about the Roman 
clergy, who had occasioned him so much 
annoyance during his residence in Rome, 
especially after the death of Damasus. He 
was particularly prone to accuse them of 
envy towards great talents. 

2 A more full investigation of this topic 


may be found in my Monograph on the 
spirit of Tertullian. 1 will here only add a 
few remarks in reference to the objections 
made against what I have asserted, by Dr. 
von Colln. The passage concerning fasts 
and mortifications cannot at all be consid- 
ered as an evidence of the Montanism of 
the author; for a voluntary ἄσκησις was cer- 
tainly resorted to by many who were no 
Montanists. The expression, “ jejunia con- 
jungere,” might, although not necessarily, 
be understood as referring to a— not Mon- 
tanistic — superpositio, (continuation of fast- 
ing from Friday to Saturday, on which no 
Montanist fasted.) Besides, the whole man- 
ner in which penitence is here spoken of, 
the spirit of gentleness which breathes 
through every remark, does not savor of 
Montanism. As to the work on the prescrip- 
tions, I do not find myself led, in reviewing 
it, to alter my opinion of it, as not having 
originated in Montanism. The words, “ alius 
libellus hune gradum sustinebit,” contr. Mar- 
cion. 1. I. ¢. 2, Tertullian might use con- 
cerning a work written already, no matter 
whether by himself or by some other _per- 
son, personifying it as an advocate. From 
the circumstance, that, in the symbol of 
faith, c. 13, the doctrine of creation from 
nothing is made particularly prominent, it by 
no means follows, that he had already had 
to sustain a conflict with Hermogenes ; for, 
even in the controversy with the Gnostics, 


OYPRIAN. 685 

It is a question difficult to determine, whether Tertullian always re- 
mained in the same connection with the Montanistic party, or whether, 
at some later period, he again inclined more to the Catholic church, 
and endeavored to strike out a middle path between the two parties. 
The reports of Augustin 1 and of Praedestinatus,? as well as the account 
given by the latter ὃ of a Montanistic work of Tertullian, in which he 
labors to diminish the number of controverted points between the two 
parties, favor indeed the latter supposition; and on this hypothesis 
many writings of Tertullian which are moderately Montanistic, or 
which merely border on Montanism, might be assigned to a different 
period of his life. These accounts, however, are not sufficiently worthy 
of credit. From the disposition of Tertullian, it may easily be con- 
ceived, that he would persevere in the mode of thinking he had once 
shaped out for himself, and only become the more obstinate by oppo- 
sition. The distinct sect of Tertullianists, which appears to have 
existed in the fifth century at Carthage, furnishes no evidence in favor 
of that supposition ; for it is possible that this sect, holding to the pecu- 
har opinions of Tertullian, had been formed at a later period, when 
separated from the correspondence with the Montanistic churches in 
Asia. 

The study of Tertullian’s writings had manifestly an important influ- 
ence on the development of Cyprian as a doctrinal writer. Jerome 
states, after a tradition which was said to have come from a secretary of 
Cyprian, that the latter was in the habit of reading something daily 
from the writings of Tertullian, whom he was accustomed to call em- 
phatically the Teacher.‘ 

Concerning the character, the labors, and the most important 
writings of Cyprian, we have already said enough in various places. 
We shall only mention here a remarkable work of Cyprian’s, his three 
books of testimonies, (testimonia,) consisting of a collection of the 
most important passages of the Bible, to prove that Jesus is the Mes- 
siah promised in the Old Testament, and to serve as a foundation for 
the scheme of Christian faith and morals. The collection was intended 
for the use of a certain Quirinus, who had requested the bishop to draw 


this article was necessarily made a promi- Hermogenes. The way in which he speaks 


nent point; and the connection in which the 
words there stand, intimates that it was the 
Gnostics, rather than Hermogenes, whom 
he had in mind. Besides, it is certain from 
c. 30, that, when Tertullian wrote this book, 
Hermogenes had already come out with his 
peculiar opinions ; but it cannot possibly be 
proved, that Hermogenes might not have 
broached his opinions a great while before 
Tertullian wrote his book against him. 
From the cursory manner in which Tertul- 
lian speaks of him in the Prescriptions, we 
might conjecture, that he was then consid- 
ered by him as a person of no great impor- 
tance ; and that it was not until the Montanis- 
tic interest was superadded to other occasions 
of hostility, that he was led to engage in a 


more detailed attack of the doctrines of - 


VOL. I. 


of the emanation of the Logos, cannot be 

called Montanistic ; for he expresses himself 

after the same manner in the Apologeticus, 

c. 21. And on the passage in the book de 

patientia, c. 1, compare the remarks on 

page 619. 
Heres. 86. 

2H. 86. 

8. Th. 26. 

4 Da magistrum, said he to his secretary ; 
Jerome de viris illustribus, ο. 53. To see 
what use he makes of Tertullian’s writ- 
ings, compare particularly the writings of 
Cyprian de oratione dominica and de pati- 
entia with Tertullian’s treatises on the same 
subjects; and de idolorum vanitate with 
the Apologeticus. 


686 CYPRIAN. COMMODIAN. 

up for him, as a daily exercise and aid to the memory, a short abstract 
of this sort, embracing the essential points of scriptural faith and prac- 
tice. As Cyprian calls him “my son,” it cannot have been a bishop 
or presbyter for whom Cyprian had prepared a collection of this sort, 
to be used as a guide in imparting religious instruction.1 When we 
compare together the introduction to the second and to the third books, 
it becomes very probable, that the individual to whom Cyprian wrote 
was a layman of his own church, whom he would assist in making him- 
self perfectly familiar with the practical truths and most important 
rules bearing on all the principal relations of the Christian life.2 This 
collection, then, would serve to show the intimate connection subsisting 
between the bishop and those members of his flock who were solicitous 
about the welfare of their souls, and the anxiety he felt to bring 
each individual to a more familiar acquaintance with the divme word ; 
a wish which he particularly expresses in the beautiful words at the 
conclusion of the preface to the first book: ‘‘ More strength will be im- 
parted to thee, and the insight of thy understanding will continually 
grow clearer, if thou searchest more carefully through the Old and 
New Testament, and diligently perusest all parts of the holy scriptures ; 
for I have only drawn for thee a little out of the divine fountain to send 
thee in the mean time. Thou canst drmk more copiously and satisfy 
thyself, when, with us, thou also approachest to the same fountain of 
divine fulness, to drink after the same manner.” 

The particular rules, which Cyprian sets forth and supports with pas- 
sages from scripture, evince the deep interest which he took in coun- 
teracting the erroneous notion, that it would be possible to satisfy the 
demands of the gospel and to obtain salvation by a mere outward pro- 
fession and’ observance of Christian ceremonies; but at the same time 
also show how important he felt it to be, that the laity should be deeply 
impressed with reverence for the priestly order, understood according to 
the principles of the Old Testament. 

In the same country, not long after Cyprian, followed a writer known 
to us only by a production of some importance on account of its bear- 
ing on the history of Christian manners and of Christian worship, 
namely, Commodian.? His work is composed in verse, and entitled 
Rules of Living (Instructiones, exhortations and admonitions.) He 
describes himself in the preface as one who had formerly been devoted 
to Paganism, and had been led by the study of the Bible to see the 


1 As we might be led to suppose from 
the words at the beginning, “ quibus non 
tam tractasse, quam tractantibus materiam 
prebuisse videamur.” On this supposition 
we could only presume, that he had prepar- 
ed the collection as an assistant for a dea- 
con or a catechist, a doctor audientium. But 
the following words show, that the collec- 
tion was also designed for the purpose of 
impressing deeply on the memory, by fre- 
quent perusal, certain important passages 
and doctrines of scripture. It must have 


been intended, then, to serve at the same 
time as a guide for the religious teacher, 
and as a manual for the catechumens. The 
view expressed above, however, is the most 
natural one. , 

2 Que esse facilia et utilia legentibus pos- 
sunt, dum in breviarum pauca digesta et 
velociter perleguntur et frequenter iteran- 
tur. 

3 Gennadius, (c. 15,) has nothing more to 
say about him, than what might be gathered 
by any one out of his writings. 


COMMODIAN. ARNOBIUS. 687 
vanity of Paganism, and to embrace the Christian faith.1 He intimates 
that as he believed, with the great majority, death to be the end of 
man’s personal existence, he was especially attracted by the promise of 
an eternal and divine life, which was presented to him in the scrip- 
tures.2 He complains of himself as one who, by falling into sin after 
baptism, had subjected himself to the penance of the church: this he 
confesses in his address to the poenitentes,? whom he exhorts to surren- 
der themselves to mortification for their sins, but not to despair; to seek 
after the physician and the right means of cure, and not to separate 
themselves from the church. And in encouraging his Christian breth- 
ren to the conflict, he says that he does not in self-exaltation address 
them as the ‘just one.® Considering the extent to which the hierarchi- 
cal element flourished in North Africa, it is the more remarkable to ob- 
serve how he ventures, though a layman, to admonish and censure even 
the clergy. While avaricious teachers allowed themselves to be bribed 
by presents, or induced, by the respect of persons, to be silent, where 
they ought to have reproved sinful conduct, he felt constrained to rouse 
the misled laity out of their security.° We discern the more free spirit, 
incapable of bowing the knee to priestly dignity, which had passed over 
to him from the study of the Bible, by which he had been led to Chris- 
tianity. The Christian spirit, however, in these admonitions, which 
evince so lively a zeal for good morals, is disturbed by a material Jew- 
ish element, a crass Chiliasm ; as for example, when it is affirmed that 
the lordly masters of the world should in the millennium do menial ser- 
vice for the saints.’ 

The work was composed at a time when the church enjoyed quiet, 
perhaps under the reign of Gallienus, and refers to the recent persecu- 
tions, to the multitude of the lapsed, to the schisms of Felicissimus and 
Novatian. The author testifies himself, that he wrote in the third 
century.® 

We have still to mention here, as belonging to the same church, Ar- 
nobius, although he discovers a doctrinal trainmg more particularly his 
own, and the spirit of the North-African church, at least in the time 
when he appeared as a Christian author, seems to have exercised no 
influence on him ; — a fact which may be accounted for, if we consider 


1 Ego similiter erravi tempore multo, 
Fano prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis, 


(His parents were Pagans, which class is 
denoted throughout this work by the term 
“ insciis.” ) 

Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege. 


2 Gens et ego fui perversa mente moratus, 
Et vitam istius szeculi veram esse putabam, 
Mortemque similiter sicut vos judicabam adesse ; 
Oum semel exisset, animum periisse defunctum. 
N. 26. 


3 Namque, fatebor enim, unum me ex vobis adesse 
Terroremque linquendum : sensi ipse ruinam. 
commoneo vulneratos cautius ire. 
N. 49. 


4 Peenitens es factus, noctibus diebusque precare : 
Attamen a matre noli discedere longe, 
Et tibi misericors poterit altissimus esse. 
Tu si vulnus habes, herbam medicumque require. 


5 Justus ego non sum, fratres, de cloaca levatus : 
Nec me supertollo, sed doleo yestri. N. 61. 


6 Si quidam doctores, dum exspectant munera 
vestra, 
Aut timent personas, laxant singula vobis ; 
Et ego [non] doleo, sed cogor dicere verum. 


And afterwards: 


Observas mandatum hominis (the clergy) et Dei 
devitas. 

Tu fidis muneri, quo doctores ora procludunt, 

Ut taceant, neque dicant tibi jussa divina. 

Me vera dicente, sicut teneris, prospice ei 


7 Nobilesque viri, sub antichristo devicto, (Nero, 
who was to burn Rome,) 
Ex przcepto Dei rursum viventes in #vo_ 
Mille quidem annis, ut serviant sanctis, et alto 
Sub jugo servili, ut portent victualia collo. N. 80. 


8 Et si parvulitas sic sensit, cur annis ducentis 
Fuistis infantes ; numquid et semper eritis? N. 6. 


688 ARNOBIUS. 


the free, independent manner in which he seems to have come to Chris- 
tianity, through the reading of the New Testament, especially the gos- 
pels. He was a rhetorician of Sicca, in Numidia, under the reign of 
the emperor Diocletian.! His writings bear testimony of the literary 
acquirements considered necessary for a rhetorician in so considerable 
a city. Jerome narrates in his chronicle, that Arnobius, who till then 
had ever been an enemy to Christianity, was moved by a dream to em- 
brace the faith ; but that the bishop, to whom he applied, knowing his 
hostility to Christianity, would not trust him, and that hence Arnobius 
was led to write his apologetical work, (the septem libros disputationum 
adversus gentes,) to prove to him the honesty of his convictions. This 
story has come to be suspected as a foreign interpolation ; for certainly 
it stands here wholly out of place. That all this should have taken 
place in the twentieth year of Constantine, (in the year 326,) is a mani- 
fest anachronism. Arnobius appears, moreover, like one who had been 
led to the faith after a long protracted examination, and not by a 
sudden impression from dreams. The work does not show the novice, 
who was still a catechumen, but a man already mature in his convic- 
tions, if he was not orthodox according to the views of the church. 
At.the same time, however, we are not warranted for these reasons 
to reject the narrative entirely. We have already had occasion to re- 
mark,? how, by such impressions, many were prepared for conversion. 
By this, indeed, it is not meant to be asserted, that his conversion was 
due wholly to such impressions ;— his own work, we must admit, 
would speak against this. But if Arnobius was devoted, as it is evi- 
dent from the passages about to be cited that he was, to blind heathen 
superstition, it is so much the less improbable, that powerful outward 
impressions were requisite, in order that the zealous Pagan might be 
induced, in the first instance, to enter upon the examination of Chris- 
tianity. But, however this may have been, it seems probable that he 
had been convinced of the truth for some time before he offered him- 
self for baptism ; a fact easily explained, especially when we con- 
sider the circumstances of the times. His apologetical work seems to 
have been written, it is true, in consequence of an impulse from within, 
and not by any outward occasion. But it may have been, also, that 
his determination to make a public profession of Christianity, and to 
appear as a public defender of Christianity, had been conceived at one 
and the same time, and that it was with this determination he pro- 
ceeded to the bishop. Subsequently, the bishops were often too little 
disposed to mistrust those who became Christians from outward mo- 
tives. But that a bishop, in these dubious times of the church, when 
he saw before him a man who had expressed himself with bitterness 
against Christianity, should fear that he had to do with a malicious spy, 
is not so improbable. And now, for the purpose of dispelling his doubts 
at once, Arnobius produces his Apology. He speaks of the change 
which had been wrought in himself by Christianity, in the following 
manner : ὃ. “Ὁ blind infatuation! But a short time ago, I worshipped 


1 Hieronym. de vir. illustr. ¢. 79. 2 See vol. I. p. 75. 8 Lib. I. ¢. 39. 


ARNOBIUS. 689 


the images that had just come from the furnace of the smith, the gods 
that had been shaped on the anvil and by the hammer. When I sawa 
smooth worn stone, besmeared with oil, 1 addressed it, as if a living 
power were there, and from the senseless stone prayed for benefits to 
myself, thus doing foul dishonor even to the gods, whom I esteemed as 
such, when I supposed them to be wood, stone, or bones, or imagined 
that they dwelt in such things. Now that I have been led by so great 
a Teacher in the way of truth, I know what all that is.” 

As to the time when Arnobius wrote his work, he gives it himself, 
when he says,! that it was 1050 years, or not much less, since the build- 
ing of Rome. This would coincide, according to the Mra Varroniana, 
then commonly adopted, (the building of Rome being 758 B. C.,) with 
the year 297 of the Christian era. But this cannot stand so; since 
the work contains evident allusions to those persecutions under Diocle- 
tian which first broke out in the year 303.2 We must, therefore, either 
suppose, that Arnobius adopted some other era than the common one, 
or that the exact number did not occur to him,’ or that he had written 
on the work at different times. He says to the Heathen :* “ If you were 
animated by a pious zeal for your religion, you should long ago have 
rather burned those writings, and demolished those theatres, in which 
the scandal of the gods is daily made public in shameless plays. For 
why did our scriptures deserve to be committed to the flames, and our 
places of assembly to be destroyed, in which the Supreme God is wor- 
shipped, peace and blessing invoked on all who are in authority, on the 
army and the emperor, joy and peace on the living and those who have 
been liberated from the bonds of the flesh ; — in which nothing else is 
heard, but what is calculated to make men humane, gentle, modest, and 
pure ; ready to communicate of their substance, and to become kinsmen 
of all those who are united in the same bond of brotherhood ?”’ 

Moreover, the objection brought by the Heathens against Christian- 
ity, which moved Arnobius to write, (as he says himself,) indicates the 
point of time in which he wrote ; for it was precisely the same charge 
which had occasioned the Dioclesian persecution ; namely, the publie 
calamities, which had arisen because the worship of the gods had been 
supplanted by Christianity, and because men no longer enjoyed their 
protection and aid. Arnobius justly replies to this: ‘If men, instead 
of relying on their own wisdom, and following their own devices, would 
but make the experiment of following the salutary and peace-bringing 
doctrines of Christ, how soon would the face of the world be changed, 
and iron, instead of subserving the art of war, be converted into imple- 
ments of peace ! ” 


Important as the Roman church became, through its outward eccle- 
siastical influence, and through the influence of the political element of 
the Roman spirit on the development of the church, yet it was from 


1 Lib. II. ¢. 71. | not accurate. Thus, lib. I. c. 13, he says: 
2 See vol. I. p. 147. Trecenti sunt anni ferme, minus vel plus 
3This is the most natural supposition; aliquid, ex quo coepimus esse Christiani. 
for certainly the chronology of Amer is 4 Lib. IV. c. 36. 
δ" 


690 CAIUS. NOVATIAN. MINUCIUS FELIX. 

the first comparatively barren in respect to all theological science. The 
care for the outward being of the church, which here became predom- 
inant, seems early to have suppressed the interest in theology as a sci- 
ence. But two individuals appear to have distinguished themselves as 
ecclesiastical authors, among the Roman clergy, neither of whom, how- 
ever, could be compared perhaps with a Tertullian, a Clement, or an 
Origen — the presbyter Caius, whom we have already noticed as an 
opponent of the Montanists, and the presbyter Novatian, who has also 
been mentioned. Of the writings of the former, none have come down 
tous. Of the latter, we have some brief expositions of the more im- 
portant Christian doctrines, particularly of the doctrine of Christ’s divin- 
ity, and of the Trinity. According to Jerome, (§ 70,) this work was 
an abstract of a larger work by Tertullian. At all events, however, 
this author was something more than a mere follower in the direction 
of some other man’s mind. He shows that he had a mind of his own. 
Without possessing the power and depth of Tertullian, he had a more 
decidedly intellectual bent. 

Next we have from him a writing on the Jewrsh laws respecting food, 
consisting of a playful allegorical exposition of them, with the design 
to show, that they are no longer obligatory on Christians.2 We see 
from this production, that it was written by a bishop, removed at a dis- 
tance from his church by persecution, who was in the habit of constant 
correspondence with them, and sought to guard them from being led 
astray by Pagans, Jews, and heretics; all which suits perfectly to a 
Roman church, Rome being the residence of a multitude of Jews. The 
only difficulty is, to see how this writing could have come from a pres- 
byter ; — the author speaks as no one, at that time, but a bishop, could 
speak to his church. We know, moreover, from the letter of Corne- 
lius, that, during the Decian persecution, Novatian had not removed 
from Rome. We must therefore call to mind the relation in which No- 
vatian stood to the churches which acknowledged him as their bishop ; 
and it is the most natural hypothesis, that he wrote this work under the 
first persecution of Valerian,’ by which so many bishops were separated 
from their churches. : 

We may mention last, as belonging to the Roman church, a man 
whose felicitous and dramatic representations, seized fron? the life, re- 
plete with good sense, and pervaded by a lively Christian feeling, give 
him an important place among the Apologists of this period — Minu- 
- eius Felix, who, according to Jerome, before his conversion to Chris- 
tianity, had acquired reputation at Rome as an advocate. He lived, 
probably, in the first half of the third century, but before Cyprian, 


who availed himself of his writings. 


1 Novatian’s adversary, the Roman bish- 
op Cornelius, seems, in Euseb. 1. VI. ¢. 43, 
manifestly to allude to this writing, when 
he calls Novatian: ὁ δογματιστὴς, ὁ τῆς 
ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἐπιστήμης ὑπερασπιστῆς. A 
remark which doubtless hints also at the 
fact, that such a phenomenon was not so 
common among the clergy of Rome. 


We have already had occasion to 


2 Jerome names this work as one which 
came from Novatian, and also two others, 
on the sabbath and on circumcision, cited 
by Novatian as two letters that had pre- 
ceded this letter to his church; in which 
letters he designed to show qu sit vera 
circumcisio et quod verum sabbatum. 

ὃ See vol. I. p. 137. 


CLEMENT. 691 


make some extracts from this Apologetical Dialogue, which is entitled 
the Octavius. 


We pass now to the teachers of the Alexandrian school, concerning 
whose relation to the progressive development of the church, we have 
spoken in a previous part of this history. Of the individual whom we 
find named as the first eminent teacher of this school, Panteenus, 
(Ilavraivoc,) the philosopher converted to Christianity, no written 
remains have reached us. Our only knowledge of him is through his 
disciple Clement. 

Titus Flavius Clemens first became a Christian at the age of manhood : 
hence he classed himself with those who abandoned the sinful service 
of Paganism for faith in the Redeemer, and received from him the for- 
giveness of their sins.1 He convinced himself of the truth of Chris- 
tianity by free inquiry, after he had acquired an extensive knowledge of 
the systems of religion and the philosophy of divine things known at 
his time in the cultivated world.2 This free spirit of inquiry, which 
had conducted him to Christianity, led him, moreover, after he had be- 
come a Christian, to seek the society of eminent Christian teachers of 
different tendencies of mind in different countries. He informs us,’ 
that he had had various distinguished men as his teachers: an Ionian in 
Greece ; one from Coelo-Syria; one in Magna Grecia, (Lower Italy,) 
who came originally from Egypt; an Assyrian in Eastern Asia (doubt- 
less Syria;) and one of Jewish descent, in Palestine. He finally 
took up his abode in Egypt, where he met with the greatest Gnosticus, 
who had penetrated most profoundly to the spirit of scripture. This 
last was doubtless none other than Panteenus. Eusebius not only ex- 
plains it so, but also refers to a passage of Clement‘ in his Hypotyposes, 
where he had named him as his instructor. Perhaps when Pantzenus 
entered on the missionary tour which has been mentioned before, Cle- 
ment became his successor in the office of catechist, and at the same 
time, or still later, a presbyter in the Alexandrian church. The perse- 
cution under Septimius Severus, in the year 202, probably compelled 
him to retire from Alexandria.® But after this juncture the history of 
his life and place of his residence are involved in great obscurity. We 
only know, that, in the beginning of the reign of the emperor Caracalla, 
he was at Jerusalem, whither even at this early period many Christians, 
especially ecclesiastics, were accustomed to travel, partly for the pur- 
pose of surveying with their own eyes the places rendered sacred by 
the memorials of religion, partly for the benefit which might be de- 
rived from a more familiar knowledge of these countries, in elucidating 
the scriptures. Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, who was at that time 
in prison on account of the faith, recommended him to the church at 
Antioch, whither he was travelling, by a letter, in which he called him 


1 Pedagog. lib. II. ¢. 8, f. 176. 3 Strom. lib. I. f. 274. 
2 Πάντων διὰ πείρας ἐλϑὼν ἀνὴρ. Euseb. 4 Lib. VI. ἃ 13. 
Preparat. Evangel. lib. 11. ο. 2. 5 Euseb. lib. VI. ο. 3. 


692 CLEMENT. 


a virtuous and tried man, and intimated that he was already known to 
the Antiochians.1 

We have three works from his hand, which form, as it were, a con- 
nected series; since his starting point is the idea, that the divine 
teacher of mankind, the Logos, first conducts the rude Heathen, sunk 
in sin and idolatry, to the faith ; then progressively reforms their lives 
by moral precepts; and finally elevates those who have undergone this 
moral purification to the profounder knowledge of divine things, which 
he calls Gnosis. Thus the Logos appears first exhorting sinners to 
repentance, converting the Heathen to the faith ( προτρεπτικός ;) then 
as forming the life and conduct of the converted by his discipline 
( παιδαγωγός ) ; and finally, as a teacher of the Gnosis to those who are 
purified.2 This fundamental idea is the conducting thread of his three 
works, which still remain, — the apologetical or protreptic ; the ethical 
or pedagogic ; and the one containing the elements of the Gnosis, or the 
Stromata.? Clement was not a man of systematic mind. Many hete- 
rogeneous elements and ideas, which he had received in his various in- 
tercourse with different minds, were brought together in him — a fact 
which occasionally becomes evident in his Stromata, and which must 
have been still more clearly evinced in his Hypotyposes, hereafter to be 
noticed, if Photius rightly apprehended him. By occasional lightning 
flashes of mind, he operated, without doubt, to excite the minds of his 
disciples and readers, as we see particularly in the example of Origen. 
Many fragmentary ideas, sketched with masterly power, and containing 
the germs of a thorough, systematic theological system, lie scattered 
in his works, amidst a profusion of vain and hollow speculations. 

As regards his Stromata, it was his express design in this work, as he 
testifies in many places, to bring together a chaotic assemblage of truth 
and error out of the Greek philosophers and the systems of the Chris- 
tian sects, in connection with fragments of the true Gnosis. Hach should 
find out for himself what suited his case ; it was his aim to excite rather 
than to teach; and he often purposely only hinted at the truth, where 
he might fear to give offence to the believers, (morixoic,) who were as 
yet incapable of comprehending these ideas. The eighth book of this 
work is wanting; for the fragment of dialectical investigations, which 
at present appears under the name of the eighth book of the Stromata, 
evidently does not belong to this work. As early as the times of Pho- 
tius, the eighth book was already lost.* 

We have to regret the loss of the ὑποτυπώσεις of Clement,’ in which 
he probably gave samples of dogmatic investigations and expositions on 
the principles of the Alexandrian Gnosis. Fragments of this work, 
consisting of short expositions of some of the catholic epistles, which 
have come down to us in the Latin translation,® perhaps also the frag- 


1 Fuseb. lib. VI. ο. 11. designation at that time for works of mis- 
2Kadapav πρὸς γνώσεως ἐπιτηδειότητα  cellaneous contents. 
εὐτρεπίζων τὴν ψυχὴν δυναμένην χωρῆσαι 4 Vid. Cod. 111. 
τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τοῦ λόγου. Pedagog.1.I. 5 Probably it should be translated: Sketch- 
6. 1. es, shadings, general outlines. Rufinus 
8 Like the similar word, κεστός, a usual translates: adumbrationes. 
ὁ See vol. II. of Potter’s edition. 


ORIGEN. 693 
ment of the ἐκλογαὶ ἐκ τῶν προφητικῶν, belong to this class. From the larger 
work, it was customary to make abstracts on particular parts of the 
sacred scriptures for common use, and several of these abstracts have 
been preserved to our times; which may have contributed, with other 
causes, to the loss of the entire work. 

There is some mystery about the fragment of an abstract from the 
writings of Theodotus, and of the διδασκαλία ἀνατολική (that is, of the theo- 
sophic doctrine of Eastern Asia) which has been preserved among the 
works of Clement ---- ἃ document of the highest authority in relation 
to the Gnostic systems. It is perhaps the fragment of a critical col- 
lection, which Clement had drawn up for his own use, during his resi- 
dence in Syria. Of Clement’s work on the time of the passover,! and 
of his dissertation: Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος, which furnishes so much in- 
formation relative to the history of the Christian system of morals, we 
have spoken already on a former occasion. 

Origen, with the ‘surname Adamantios,? was born in Alexandria in 
the year 185. In connection with his early culture, it is important to 
remark, that his father Leonides, a devoted Christian, and, as it is con- 
jectured, a rhetorician, was in a condition to give him a good literary 
as well as a pious Christian education. Both had an abiding influence 
on the direction of his inner life: the development of mind and heart 
proceeded, in his case, with equal step; a striving after truth and after 
holiness continued ever to be the actuating tendency of his life. As 
we have remarked before, that the Bible at that time was not reserved 
exclusively for thc study of the clergy, but was also the devotional book 
of families, so we may see from the example of Origen, that a wise 
use was also made of it in the business of education; and we may 
observe at the same time its happy effects. Leonides made his son 
commit daily a portion of sacred scripture to memory. The boy took 
great delight in his task, and already gave indications of his profoundly 
inquisitive mind. Not satisfied with the explanation of the literal sense, 
which his father gave him, he required the thoughts embodied in the 
passages he had committed to be fully opened out, so that Leonides 
frequently found himself embarrassed. The father chided, indeed, his 
inconsiderate curiosity, and exhorted him to be satisfied, as became his 
years, with the literal sense ; but he secretly rejoiced in the promising 
talents of the youth, and with a full heart thanked God that he had 
given him such a son. Often, it is said, when the boy was asleep, he 
would uncover his breast, kissing it as a temple where the Holy Spirit 
designed to prepare his dwelling, and congratulated himself in possess- 
ing such a treasure. 

The trait just alluded to in the early character of Origen discloses 


1 Of a kindred nature doubtless were also 
the contents of the writing which Eusebius 
cites: Κανὼν ἐκκλησιαστικὸς, ἢ πρὸς τοὺς 
ἸΙουδαΐζοντας. 

2 In case this surname were given to him 
after his death, we must not follow the 
strained interpretation of Photius, ο. 118, 
“because Origen’s proofs resembled ada- 


mantine bonds.” but rather the interpreta- 
tion of Jerome: “from his iron diligence, 
as we commonly express it.” Hence he 
was also called συντάκτης and χαλκέντερος. 
Yet Eusebius, 1. VI c. 14, seems to cite 
this cognomen as one which Origen bore 
from the first. 


694 ORIGEN, 
to us already that tendency of mind, which, unevenly developed, and 
misled by a wrongly conceived opposition to the contrary error, betrayed 
him into an arbitrary allegorizing method of interpretation; but under 
more favorable conditions, and with the helps and appliances necessary 
to the harmonious education of the biblical interpreter, would have 
made him a thorough and profound expositor of the scriptures. By 
his father, this inclination was checked rather than encouraged. But 
if the intellectual and religious bent of Origen was determined at an 
early period by the influence of the theological school at Alexandria, 
this inclination must have soon found means of nourishment, and ripened 
to maturity. As we afterwards become acquainted with Origen from 
his writings, there is incontestable evidence of the influence which Cle- 
ment had exerted on his theological development; we find once more 
in his works the predominant ideas of the latter, systematically un- 
folded. Now it is certain! that he was, at least when a boy, a scholar 
of Clement the catechist. But a youthful indiscretion of Origen (here- 
after to be noticed) into which he was led by a grossly literal interpre- 
tation of sacred scripture, proves, that in his youth he was still at a far 
remove from the theological direction of his later years; and he says 
of himself, in allusion to this false step of his youth: ‘I, who once 
knew Christ, the divine Logos, only according to the flesh and the 
letter, now no longer know him so.”? It is quite evident from this, 
that the education of his father had more influence in giving the first 
religious direction to the mind of Origen, than the instructions of Cle- 
ment, and that the influence on him of the Alexandrian theological spi- 
rit belongs to a period of development still later in his life. We admit 
that a great deal of obscurity continues to rest on the history of his 
early training, which tne poverty of our materials will not allow us to 
clear away. ‘The religion of the heart was at first uppermost with 
Origen; and this great teacher, too, must be numbered with those in 
whom the early direction given to the feelings by a pious education has 
acted as a check on the too intellectual tendency of their later studies. 
The above-mentioned persecution which befel the Christians in Egypt 
under the reign of Septimius Severus gave the youth of sixteen an 
opportunity of displaying the ardor of his faith. The example of the 
martyrs fired him with such enthusiasm, that he was ready to avow him- 
self a Christian before the pagan authorities, and expose himself to cer- 
tain death. ; 


]. VI.c.14. Yet, alas! the earlier influence 
of these men on the education of Origen - 
is involved in an obseurity, which our defi- 
cient means of information will not enable 


1 According to Eusebius, |. VI.c. 6. Alex- 
ander, bishop of Jerusalem, who was either 
born in Alexandria, or had come there in 
his youth to place himself under the in- 


structions of its catechists, seems indeed to 
hint in his letter to Origen, that the latter 
had enjoyed the society of Panteenus, al- 
though not directly, that he was his scholar: 
“ We recognize as our fathers, those blessed 
men who have gone before us, Pantsnus 
and Clement, who was my master, and has 
been useful to me, and whoever besides be- 
longs to the number of these men, through 
whom I became acquainted with you. Euseb. 


us to dispel. 

2In Matth. T. XV. § 3, ed. Huet. f. 369: 
Ἡμεῖς dé, Χριστὸν ϑεοῦ, τὸν λόγον τοῦ ϑεοῦ, 
κατὰ σάρκα καὶ κατὰ τὸ γρώμμα ποτὲ νοῆσαν- 
τες, νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκοντες. And T. XI. 
§ 17, where he speaks of an interpretation 
of the scriptures for the ἁπλούστεροι : Ἡμεῖς 
δὲ of εὐχόμενοι ἐξ ἀληϑείας λέγειν" εἰ καὶ 
Χριστόν ποτε κατὰ σάρκα ἐγνώκαμεν, ἀλλὰ 
νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκοντες, 


ORIGEN. 695 


Such was the zeal of the enthusiastic Christian youth: quite differ- 
ent was the judgment of.the prudent Christian man, who better un- 
derstood the nature of the Christian system of morality, from the stud 
of that system itself, and from contemplating the life of Christ and of the 
apostles.1 He acknowledges, that, on the question whether the danger 
ought to be evaded or met, no general rule can be laid down, but every- 
thing depends on the particular circumstances and on the call; that it 
requires Christian truthfulness to decide the question in each individual 
case. ‘* A temptation which overtakes us without any meddling of our 
own,” he says in reference to this subject, “‘we should endure with 
fortitude and confidence; but it is fool-hardy not to avoid it when we 
can.’ And in another place, where he is speaking of Christ, who was 
not to be deterred by the prospect of death from making his last jour- 
ney to Jerusalem, and of Paul, who was not to be hindered from going 
to that city by the voices which warned him of what awaited him there, 
he adds: ‘‘ We say it behoves us neither at all times to avoid danger, 
nor at all times to meet it. But it needs the wisdom of a Christian 
philosopher to examine and decide what times require that one should 
withdraw himself, and what, that he should stand fast, ready for the 
conflict, without withdrawing himself, and still more without fleeing.” 3 

When the father of Origen himself was thrown into prison, the son 
felt impelled, still more than before, to go and meet death along with 
him. Remonstrance and entreaty having been tried in vain to dis- 
suade him from his purpose, his mother knew of no other way to detain 
him, than by concealing his garments. Then the love of Christ so far 
exceeded all other emotions, that, seeing himself prevented from sharing 
in his father’s imprisonment and death, he wrote to him, “ Look to it, 
that thou dost not change thy mind on our account.” 

Leonides died a martyr; and, as his property was confiscated, he 
left behind him a helpless widow, with six young children besides Ori- 
gen. The latter was kindly received into the family of a rich and noble 
Christian lady of Alexandria. Here he characteristically displayed 
his steadfast adherence to ‘that which he had recognized as the true 
faith, showing how much he prized it above all things else. His patron- 
ess had become devoted to a certain Paul of Antioch, one of those 
Gnostics who so often resorted from Syria to Alexandria, with a view. 
to propagate their system, after having so modified it as to suit the 
Alexandrian taste. This man she had adopted; and he was allowed 
to hold his lectures at her house, which were attended, not only by the 
friends of Gnosticism in Alexandria, but also by others of the true faith 
who were curious to hear something new. But the young Origen 
would not be restrained, even by respect for his patroness, from freely 
expressing his abhorrence of the Gnostic doctrines ; and nothing could 
induce him to attend these assemblies, because he would be obliged to 
join in the prayers of the Gnostic, and thereby express his fellowship 
with him in the faith. 

He was soon enabled to free himself from this condition of depen- 


1 He refers to Matth. 14:13;—10:23. 2In Matth.T.X.§ 23. %L.c.T. XVI.§1. 


696 ORIGEN. 
dence. His knowledge of the Greek philology and literature, which 
he had continued to cultivate after the death of his father, placed him, 
at Alexandria, where such knowledge was particularly valued, in a con- 
dition to gain his own subsistence by giving instruction on these 
subjects. ; ἱ 

Having, by his various attainments and gifts of mind, by his zeal for 
the cause of the gospel, and by his pure, exemplary life, acquired a 
name even among the Heathens, he was applied to, now that the office 
of catechist at Alexandria had been made vacant in the persecution, 
by a number of Heathens, who were seeking for instruction in Chris- 
tianity ; and, through the instrumentality of the young man, some were 
conducted to the faith, who afterwards became renowned as martyrs or 
teachers of the church. By this zeal and activity im promoting the 
spread of Christianity, he could not fail to draw upon himself more 
and more the hatred of the fanatic multitude; especially since, without 
regard to his own danger, he showed so much sympathy for those who 
were imprisoned on account of the faith, not only visiting them in their 
dungeons, but accompanying them to the place of execution, and in the 
very face of death refreshing them by the power of his faith and ardor 
of his love. Often was he rescued by Providence from threatening 
danger, when soldiers had already surrounded the place where he re- 
sided, and he was obliged to escape secretly from one house to another. 
At one time he was seized by a band of Pagans, who dressed him in 
the robes of a priest of Serapis, and conducted him, thus arrayed, to 
the steps of the temple. Here they placed in his hand a branch of 
palm, which he was bid to distribute, in the customary manner, to those 
who entered. Origen did as he was bidden, but said to those to whom 
he presented the branches, ‘‘ Receive not the idol’s palm, but the palm 
of Christ.” + 

The successful labors of Origen, in imparting religious instruction, 
drew on him the attention of Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was 
induced to confer on him the office of a catechist im the Alexandrian 
church. ΤῸ this office, however, no salary was then affixed; and as 
he now wished to have it in his power to devote himself wholly to the 
labors of his spiritual calling and to his theological studies, without be- 
ing interrupted or withdrawn from them by foreign occupations, and as 
he did not choose to be dependent on any one for the means of subsist- 
ence, he determined to sell a collection of beautiful copies of the an- 
cient authors, which he had been forming at great pains for his own use, 
to a literary amateur, who, in compensation, allowed him, for several 
years, four oboles a day. This was enough to satisfy the very limited 
wants of Origen; for he led the life of the most rigid ascetic. He 
was at this time, as we have said, given to the literal interpretation of 
the Bible ; and as he now felt himself bound to aim at the ideal of holi- 


1 Vid. Epiphan. h.64. The story may Epiphanius. But the first of these con- 


in itself seem improbable, when we reflect 
how likely such language would be to in- 
flame the fanatic fury of the Alexandrian 
populace, and when we consider what little 
reliance can be placed on the authority of 


siderations, although it may excite doubt, 
yet does not disprove the fact; and Epipha- 
nius is entitled to more credit than usual, 
where he repeats anything to the advantage 
of a man branded as a heretic. 


ORIGEN. 697 
ness presented by our Saviour; as he endeavored with conscientious 
fidelity to apply every word of the Saviour to his own case; he could 
hardly fail, in his youthful ascetic zeal, unchecked by a judicious inter- 
pretation of the scriptures, to be betrayed into many a practical error, 
either by taking the figurative expressions of Christ in a literal sense, 
or by clinging to what Christ had said with reference only to particular 
cases, as valid for all times and in all circumstances. The most sur- 
prising mistake of this sort, which afterwards occasioned him much 
vexation, was in suffering himself to be misled by a literal understand- 
ing of the passage in Matth. 19: 12,1 to execute upon himself what 
he believed to be enjoined by these words on those who would be sure 
of entering the kingdom of heaven. It was a misconception, which 
might easily arise from a one-sided ascetism and from that method of 
scriptural interpretation, and which was fostered by many a tract then 
in circulation.2, Even in this false step, however, the earnest effort, 
the ardent desire of the young man after holiness, — his sincere love of 
the Redeemer, whom he was ready literally to obey in every hint which 
had been given by him, shine forth conspicuously. But although such 
errors, arising out of what is holiest in man, should always be treated 
with the greatest gentleness ; yet there are many at all times, who, with 
but one standard for everything, pronounce judgment on aberrations of 
this kind with so much the greater severity, as the principle from 
which alone even such acts of enthusiastic extravagance can proceed, 


1 The correctness of this fact has, it is true, 
very recently been called in question by Prof. 
Schnitzer, “ Origines ueber die Grundlehren 
der Glaubenswissenschaft,” and by Dr. Baur 
in his critique on this work, Jahrbiicher fiir 
wissenschaftliche Kritik, Mai 1837, Nr. 85. 
But I must still, with Dr. Engelhardt, in the 
Studien und Kritiken, Jahrgang 1838, 1stes 
Heft, 5. 157, and Dr. Redepenning, in his 
Monographie ueber Origenes, hold to the 
contrary opinion. [Eusebius, whose notices 
concerning Origen are derived from the 
most authentic sources, is (l. VI. ¢. 8) a 
trustworthy witness; and his account of a 
matter of this sort we should not be at all 
warranted to put down as false, without the 
most weighty reasons. It is not to be con- 
ceived, that he would allow himself to be 
imposed upon by any rumor growing out of 
a wrong interpretation of facts, and the less 
so, as he could have no inclination whatever 
blindly to adopt any such rumor; for he 
did everything in his power to exalt Origen, 
and such a step, even in the opinion of Euse- 
bius, although he seeks to give the utmost 
prominence to the good motive at bottom, 
still requires the excuse (φρενὸς ἀτελοῦς, as 
he expresses it). Origen himself says in 
fact, (in the passage referred to, Matth. T. 
XV. § 3,) that he was once inclined to the 
literal interpretation, out of which that mis- 
conception arose. In the fulness of detail 
with which he there treats this subject, — in 
his manner of speaking of the mischievous 


VOL. I. 59 


consequences of such a step, — we seem to 
hear one who speaks from his own painful 
experience, and holds up his own example 
as a warning to others. It is nothing strange 
if a certain delicacy of feeling restrains him 
from expressly avowing that this is the case. 
Assuredly, therefore, it cannot be inferred 
in the least from the words, “he would not 
have spent so much time on this subject, 
(εἰ μὴ καὶ ἑωράκειμεν τοὺς τολμῆσαντας,)" 
that he had observed this only in others. 

2 Philo, opp. f. 186: ’Egevvovyiodjvac 
ἄμεινον, ἢ πρὸς συνουσίας ἐκνόμους λυττᾷν. 
See moreover a gnome of Σέξτος, 12, which 
was widely circulated among the Alexan- 
drian Christians; according to the transla- 
tion of Rufinus: Omne membrum corporis, 
quod suadet te contra pudicitiam agere, ab- 
jiciendum. These gnomes, by the way, 
came neither from a Roman bishop, by the 
name of Sextus, (whether the first or the 
second,) as Rufinus supposed; nor, as was 
the opinion of Jerome, ( V.ep.ad Ctesiphon,) 
from a héathen Pythagorean: but they are 
the work of some man, who, from certain 
Platonic and Gnostic maxims, and expres- 
sions of scripture wrested out of their proper 
connection, had drawn up for himself a sys- 
tem of morals, the highest aim of which was 
the ἀπάϑεια. They do not contain a moral 
system pervaded by the spirit of the gospel ; 
but many lofty maxims, along with many 
perverse ones. 


698 ORIGEN. 


lies remote from their own carnal sense or tame understandings. Ori- 
gen speaks from experience, when he takes notice of those who, by 
similar misconceptions and similar false steps, have involved themselves 
in disgrace, not only with the unbelieving world, but hkewise with that 
whole class who will sooner pardon any other human frailty than those 
errors which spring out of a mistaken fear of God, and an immoderate 
longing after holiness.!_ When the bishop Demetrius first heard of the 
transaction, he did not overlook in the error the purity of the motive ; 
though afterwards he took advantage of this false step as a means to 
injure Origen. 

An important point would be gained, were it possible fairly to de- 
termine the precise time and manner in which Origen passed over — 
to speak in the Alexandrian style — from the πίστις to the γνῶσις, After 
what has been said above respecting Clement’s peculiar bent of mind, 
it is impossible to doubt, that, if Origen was his immediate disciple as 
a theologian, he had from the first been stimulated by Clement to make 
himself accurately acquainted with the systems of the Greek philosophy, 
and of the different heretics ; as indeed the liberal spirit of the Alex- 
andrian theology required that he should do. But probably the origi- 
nal turn of Origen’s mind was of a far more decided and determinate 
character. There was in his case no mutual interpenetration of the ele- 
ments subsisting beside each other in his mind. The practical Christian, 
the ascetic, and the literary element never kindly intermmgled. He says 
himself, that it was first by an outward occasion he was led to busy 
himself with the study of the Platonic philosophy, and to make himself 
better acquainted generally with the systems of those who differed from 
himself ; by his intercourse, namely, with heretics and Pagans of phi- 
losophical education, who, attracted by his reputation, entered with him 
into discussions of religious topics, when he was compelled to give them 
a reason of his faith, and to refute the objections which they brought 
against it. He expresses himself on this point in the followmg manner, 
in a letter in which he defends himself for bestowing his time on the 
Greek philosophy: ‘‘ When I had wholly devoted myself to the pro- 
mulgation of the divine doctrines, and the fame of my skill in them 
began to be spread, and sometimes heretics, sometimes such as had 
been conversant with the Grecian sciences, and particularly men from 
the philosophical schools, came to visit me, it seemed to me necessary, 
that I should examine the doctrinal opinions of the heretics, and what 
the philosophers pretended to know of the truth.” He proceeds to say, 
that he attended the lectures of the teacher of philosophical science, 
with whom Heraclas, a convert of Origen’s, had already spent five 
years. As he here particularizes an individual known at that time in 
Alexandria, simply as the teacher of philosophy, chronology would 
naturally lead us to think of the famous Ammonius Saccas, the teacher 
of the profound Plotinus, from whose hand the chaotic eclecticism of 
the Neo-Platonists — that compound of Oriental and Grecian ele- 
ments — received a more definite shape. Add to this, that Porphyry, 


1 In Matth. § 3, T. 15. ἢ 367. 


ORIGEN. 699 
in his work against Christianity, expressly calls Origen a disciple of 
this Ammonius.! 

From this time began the great change in the theological bent of Ori- 
gen’s mind. It now became his endeavor, to trace the vestiges of truth 
in all human systems; to examine all things, that he might everywhere 
separate the true from the false. His residence in Alexandria, where 
sects so widely different were brought together; his journey to Rome 
(in the year 211;) his journeys to and within Palestine ; to Achaia, to 
Cappadocia; gave him opportunity, as he tells us himself, of visiting 
those who pretended to any extraordinary knowledge, and of becoming 
acquainted with and examining their doctrines. He made it his prin- 
ciple, not to suffer himself to be governed by the traditional opinion of 
the multitude, but to hold fast that only as truth, which he found after 
unbiassed examination. This principle he expresses in a practical ap- 
plication of Matth. 22: 19, 20: ‘We here learn from our Saviour, 
that we are not, under the pretext of piety, to pin our faith on that 
which is said by the multitude, and which therefore stands in high 
authority ; but on that which results from examination and the internal 
connection of truth; for it is well to remark, that when he was asked 
whether men should pay tribute to Ceesar or not, he not only expressed his 
own judgment, but, having asked them to show him a penny, he inquired 
whose image and superscription is this; and when they said it is 
Czesar’s, he answered that men should give unto Ceesar the things that 
are Ceesar’s, and not, under the pretext of religion, deprive him of what 
was his own.’’? Hence the mildness with which he passed judgment on 
those who were wrong, an illustration of which we have in the following 
beautiful remark on John 13: 8: “It is clear, that although Peter 
said this in a good and respectful disposition towards his Teacher, yet 


1 For there can be no doubt on this point; 
viz. that Porphyry, in Euseb. 1. VI. c. 19, 
meant no other person than this Ammonius, 
although Eusebius confounds him with the 
church-teacher Ammonius, who had written 
a Harmony of the Gospels, still extant, and a 
book on the agreement between Moses and 
Jesus. There were, at periods not far remote 
from each other, and in Alexandria itself, 
a pagan Ammonius, highly -distinguished 
among the learned, —a Christian Ammo- 
nius,—and two Origens. We may here re- 
mark, that, when Porphyry says of Origen: 
“Ἕλλην ἐν ἕλλησι παιδευϑεὶς λόγοις, πρὸς τὸ 
βάρβαρον ἐξώκειλε τόλμημα, (he became an 
apostate to the religion of the barbarians,) 
one part of the assertion has its truth ; 
namely, that Origen, from the first, had been 
disciplined in the Greek literature; but it 
was a false insinuation of Porphyry, that 
he had been educated in Paganism. We 
cannot suppose that Porphyry, in this case, 
confounded the two persons bearing the 
name of Origen; for he knew them both. 
I must agree with Dr. Redepenning, in 
his Monographie ueber Origenes, that the 
reasons adduced by Ritter are by no means 


sufficient to refute the hypothesis, — that 
the philosopher whose lectures Origen at- 
tended was Ammonius Saccas. Although 
several philosophers taught at Alexandria, 
still the words which Origen employs : — 
Παρὰ τῷ διδασκάλῳ τῶν φιλοσόφων 
μαϑημάτων, naturally suggest the famous 
one; and chronology points to the Ammo- 
nius in question. And even though Am- 
monius sprung from Christian parents, and 
again fell back to Paganism, yet this is no 
sufficient reason for maintaining that Origen 
must have had scruples about hearing him, 
— being, as he was, a famous teacher of the 
Platonic philosophy. And it still remains 
open for inquiry, whether really the descent 
of Ammonius from Christian parents is an 
ascertained fact. 

2 ς, Cels. 1. VI. ¢. 24: Πολλοὺς ἐκπερίελ- 
ϑόντες τύπους τῆς γῆς, Kal τοὺς πανταχοῦ 
ἐπαγγελλομένους τι εἰδέναι ζητήσαντες. 

8 In Matth. T. XVII. § 20, f.483: Μὴ τοῖς 
ὑπὸ TOV πολλῶν λεγομένοις Kal διὰ τοῦτο 
ἐνδόξοις φαινομένοις, προφάσει τῆς εἰς ϑεὸν 
εὐσεβείας προσέχειν, ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ τῆς ἐξετάσεως 
καὶ τῆς ἀκολουϑίας τοῦ λόγου παρισταμένοις. 


700 ORIGEN. 


he said it to his own hurt. Life is full of this kind of sins, attaching to 
those who in their faith mean what is right, but out of ignorance say, 
or even do, what leads to the contrary. Such are those who say: 
Thou shalt not touch this, thou shalt not taste that, thou shalt not han- 
dle the other. Col.2: 21,22. But what shall we say of those who, in 
the sects, are driven about by every wind of doctrine; who set forth 
that which is soul-destroying as saving doctrine; and who frame to 
themselves false notions of the person of Jesus, under the supposition 
that they honor him thereby ?” 4 

By this liberality of mind, it was the happiness of Origen to bring 
back many heretics, with whom he fell in contact at Alexandria, par- 
ticularly Gnostics, to the simple doctrine of the gospel. One remarka- 
ble example of this sort was that Ambrosius, a wealthy man in Alex- 
andria, who, not satisfied with the manner in which Christianity had 
been exhibited to him in the common representations of the church- 
teachers, had sought, and supposed that he had found, a more spiritual 
conception of it among the Gnostics; until, through the influence of 
Origen, he was undeceived of his error, and rejoiced at now finding, 
through his means, the right Gnosis at the same time with the true faith.” 
He now became Origen’s warmest friend, and endeavored especially 
to promote his literary labors for the good of the church. 

If Origen, after having been taught, by his own experience, the 
errors resulting from a grossly literal interpretation of scripture, and 
the hurtful consequences to which it might lead, passed over to the 
other extreme of an arbitrary allegorizing method of exposition; his 
conscientious and zealous endeavors to avail himself of every help which 
could be used in restoring back to its original condition, and in rightly 
understanding, the literal text of scripture, deserve the greater esteem. 
To this end, he studied the Hebrew, after he had arrived at the age of 
manhood, —a task of some difficulty to a Greek. He undertook an 
emendation of the biblical manuscripts, by comparmg them with one 
another: he is the creator of sacred literature among the Christians ; 
although his arbitrary principles of interpretation prevented, in his own 
case, the full realization of all those results which might otherwise have 
been expected fromit. Many pregnant ideas were scattered abroad 
by him, which needed only to be applied in a different way from that 
which his own one-sided speculative bent and his mistaken notions of 
inspiration allowed, to lead to fruitful results. 

As the number of those who now resorted to him for religious in- 
struction continued to increase, and at the same time his literary labors 
on the scriptures, which extended over a widening field, claimed more 
of his attention ; in order to gain time, he shared the task of catechist 
with his friend Heraclas; giving over to the latter the preparatory reli- 
gious instruction, and reserving for himself the exacter instruction of 
the more advanced,®—a division of labor which probably had reference 
to the two classes of catechumens of which we have formerly spoken.‘ 


1Jn Joann. T. XXXII. § 5. ὃ Euseb. lib. VI. c. 15. 
2 See the words to Ambrosius, Τὶ Evang. = # See vol. I. p. 305. 
Joann. p. 99, cited on a former occasion. 


ORIGEN. 701 


The division of his official labors in this department made it possible 
for him to enlarge the sphere of his activity as a teacher of the church, 
and to establish a sort of preliminary school to the Christian Gnosis, in 
a course of lectures on that which was reckoned by the Greeks to the 
Encyclopedia, or general circle of education, as well as on philosophy. 
He expounded to his pupils all the ancient philosophers in whom a 
moral and religious element was to be found, and sought to train them 
to that mental freedom which would enable them everywhere to sepa- 
rate truth from the mixture of falsehood; as his disciple, Gregory 
Thaumaturgus, has described, in the account of Origen’s method of in- 
struction, which he has given in a work hereafter to be mentioned. 
Thus he entitled himself to the great merit of diffusing a more liberal 
system of Christian and scientific education, of which the schools that 
resulted from his labors are the evidence. It was also his lot to con- 
duct many, who had been drawn to him solely through the love οὗ sci- 
ence, by gradual steps, to faith in the gospel ; — first inspiring in them 
a longing after divine things; then pointing out to them the inadequacy 
of the Greek systems of philosophy to satisfy the religious wants of hu- 
man nature; and finally exhibiting to them the doctrine of scripture 
concerning divine things, contrasted with the doctrines of the ancient 
philosophers. His course of instruction ended with his lectures on the 
interpretation of scripture, which, following the principles unfolded in 
the earlier studies, gave him an opportunity to exhibit his whole theo- 
logico-philosophical system, or his whole Gnosis, in single investigations 
and remarks. Many of those whom Origen was enabled thus gradu- 
ally to bring to the knowledge and to the love of the gospel, became 
afterwards zealous and influential teachers of the church. 

Ambrosius, whom we mentioned above as the friend of Origen, took 
special interest in his scientific labors. Origen used to call him his 
work-driver (ἐργοδιώκτης.) He not only excited him by his questions and 
challenges to many inquiries, but also employed his great wealth in pro- 
viding him with the means of pursuing expensive investigations ; such, 
for instance, as made indispensable the purchase and collation of manu- 
scripts. He furnished him with seven ready scribes, who were to 
relieve each other as his amanuenses, besides others to transcribe every- 
thing in a fair copy. Origen says of this friend, in one of his letters :1 
“He who gave me credit for great diligence, and a great thirst after 
the divine word, has, by his own diligence and his own love of sacred 
science, convinced himself how much he was mistaken. He has so far 
outdone me, that I am in danger of not coming up to his requisitions. 
The collation of manuscripts leaves me no time to eat; and after meals 
I can neither go out nor enjoy a season of rest; but even at those times 
I am compelled to continue my philological investigations and the cor- 
rection of manuscripts. Even the night is not granted me for repose, 
but a great part of it is claimed for these philological inquiries. 1 will 
not mention the time from early in the morning till the ninth and some- 
times the tenth hour of the day ;? for all who take pleasure in such 


1 T. I. opp. ed. de la Rue, f. 3. 
? Till three or four a 5 M. according to our reckoning. 
* 


702 ORIGEN. 


_—_ employ those hours in the study of the divine word, and in 
reading. 

Ambrosius urged Origen, by the publication of his theological labors, 
to give the entire church an opportunity of enjoying the benefit of 
them, and thus to counteract the influence of the Gnostics, who had 
first excited among the Christians a spirit of deeper research into the 
things of God, and, under the pretence of a more profound scriptural 
interpretation, contrived, by arbitrary allegorical expositions, to intro- 
duce their Theosophy into holy writ. The object last mentioned is 
one which Origen himself assigns for his labors, at the close of the fifth 
Tome of his commentary on the gospel of John, which was in part aimed 
against the Gnostic Heracleon. ‘As at present the heterodox,” he 
says, ‘‘under cover of the Gnosis, set themselves against God’s holy 
church, and scatter abroad works of many volumes, which promise to 
expound the evangelical and apostolical writings; so will they succeed, 
if we remain silent, without placing the sound and true doctrines by 
their side, to snatch away the hungry souls, who, for want of wholesome 
nourishment, hasten to that which is forbidden.” 

He completed at Alexandria his commentaries on Genesis, the 
Psalms, the Lamentation of Jeremiah, (of which writings some frag- 
ments only remain, ) his five first Zomes on the gospel of John, his tract 
on the resurrection, his Stromata, and his work concerning principles.! 
The work last mentioned derived great importance from the struggle 
which it called forth between opposite tendencies of the theological 
mind, and from the influence which it had on the fortunes of Origen 
and of his school. Platonic philosophy and doctrines of the Christian 
faith were then, still more than at a later period, blended together in 
his mind. His wildness of speculation became afterwards moderated 
by the influence of the Christian spirit. Many ideas which he had 
thrown out in this work, (rather as problems, however, than as deci- 
sions,) he afterwards retracted; although the principles of his system 
always remained the same. He declared himself, in a letter subse- 
quently written to Fabian, bishop of Rome, before whom his doctrines 
had probably been accused as heretical, that he had set forth many 
things in that book which he no longer acknowledged as true, and that 
his friend Ambrosius had published it against his will.? 

Yet, as has often happened, unless there had been an outward occa- 
sion for it, an intervention of personal and unworthy passions, the con- 
flict between Origen and the party ofthe church zealots would not have 
broken out, at least so soon; especially as Origen was far from possessing 
that pride which in other cases so readily connects itself with a theo- 
logical tendency of this sort, and as he constantly evinced the utmost 
forbearance towards those whose religious and theological principles 
differed from his own. ‘The authority of his bishop, Demetrius, was to 
him an important support ; but this man, who was full of the hierarchi- 
cal pride, which in these times we find especially rife in the bishops of 


1 Περὶ ἀρχῶν = τῶν κορυφαιοτάτων καὶ 2 Vid. Hieronym. ep. 41, T. LV. opp. edd. 
ἀρχικῶν δογμώτων, as Origen himself ex- Martianay, f. 341. 
presses it in Joann. T. X. § 13. 


ORIGEN. 108 
the large cities, had his jealousies excited by the great reputation of 
Origen, and the honor which he received on particular occasions. 

Hspecially the honor paid him by twe of his friends, Alexander, 
bishop of Jerusalem, the friend of his youth, and Theoctistus, bishop 
of Czsarea in Palestine, gave no small umbrage. The haughty Deme- 
trius had already taken it greatly amiss of them, that they had per- 
mitted Origen, when a layman,! to preach in their churches.2 Yet: 
when, in obedience to the call of his bishop, he returned back to Alex- 
andria, he was enabled to restore the friendly relations in which they 
had previously stood to each other. but m the year 288, he happened 
to make a journey to Greece on some ecclesiastical business of which 
we have no further account. While upon this journey, he made a visit 
to his friends in Palestine; and these ordained him as a presbyter at 
Cvesarea. 

This was a step, for which Demetrius could not forgive the two 
bishops, nor Origen. After the return of the latter, Demetrius con- 
vened a synod, composed of presbyters from his own diocese, and of 
other Egyptian bishops, and here brought against Origen that indis- 
erect act of his youth, by which, we must allow, according to the strict 
letter of the ecclesiastical canons, he was excluded from the spiritual 
order.* But it should have been duly considered, that he had since 
become an entirely different man; that he had long condemned the 
step into which his youthful zeal had betrayed him. Yet for this 
reason he was deprived of the presbyterial rank which had been be- 
stowed on him, and forbidden to exercise the office of a public teacher 
in the Alexandrian church.? Having once drawn upon himself the 
jealousy and hatred of the pharisaical bishop, he could enjoy no further 
peace in Alexandria. Demetrius did not stop with the first attack 
upon him: he now began to stigmatize the doctrines of Origen as hereti- 


1 See vol. I. p. 197. 

2 There were, probably in the year 216, 
certain warlike demonstrations in Alexan- 
dria, according to Euseb. 1. VI. c. 19, which 
made it unsafe for him to reside there any 
longer; perhaps when the demented Cara- 
calla, on his way to the Parthian war, gave 
up this city to the rapacious and murderous 
lusts of his soldiers, Al. Spartian. 1. VI. 
c.6. It may be supposed that the fury of the 
pagan soldiers would light especially on 
the Christians. Origen betook himself to 
Palestine, for the purpose of visiting his 
ancient friends, and, as he says himself, (in 
Joann. T. VI. § 24,) for the purpose of ex- 
ploring the footsteps of Jesus, of his disciples, 
and of the prophets (ἐπὲ ἱστορίαν τῶν ἰχνῶν 
ἸΙησοῦ καὶ τῶν μαϑητῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν προ- 
φητῶν.) 

5. Perhaps he was called into these coun- 
tries for the purpose of disputing with Gnos- 
tics who had spread there, — his skill in 
managing disputes of this sort being exten- 
sively known. His disputation with Can- 
didus the Valentinian, the acts of which are 
cited by Jerome, might lead us to infer this. 


4 It is very probable, that the ecclesiastical 
law was already existing, which we find in 
the XVII. of the Apostolic Canons. It was 
here by no means unconditionally forbidden, 
after the example of the Old-Testament law, 
Deut. 23, that a eunuch should be chosen 
to the spiritual order; but expressly defined, 
that whoever had been subjected to such a 
mischance, without any fault of his own, if 
worthy, might become an ecclesiastic; only 
6 ἑαυτὸν ἀκρωτηριάσας μὴ γινέσϑω κληρικός. 
It was simply designed to offer a check to 
that ascetic species of enthusiasm. 

5 Photius says, it is true, that this same 
synod not only forbade Origen to exercise 
the office of teacher, but also to remain a 
resident in the Alexandrian church. But 
it is difficult to see how a bishop at that time 
could enforce this. He could in fact only 
exclude him from the communion of the 
church, and this was first done in the second 
synod. Moreover, the words of Origen do 
not seem to intimate, that he had been forced 
to leave Alexandria. 


704 ORIGEN. 
cal—-a proceeding for which, perhaps, some assertions of the latter, 
in his disputations with the Gnostics, had given fresh occasion.} 

Yet from the resources of his own inner life he drew sufficient peace 
of mind to complete his fifth Zome on the gospel of John, amid the 
storms at Alexandria (since, as he says,” Jesus commanded the winds 
and the waves of the sea;) when he finally concluded to~leave that 
city, and to take refuge with his friends at Czesarea in Palestine. But 
the persecutions of Demetrius followed him even there. The bishop 
now seized on a pretext, which would enable him easily to find allies 
in Egypt and out of Egypt; inasmuch as the prevailing dogmatic 
spirit, in many parts of the church, was violently opposed to the ideal- 
istic tendency of Origen’s school, and inasmuch as the work περὶ ἀρχῶν 
would furnish such abundant materials for the charge of heresy. Ata 
more numerous synod of Egyptian bishops, Demetrius excluded Origen, 
as a heretic, from the communion of the church; and the synod issued 
against him a violent invective. To this document Origen alludes, 
when, in commencing once more at Ceesarea the continuation of his 
commentary on the gospel of John, he says: ‘‘ That God who once led 
his people out of Egypt, had also delivered him from that land; but his 
enemy, in this recent letter, truly at variance with the spirit of the 
gospel, had assailed him with the utmost virulence, and roused against 


him all the winds of malice in Egypt.” ὃ 


1 As we might infer from the disputation 
with Candidus the Valentinian. Hieronym, 
adv. Rufin. lib. 11. f. 414, vol. IV. 

2TIn Joann. T. VI. ὁ 1. 

8 We are in want of connected and trust- 
worthy accounts respecting these events, so 
pregnant of consequences. We can only 
endeavour, by a combination of particulars, 
to trace the facts of the case as they really 
occurred. It is certain, indeed, from the 
intimation which Eusebius gives, and from 
Origen’s words, which have already been 
cited, concerning that indiscretion of his 
youth, that the latter was then urged agaznst 
him ; but this could be employed only as a 
reason for excluding him from the clerical 
office. The other steps against him must 
have originated in some other complaint. 
Photius, who had read the Apology of Pam- 
philus in behalf of Origen, says, it is true, 
Cod. 118, that Demetrius accused him of hay- 
ing undertaken the journey to Athens without 
his permission, and of having caused himself, 
on this journey undertaken without his per- 
mission, to be ordained a presbyter, — which 
certainly would have been an infraction of 
the laws of the church on the part of Origen, 
as well as of the bishops. But if Demetrius 
brought this charge against Origen, still it 
may be asked, whether he had any grounds 
for it. We see from the citation of Jerome, 
de vir. illustr. c. 62, that Alexander, bishop 
of Jerusalem, had to allege against Deme- 
trius, the fact that he had ordained Origen on 
the authority of an epistola formata, which 
Origen brought with him from his bishop. 


The church laws respecting these matters 
were at that time, perhaps, still so vague, that 
Alexander might suppose he had every right 
to ordain a man who belonged to another 
diocese; and yet Demetrius might look upon 
this as an invasion on the rights of his epis- 
copal office. At any rate, however, this was _ 
no sufficient reason for excommunicating 
Origen. The participation of other churches 
in this attack upon him; the brand of heresy, 
which Origen continued to bear even after 
his death; his own language in justification 
of himself, in the letter already cited, ad- 
dressed to the Roman bishop Fabian (as he 
had also written to other bishops in vindi- 
cation of his orthodoxy, Euseb. 1. VI. ¢. 
36 ;) —all conspire to show, that his doctrines 
were the cause of his excommunication. 
We see also from what Jerome cites, 1. 11. 
adv. Rufin. f. 411, and from the letter of 
Origen against Demetrius, that he was ac- 
cused of errors in his system of faith; since 
he defends himself against the charge of 
having asserted that Satan would one day 
become holy, — although we cannot well 
understand how he could deny this assertion, 
which is necessarily grounded in his system. 
Rufinus cites passages from one of Origen’s 
letters of vindication, addressed to his friends 
in Alexandria; from which we learn, that 
a forged protocol, pretending to give an 
account of a disputation held between him 
and the heretics, had excited surprise at his 
doctrinal positions, even among his friends 
in Palestine. They had despatched a mes- 
senger after him to Athens, and requested 


ORIGEN. 705 

This personal quarrel became now a conflict between the opposite 
doctrinal parties. The churches in Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and 
Achaia, took the side of Origen: the church of Rome declared against 
him.!_ How Origen judged of those who stigmatized him as a heretic, 
appears from a remark,” which he makes after citing 1 Corinth. 1: 25: 
“1 7 had said,”’ he observes, ‘‘ the foolishness of God, how would the 
lovers of censure? accuse me! How should I be accused by them, even 
though I had said a thousand times what they themselves hold to be 
true, yet had not rightly said this single thing, — how should I be ac- 
cused by them for saying, ‘ the foolishness of God’!” In his letter of 
vindication against the synod which had excommunicated him, he quotes 
some of the denunciations of the prophets against wicked priests and 
potentates, and then adds: ‘‘ But we should far rather pity than hate 
them, far rather pray for them than curse them; for we are made to 
bless, and not to curse.’’! 

The efforts of Origen’s enemies only contributed to extend the sphere 
of his activity. His removal to Palestine was certainly important in 
its consequences, an opportunity being thus given him of laboring also 


from him the original of the protocol. Also 
protocols of this sort had been dispersed as 
faras Rome. Vid. Rufin. de adulteratione 
librorum Origenis, in opp. Hieronym. T. V. 
f. 251, ed. Martianay. Although Rufin is 
not a faithful translator, yet this cannot have 
been a story wholly invented by himself. 
The disputations with the Gnostics, more- 
over, could not fail to furnish occasions, 
which would bring out prominently the 
peculiar religious opinions of Origen; and 
every opportunity of making his orthodoxy 
suspected in his own church must have been 
eagerly welcomed by those who found in 
him so powerful an antagonist. 

1 Hieronym. ep. 29, ad Paulum: Dam- 
natus a Demetrio episcopo, exceptis Palzs- 
tine et Arabiz et Phceniciz atque Achaize 
sacerdotibus. In damnationem ejus con- 
sentit urbs Roma: ipsa contra hunc cogit 
senatum. ΤῸ be sure, he adds to this: non 
propter dogmatum novitatem ; non propter 
heresin, sed quia gloriam eloquentiz ejus 
et scientiz ferre non poterant. 
not fact; it is the subjective interpretation 
of motives, according to interests which 
Jerome at that time espoused. Compare, 
moreover, the remark made in the case of 
Tertullian. 

2 Hom. VIII. in Jerem. § 8. 

3 Οἱ φιλαίτιοι. 

4. See |. 6. Hieronym. 1. IV.f. 411, Comp. 
what Origen says against the significancy 
of unjust excommunication, see vol. I. p. 219. 
Comp. also in Matth. T. XVI. § 25, f. 445, 
the words in which we discern the zealous 
opponent of hierarchy, who was able to dis- 
cover the pious disposition even when hid- 
den under the most unpromising shapes, 
and, wherever it appeared, embraced it in 
his love. Different from this, however, was 


But this is 


the course of those bishops who were filled 
with the spirit of a priestly caste and hie- 
rarchical pride, and of whom he says, apply- 
ing to them the passage in Matth. 21: 16: 
“ As these scribes and priests were censura- 
ble according to the letter of the history, so, 
in the spiritual application of this passage, 
there may be many a blame-worthy high- 
priest, who fails to adorn his episcopal dig- 
nity by his life, and to put on the Urim and 
Thummim, (the Light and Right, Exod. 28.) 
These, while they behold the wonderful 
things of God, despise the babes and 
sucklings in the church, who sing praises 
to God and his Christ. They are dis- 
pleased at their spiritual progress, and 
complain of them to Jesus, as if they did 
wrong when they do no wrong. They ask 
Jesus, ‘ Hearest thou what these say?’ And 
this we shall better understand, if we con- 
sider how often it happens, that men of 
ardent minds, who hazard their liberty in 
bold confessions before the Heathen, who 
despise danger, who with all constancy lead 
lives of the strictest continence and severest 
austerity, — how often such men, who are 
rude, however, in their expressions, [ἰδιῶται 
τῇ λέξει.) are calumniated by these blame- 
worthy high-priests as disorganizers, — how 
often they are accused by them before Jesus, 
as if they themselves behaved better than 
such honest and good children. But Jesus 
testifies in‘favor of the children, and on the 
other hand accuses the high-priests of igno- 
rance, saying, ‘ Have ye not read: Out of 
the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast 
ordained praise ?’” It might well be, that 
Origen here had before his mind’s eye, Deme- 
trius and similar bishops, who were inclined 
to judge with the greatest severity, those 
errors which proceeded out of a pious zeal. 


706 ORIGEN. 


from that point, for the diffusion of a liberal scientific spirit in the 
church ; and long were the traces of his activity to be discerned in 
these districts. Here, too, a circle of young men gathered around 
him, who were trained under his influence to fill the posts of theolo- 
gians and church-teachers. To the number of these belongs that 
active and laborious preacher of the gospel, Gregory, of whom we shall 
speak more particularly hereafter. Here Origen prosecuted his 
literary undertakings. Here he composed, among other works, the 
treatise, already noticed, on the Utility of Prayer, and on the Exposi- 
tion of the Lord’s Prayer, which he addressed to his friend Ambrosius. 
Here he maintained an active correspondence with the most distin- 
guished church-teachers in Cappadocia, Palestine, and Arabia; and he 
was often invited to assist at deliberations on the concerns of foreign 
churches. 

During the persecution of Maximin the Thracian, in which two of 
Origen’s friends, the presbyter Protoctetus, of Czesarea, and Ambro- 
sius, had much to suffer, he addressed to these confessors, who were 
awaiting in prison the issue of their trials, his treatise on Martyrdom. 
He exhorts them to steadfastness in confession ; he fortifies their reso- 
lution by the promises of scripture, and takes pains to refute those 
sophisms which might be employed to palliate the denial of a faith 
grounded in facts ; as, for example, when Gnostics, who held outward 
things to be of no importance, and pagan statesmen, who were wont to 
regard everything solely from the political point of view, sought alike 
to persuade the Christians, that, without violating their private convic- 
tions, which no one wished to deprive them of, they might join in those 
merely outward ceremonies of the state religion. Although that moral- 
ity, aiming at an absolute estrangement from all human passions, con- 
cerning the connection of which with Origen’s whole mode of thmking 
we have already spoken, is everywhere to be met with in this book,} 
and also those false notions of martyrdom as an opus operatum, — 
which, infused into him by the prevailing spirit of the church in his 
time, were incorporated with several of his own peculiar ideas, —shine 
through the surface ; yet, at the same time, the energy of his unwaver- 
ing trust and of his zeal in behalf of the gospel faith, finely expresses 
itself in this work. Says he to the two confessors :* ‘¢ I could wish that 
you, too, in the whole conflict that is before you, mindful of the great 
reward reserved in heaven for those who suffer persecution and 
reproach for the sake of righteousness and of the Son of man, might 
rejoice and be glad, as the apostles once rejoiced, when they were 
found worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Christ. But should 
ever anguish enter your souls, may the Spirit of Christ, that dwells with- 
in you, say, tempted though you may be on your part to disturb it, 
‘Why troublest thou me, my soul? and why art thou disquieted within 
me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my 
countenance and my God,’ Ps. 42:5. May it, however, never be 


1 This is seen particularly in Origen’s referred to not allowing him to take them 
artificial way of explaining the words spok- according to their natural sense. 
en by Christ in his agony ; the spirit above 2§ 4. 


_ ORIGEN. 707 


troubled, but even before the tribunal itself, and under the naked sword 
aimed at your necks, be preserved by that peace of God which passeth 
all understanding.”” He says to them, in another place :! ‘ Since the 
Word of God ? is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged 
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is 
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, Heb. 4: 12; so 
let this divine Word, especially now, cause to reign in our souls, as he 
did in his apostles, that peace which passeth all understanding ; but he 
has cast the sword between the image of the earthly and the image of 
the heavenly within us, that he may for the present receive our heay- 
enly man to*himself, and then, when we have attained so far as that 
we need to experience no more separation,’ that he may make us alto- 
gether heavenly. And he came, not only to bring the sword, but also 
to send fire on the earth, concerning which he says: ‘ What would I 
rather, than that it be already kindled?’ Luke 12:49. May this fire, 
then, be kindled even in you, and consume every earthly feeling within 
you, and cause you to be joyfully baptized with that baptism of which 
Jesus spake. And thou, (Ambrosius,) who hast a wife and children, 
brothers and sisters, remember the words of the Lord: ‘ Whoever 
cometh unto me, and hateth not his father, mother, wife, children, 
brothers and sisters, cannot be my disciple.’ But both of yow be mind- 
ful of the words: ‘If any man come unto me, and hate not even his 
own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ ” 

It was, perhaps, this same persecution which induced Origen to 
leave for awhile the place where he had hitherto resided. The perse- 
cution at that time being merely local, it was easy to escape from it, 
by fleeing to other districts, where tranquillity happened to prevail. 
Origen repaired to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he visited his friend, 
the bishop Firmilian, with whom he had been in the habit of correspond- 
ing on scientific and theological subjects.® : 

But, perhaps, at the very time while he was there, the persecution 
broke out in Cappadocia,® which was the occasion of his retiring to the 
house of Juliana, a Christian virgin, who concealed and entertained 
him in her dwelling during the space of two years. It was here he 
made a discovery, which had an important bearing on his literary un- 
dertakings. He had been employed for years on a work which was 
to contribute both to the emendation of the text of the Alexandrian 
version of the Old Testament, — which was the translation chiefly used 
in the church, being regarded by many Christians, who followed the 
old Jewish legend, as inspired, and of which the different manuscripts 
varied considerably from each other in their readings, — and also to the 
improvement of this translation itself, by comparing it with other 
ancient versions, and with the original Hebrew text. Origen, who was 
in the constant habit of disputing with Pagans and Jews on religious 


1 § 37. 5 They occasionally visited each other for 
2 He understands this of the Logos. the purpose of conversing on theological 
8 No separation of the godlike and the topics. Euseb.1. VI. c. 27. 
unigodlike. 6 See vol. I. p. 126. 
Luke 12: 50. 


108 ORIGEN. 

matters, had found, as he says himself, by his own experience, how 
necessary was an acquaintance with the original text of the Old Testa- 
ment, to avoid laying one’s-self open to the Jews, who ridiculed the 
ignorance of those Gentile Christians that disputed with them, when 
they cited passages from the Alexandrian version which were not to be 
found in the Hebrew, or when they showed that they knew nothing of 
passages which were to be found in the Hebrew only.!. He had there- 
fore employed the wealth of his friend Ambrosius, and availed himself 
of his own frequent journeys, to collect various manuscripts of the 
Alexandrian version, and other ancient translations, which it was still 
possible to procure. Thus he had, for example, in ransacking every 
corner, found, in a cask at Jericho, an ancient translation, not before 
known to exist, of some books of the Old Testament. It now fell out, 
that this Juliana had become heiress to the writings of the Ebionite 
Symmachus, who had lived perhaps in the beginning of this century ; 
and among these writings Origen found both his commentary on the 
gospel according to the Hebrews, (εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἕβραιους,2) and his 
version of the Old Testament. He was now enabled to bring to a com- 
pletion the great work of collating the ancient versions still extant, and 


of comparing them with the Hebrew text.4 


1 Orig. ep. ad African. ὁ 5.: Τοιαύτης 
οὔσης ἡμῶν τῆς πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐν ταῖς ζητῆσεσι 
παρασκευῆς, οὐ καταφρονῆσουσιν, οὐδ᾽ ὡς ἔϑος 
αὐτοῖς, γελάσονται τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐϑνῶν πισ- 
τεύοντας, ὡς τ’ ἀληϑῆ καὶ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἀνα- 
γεγραμμένα ἀγνοοῦντας. 

2 The words of Eusebius, 1. VI. ¢. 17, re- 
specting the work of Symmachus, are: Ἔν 
οἷς δοκεῖ πρὸς TO κατὰ Ματϑαῖον ἀποτεινόμε- 
νος εὐαγγέλιον τὴν δεδηλωμένην αἵρεσιν (τῶν 
᾿ἘΠΒβιωναίων) κρατύνειν. As he subsequently 
classes this work with the cgmmentaries of 
Symmachus on the scriptures, (ἑρμηνείας 
εἰς τὰς ypagvac,) one might be led to sup- 
pose it was some writing of his, in which 
he expounded this gospel, or rather the 
Ebionitic gospel according to the Hebrews, 
which resembled it, and employed it to 
prove the Ebionitic doctrines ; but the Greek 
phrase, ἀποτείνεσϑαι πρός τι, connected 
with κρατύνειν, favors much rather the sup- 
position, that a writing is here meant which 
attacked the gospel of Matthew by assum- 
ing the genuineness of the Ebionitic revis- 
ion of the gospel according to the Hebrews. 

8 Palladius (in the beginning of the fifth 
century) relates, in his history of the monks, 
(Aavoiaxa,) ο. 147, that he had found in an 
old manuscript, coming from Origen, the 
words written in his own hand, giving the 
account cited in the text. True, this Pal- 
ladius is a witness liable to some suspicion 
on account of his credulity; but in this case 
we have no reason to disbelieve him, espe- 
cially as his testimony agrees with the nar- 
rative of Eusebius, 1. VI. c. 17. 

4The Hexapla: to say anything more 
concerning this work and kindred works of 
Origen, would be foreign from our purpose. 


See the Introductions to the Old Testa- 
ment. We shall merely cite here the words 
of Origen himself respecting the compari- 
son instituted by him between the Alexan- 
drian version and the other ancient transla- 
tions of the Old Testament. After having 
spoken, (Commentar. in Matth. f. 381,) of 
the differences in the copies of the New 
Testament, which had arisen partly from 
the negligence and partly from the arbitra- 
ry criticism of the transcribers, he adds: 
“As regards the differences between the 
copies of the Old Testament, we have, with 
God’s help, found a means of adjusting 
them, by using the other translations as our 
criterion. Wherever in the version of the 
Seventy anything was doubtful on account 
of the differences of the manuscripts, we 
have retained that which coincided with the 
other translations; and many passages, not 
to be found in the Hebrew text, we have 
marked with an obelisk, (the critical sign of 
omission,) not daring wholly to omit them. 
But some passages we have noted with an 
asterisk, in order to make it clear, that such 
passages, which are not found in the Seven- 
ty, have been added by us from the other 
translations coinciding with the Hebrew 
text; and in order that whoever 18. so in- 
clined, may receive them into the text, (1 sup- 
pose that the reading should be προςῆται:) 
but whoever takes any offence at them, may 
receive or not receive them, as he pleases.” 
From these last words, we see how much 
Origin had to fear from those who were 
ready at once to accuse any one that de- 
parted from the traditional and customary 
route, of falsifying the sacred scriptures. 


ORIGEN. 709 
_ After the assassination of Maximim, and under the reign of the em- 
peror Gordian, in the year 238, Origen was enabled to return once 
more to Caesarea, and resume there his earlier labors. 

Long before, while he resided at Alexandria, the church of Greece, 
where he enjoyed a high reputation, had sent for him to advise with 
them on some ecclesiastical matters : he now probably received a second 
invitation of the same kind. His way led him through Nicomedia in 
Bithynia, where he spent several days with his old friend Ambrosius, 
who, if the narrative of Jerome is correct, had meanwhile become dea- 
con ; whether it was that the latter had his appointment in the church 
of that city, or whether he had come thither for the sake of meeting 
Origen. There he received a letter from another friend, Julius Afri- 
canus, one of the distinguished learned Christians of that age.! Ori- 
gen, in a conversation which took place im the presence of Africanus, 
had cited the story of Susanna, on the authority of the Alexandrian 
version, as a part of genuine scripture, belonging to the book of Dan- 
iel. In this letter, equally characterized by the moderate, respectful 
tone of literary controversy, and by the unbiassed freedom of criticism, 
Africanus expressed his surprise at what he had heard, and asked for 
further explanations. Origen replied in a full and elaborate letter from 
Nicomedia. Not so free from prejudice as Africanus, he labored to 
defend the authority of the Alexandrian version and collection of the 
sacred writings. It is well worth observing, how the free inquirmg 
mind of Origen, out of a misconceived piety, perhaps, too, rendered 
timid by the convulsions which, in spite of his own will, he had occa- 
sioned in the church, took refuge in the authority of a church tradition 


preserved pure under the guidance of a special Providence. 


“ But 


ought not that Providence,’’ says he, ‘ which in the sacred writings has 


1 He was then a very aged man, as is evi- 
dent from the fact, that he could address 
Origen, who was now fifty, by the title, 
“my son.” His usual place of residence 
was probably the ancient and ruined city of 
Emmaus or Nicopolis in Palestine, (so call- 
ed by the Romans after the Jewish war, and 
not to be confounded with the Emmaus of 
the New Testament, being more distant, 
namely, 176 stadia from Jerusalem.) The 
inhabitants of this ruined place chose him 
as their delegate to the emperor Heliogaba- 
lus, for the purpose of obtaining from that 
emperor the restoration of their city, a mis- 
sion in which he was successful. Hieronym. 
de vir. illustr. c. 63. He is known as the 
first author of a Christian History of the 
world, (his χρονογραφία in five books, vid. 
Euseb. |. VI. c. 31.) This work, of which 
our only knowledge is derived from the use 
made of it by other writers, and from frag- 
ments, undoubtedly had its origin in an 
apologetic aim. He is known, again, on 
account of his letter to Aristides, on the 
method of reconciling the differences be- 
tween the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 
and Luke, of which Eusebius, Hist. lib. I. 
c. 7, has preserved to us a fragment. There 
is another remarkable fragment of the same 


VOL, I. 


letter, published by Routh, reliquiz sacre, 
vol. 11. p. 115. He controverts here those 
who asserted, that these different genealo- 
gies had been given merely for the purpose 
of demonstrating in this way the truth, that 
Christ was at once King and High Priest, 
being descended from the royal and priest- 
ly families. And in this connection he ex- 
presses himself very strongly against the 
theory of “pious fraud.” “God forbid,” 
says he, “ that the opinion should ever pre- 
vail in the church of Christ, that any false 
thing can be fabricated for Christ’s glory.” 
My 67 κρατοίη τοιοῦτος λόγος ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ 
Χριστοῦ, ὅτι ψεῦδος σύγκειται εἰς αἷνον καὶ 
δοξολογίαν Χριστοῦ. Eusebius ascribes to 
him a work which contained a sort of lite- 
rary omnana, after the fashion of the unsci- 
entific Polyhistories of those times, entitled 
the κέστοι. A great deal, however, as- 
cribed to him in the fragments of this work, 
does not accord with the views and princi- 
ples which should belong to this man, ac- 
cording to what we otherwise know of him. 
It were certainly the most natural hypothe- 
sis, that he wrote this work before his habits 
of thinking had become decidedly Chris- 
tian. 
2 €. 4 


710 ORIGEN. 

given the means of edification to all the churches of Christ, to have cared 
for those who are bought with a price, for whom Christ died -— Christ, 
the Son of that God who is love, and who spared not his own Son, but 
gave him up for us all, that he might with him freely give us all things ? 
Besides, consider whether it is not well to think of those words, ‘ Re- 
move not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.’” Prov. 
22: 28. He then proceeds to say, that although he by no means ne- 
glected the other ancient translations, yet he had bestowed peculiar dili- 
gence on the Alexandrian version, that it might not seem as if he 
wished to introduce into the church any falsifying innovation ; and that 
he might give no pretext to those who sought occasion for, and took de- 
light in, accusing and calumniating the men who were universally 
known and held an important place in the church.! Origen’s journey 
terminated at Athens, where he resided for some time, finished his com- 
mentary on Hzekiel, and began his commentary on the Song of Solo- 
mon. 

To the end of his life, he was occupied with theological labors. Under 
the reign of Philip the Arabian, with whose family he was on terms of 
correspondence, he wrote the work against Celsus, which has already 
been mentioned, his commentary on the gospel of Matthew, and other 
treatises. When he was sixty years of age, he now for the first time 
permitted his discourses to be taken down by short-hand writers. In 
what high consideration he stood with the churches of these countries, 
is evident from the fact, that on important ecclesiastical questions, 
where it was difficult to come at a decision, the opmion of Origen was 
consulted by synods of bishops. A case of this sort, im which Beryl- 
lus, the bishop of Bostra in Arabia, submitted to be taught by him, we 
have noticed on a former occasion. We may here mention as another 
instance of this kind, that a*controversy had been excited by a party 
among the Arabian Christians, who asserted, that the human soul died 
with the body, and that it was to be revived only with the body at the 
resurrection, — an ancient Jewish notion. Perhaps, too,in these dis- 
tricts, whose situation brought them into frequent contact with Jews, it 
was no new doctrine, but the one which had prevailed there from an- 
cient times ; and perhaps it was first brought about through the influ- 
ence of Origen, —in whose system the doctrine of the natural immor- 
tality of the soul, which is related to God, held an important place, — 
that this latter doctrine now became here the more general one, and 
the small party who still adhered to the old opinion, appeared to be 
heretical ; if the case really was, that the prevailing voice had expressed _. 
itself thus early against them. Hence it is explained, how the con- 
vention of a great synod came to be thought necessary for the purpose 
of settling these disputes. As they could not come to an agreement, 


1 “Iva pq τι παραχαράττειν δοκοίημεν ταῖς 
ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐκκλησίαις" καὶ προφάσεις 
δίδωμεν τοῖς ζητοῦσιν ἀφορμὰς, ἐϑέλουσι τοὺς 


judge concerning the controversies of these 
times too much according to his own sub- 
jective views and the church orthodoxy of 


ἐν μέσῳ συκοφαντεῖν καὶ τῶν διαφαινομένων 
ἐν τῷ κοινῷ κατηγορεῖν. 

2 Euseb. lib. VI. c. 82. 

8 Eusebius (l. VI. c. 37) may perhaps 


his age, when he represents the defenders 
of this opinion as men generally acknowl- 
edged to be teachers of error and propaga- 
tors of a new doctrine. 


ORIGEN. 111 
Origen was sent for; and it was brought about by his influence, that 
the opponents of the soul’s natural immortality confessed and renounced 
their error. 

Origen, who, on account of some particular opinions, was by a great 
part of the church stigmatized as a heretic and enemy to the evangeli- 
cal scheme of faith, is said in the last days of alife consecrated to labor 
and conflict in behalf of that which he considered to be the cause of 
Christ, to have refuted by his conduct the accusations of his adversa- 
ries, and shown how he was ready to sacrifice all for the faith, — how 
he belonged to that number who are willing to hate even their own life 
for the Lord’s sake. 

As the fury of the enemies, of Christianity, in the Decian persecu- 
tion, was directed particularly against those men who were distinguished 
among the Christians for their station, their wealth, or their know- 
ledge, and their activity in promulgating the faith,! it was natural that 
such a man as Origen should become a shining mark for fanatical cru- 
elty. After a steadfast confession, he was thrown into prison; and 
here it was attempted, in conformity with the plan of the Decian perse- 
cution, to overcome the infirmity of age, by exquisite and gradually 
increasing tortures. But the faith which he bore at heart, sustained 
the weakness of old age, and gave him power to withstand every trial. 
After having suffered so much,” he wrote from his prison a letter full of 
consolation, of encouragement for others. The circumstances hereto- 
fore mentioned, which contributed first to moderate, and then to bring 
wholly to an end, this persecution, procured finally for Origin also free- 
dom and repose. Yet the sufferings which he had undergone, served 
perhaps to hasten his death, which took place about the year 254, in 
the seventieth year of his age. 

The influence of Origen on theological culture was no longer connected 
with his person, but continued to spread independently of the man, 
through his writings and his scholars, not without continual conflict with 
the minds of the opposite tendency. The friends of Chiliasm, of the 
gross literal method of scriptural interpretation, and of the anthropo- 
morphic and anthropopathic mode of representing divine things con- 
nected therewith, and the zealots for the letter of the church doctrinal 
tradition, were opponents to the school of Origen. The conflict between 
these antagonistic directions of mind presents the most important phe- 
nomena connected with the theological development at the close of this 
period. We shall here, in the first place, glance at the church which 


1 The persone insignes. 

2 Euseb. 1. VI. ας. 39. 

8 Euseb. |. VII. c. 2. According to Pho- 
tius, cod. 118, there were two different re- 
ports concerning the manner and time of 
Origen’s death. Pamphilus, and many oth- 
ers who had been personally acquainted 
with Origen, reported that he died as a mar- 
tyr, at Czsarea, under the Decian persecu- 
tion. Others reported, that he lived till the 
times of Gallus and Volusianus, and then 
died at Tyre, and was there buried; which 
account was confirmed also by the letters 


! 


written by Origen after the persecution, 
concerning the genuineness of which, how- 
ever, Photius was not fully convinced. But 
according to what Eusebius says, in the 
above-cited passage of his Church Histo- 
ry, — who undoubtedly followed the account 
of his friend and teacher Pamphilus,—it can 
hardly be supposed that Pamphilus really 
reported any such thing. Perhaps Photius 
misunderstood Pamphilus, when the latter 
meant simply confession under torture, or 
perhaps was speaking of the indirect conse- 
quences of those sufferings to Origen. 


"Δ HERACLAS. DIONYSIUS. 


was the original seat of Origen’s activity, namely, the church of Alez- 
andria and of Egypt. 

Origen had here left behind him disciples, who continued to labor on 
in his own spirit, although with less of the zeal for speculation. Deme- 
trius the bishop was, as it appears from what has been said, rather the 
personal enemy of Origen, than the enemy of his theological direction 
of mind: his attack upon the latter had probably been only a pretext. 
Hence he permitted the disciples of Origen to continue their labors 
without disturbance ; and he himself died soon after the outbreak of 
these controversies, in the same year 231. . 

Heraclas, the disciple and friend of Origen, — who has already been 
mentioned, and who, after the death of the latter, was placed at the 
head of the catechetical school, — succeeded Demetrius in the episcopal 
office. Heraclas was succeeded —in the year 247 —as catechist, 
and afterwards as bishop, by Dionysius, another worthy disciple of Ori- 
gen, who always retained his love and respect for him, and when he 
was in prison, under the Decian persecution, addressed to him a letter 
of consolation. Dionysius, as he tells us himself, had come to the faith 
in the gospel in the way of free examination, —having searched im- 
partially through all the systems; and hence he remained true to this 
principle, both as a Christian and a teacher of the church. He read 
and examined without prejudice all the writings of the heretics, and 
rejected their systems only after he had made himself accurately ac- 
quainted with them, and put it into his power to refute them by argu- 
ments. A presbyter of his church warned him of the injury which 
might accrue to his soul by the distracting occupation of perusing so 
many godless writings. But the Spirit of God gave him assurance, 
that he needed not to be disturbed by that fear.. He believed that he 
had heard a voice, saying to him: “ Read whatever falls into thy hands, 
for thou art capable of judging and proving all things; and from the 
first this has been to thee the occasion of faith.” By this encourage- 
ment, Dionysius was confirmed in his purpose; and he found it agreea- 
ble to that direction of the Lord (in an apocryphal gospel) to the 
stronger Christians: ‘Be ye skilful money-changers,”’ γίνεσϑε δοκιμοὶ τραπε- 
Gra, i.e. skilful to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit com.! 

We have, on several occasions, already adduced examples of the 
freedom of spirit and moderation of this Father, and of the happy 
effects thence resulting. The same Christian moderation and gentle- 
ness appear also in his letter to Basilides, an Egyptian bishop, on ques- 
tions relative to matters of church discipline and worship.? The letter 
of Dionysius to his subordinate bishop concludes thus: “ These ques- 
tions you have not proposed to me as if you were ignorant of the sub- 
ject, but to honor me, and to be assured that I am of the same mind 
with yourself, as indeed Iam. I have laid open to you my own opin- 
ions, not as a teacher, but with all the frankness which we are bound to 


1 Dionysius, in his letter to the Roman ing an ἐπιστολὴ κανονικῆ. The fragments 
presbyter Philemon, Euseb. 1. VII. ο. 7. of it which still remain were last edited by 

2 Which letter acquired the authority of Routh, in his Reliquiz Sacre, vol. II. 
canonical law in the Greek church, as be- 


HIERACAS. 713 


use in our communications with each other. But it is now your busi- 
ness to judge of what I have said, and then write me what seems to 
you better than this, or whether you hold that to be right which I have 
advanced.” ! 

The next that distinguished themselves as teachers in the Alexan- 
drian church were Pierius and Theognostos, who lived in the last times 
of the third century. In the fragments of their writings, (preserved 
by Photius, ) we recognize the peculiar doctrines of Origen. 

We have observed before, that in Egypt itself there existed two op- 
posite parties, of Origenists and anti-Origenists. We meet with them 
again in the fourth century, especially among the Egyptian monks, 
under the names of Anthropomorphites and Origenists. Perhaps this 
opposition among the Egyptian monks may also be traced to the times 
of which we are now speaking. In these times, it is true, there were 
as yet no monks; but, as early as the close of the third century, there 
existed in Egypt societies of ascetics, who lived retired in the country.” 
Among these Egyptian ascetics, appeared, at the end of this period, a 
man by the name of Hieracas, who, in the following times, was placed 
among the heretics, by those who judged him according to the standard 
of the church scheme of faith, as it had formed itself in the fourth cen- 
tury ; but who could hardly have been considered as a heretic during 
his life-time. So far as we are able to understand his spiritual bent 
and his doctrines from the fragmentary accounts, for which we are in- 
debted for the most part to Epiphanius,* there was much in his peculiar 
views which savored of the school of Origen; and the fact may have 
been, that he came from that school: yet we find no such relationship 
as could be explained only in this particular way. The same tenden- 
cies may easily have sprung up in Egypt from different quarters. 

Hieracas passed the life of an ascetic in the city of Leontopolis, in 
Egypt,° and, after the manner of the ascetics, earned the necessaries of 
life, and the means of bestowing charity, by the industry of his owns 
hands ; exercising an art that was highly esteemed and much employed 
in Egypt, that of calligraphy, which he practised with equal skill both 
in the Greek and in the Coptic language. He is said to have lived 
beyond the age of ninety, and — which may be easily accounted for 
from his simple habits — to have retained to the last the full exercise 
of his powers, so that he could pursue his art to the very end of his 
life. He was equally familiar with the Greek and with the Coptic lit- 
erature ; from which very circumstance, however, it may have resulted 
that he introduced many foreign elements from both these sources into 


1 A considerable fragment of the work of ὃ For this reason, as we can take the no- 
this Dionysius on Nature, in which he de- tion of heresy in the present work only in 
fends the belief in a Providence against the _ its historical sense, we have not placed Hie- 
atomistic system of the Epicureans, has _ racas, as is usually done, among the heretics. 
been preserved to us by Eusebius, in the + Heres. 67. 

XIV. Book of the Preparatio evangelica, ὅ Unless he lived at the head of a com- 
introduced by Routh, |. ¢. vol. IV. munity of ascetics, somewhere in the neigh- 

2 See Athanasius’ life of Antonius. We  borhood of that city. 
shall have occasion to say more on this 
point in the following period. 

00" 


714 HIERACAS. 


Christianity. He wrote commentaries on the Bible, in the Greek and 
in the Coptic tongue, and composed many church hymns. 

He was given to the allegorical method of interpretation, which was 
closely connected with a certain theosophic tendency. Like Origen, 
he explained particularly the account of Paradise as an allegory, deny- 
ing that there had ever been a material Paradise. It may be conjec- 
tured that, like Origen, he considered the Paradise as a symbol of that 
higher spiritual world, from which the heavenly spirit fell by an inclina- 
tion to earthly matter. But as there was no general agreement of opin- 
ion as to what should be understood symbolically and what literally, in 
that narrative of Genesis ; as, moreover, nothing was yet settled in the 
system of the dominant church, respecting the origin of the soul; and 
as the peculiar opinions of Origen had still many important advocates, 
particularly in the Egyptian church, — he could not on this account be 
generally condemned as a heretic. 

From that theory of his concerning the manner in which the heay- 
enly spirit, sunk into union with matter, became invested with a body, 
we may easily understand why Hieracas should contemn this earthly, 
material body, make its mortification the leading aim of the Christian 
system of morals, and oppose the doctrine that the soul, once set free, 
should again be incarcerated in this prison of the body by the resurrec- 
tion. In reference to the latter point, however, he may, at the same 
time, have supposed, perhaps, that the soul would be veiled in a higher 
organ of ethereal matter, (a σῶμα πνευματικόν.) Even this opinion he 
might present under such a form as not directly to reject the doctrine 
of the resurrection of the body, but only to explain it according to his 
own sense... 

In respect to the former point, he represented the abstemious unmar- 
ried life as something essential to the proper perfection of the Christian. 
The recommendation of the unmarried life, he made to constitute the 
characteristic distinction between the great moral principle of the Old, 
and that of the New Testament. ‘hose false notions respecting the 
essence of morality, respecting the demands of the moral law on hu- 
man nature, by which men were led to imagine they could-so easily ful- 
fil it, and even do more than it requires, (opera supererogationis, ) dis- 
cover themselves in Hieracas, when he asks: ““ What new thing has the 
doctrine of the Only-begotten introduced? Of what new benefit has 
he been the author to humanity ? Respecting the fear of God, respect- 
ing envy, covetousness, and the like, the Old Testament has already 
treated. What new thing is there still remaining, unless it be the in- 
troduction of the unmarried life?” This question shows, we allow, 
that Hieracas had no right apprehension, either of the demands of the 
moral law, or, what is strictly connected therewith, of Christ as the 
Redeemer of mankind, and of the nature of the redemption. From 
the views which we here find expressed, of human nature, and of the 
demands of the moral law on the same, might be drawn a doctrine, 
teaching that man needed no Redeemer. But it is with no good rea- 
son the doctrine has, therefore, been ascribed to Hieracas, that Christ 
was merely the author of a perfect system of morals, and not the Re- 


HIERACAS. 715 


deemer of mankind. A zealous Montanist might have said nearly the 
same as Hieracas has done. Indeed, the traces of these erroneous ethi- 
cal and anthropological notions may be found elsewhere, in the samo 
period, particularly among the Alexandrians. 

He endeavored to prove, by texts wrested out of their proper con- 
nection, in the seventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
that Paul had permitted marriage only out of respect to human infirm- 
ity, and only for the sake of avoiding, in the case of the weak, a still 
greater evil. In the parable of the virgins, Matth. 25, he neglected 
the rule requiring that, in a comparison, we should not give weight to 
each individual circumstance, but only to the particular point to be 
illustrated ; and, from the fact that none but virgins are here men- 
tioned, drew the conclusion, that none but unmarried persons could have 
any portion in the kingdom of heaven. In the application of the pas- 
sage, ““ Without holiness no man can see the Lord,’ Heb. 12: 14, he 
proceeded on his own principle, that the essence of holiness consists in 
a life of celibacy. 

As Hieracas himself allows that Paul permitted marriage to the 
weak, it follows from this, that he by no means condemned uncondi- 
tionally married Christians, and excluded them from the number of the 
faithful. It may have been, perhaps, that too hasty conclusions were 
drawn from some of his extravagant assertions in recommending the 
unmarried life. Or, when he said that none but those living in celi- 
bacy could enter into the kingdom of heaven, he must have understood 
by the kingdom of heaven, not the state of blessedness generally, but 
only the highest degree of that blessedness ; a dogmatic use of language 
peculiar to himself, as seems probable from what we are about to 
remark. 

In consequence of his ascetic bent, Hieracas was accustomed to 
dwell with great earnestness on the position, that every man must earn, 
by his own moral conflict, his own ascetic efforts, a portion in the king- 
dom of heaven. This circumstance, of his laying a peculiar stress on 
each one’s own moral conflicts, was also entirely in accordance with the 
peculiar Alexandrian tendency. Inasmuch now as Hieracas assumed 
the position, that a participation in the kingdom of heaven can only be 
the reward of a conflict, and that he who has not fought, cannot obtain 
the crown; he inferred that children who die before they come to the 
years of understanding, do not enter into the kingdom of heaven. It 
can hardly be supposed, that by this he meant to pronounce on them 
an unconditional sentence of condemnation, but only that he excluded 
them from the highest grade of blessedness which results from com- 
munion with God, from the glorification of human nature by its union 
with the Godhead in Christ ; for to the participation in this it was im- 
possible to attain, except by one’s own moral efforts, and by doing more 
than the law demands. He assumed a middle condition for these chil- 
dren — an hypothesis which Pelagius and many of the Orientals after- 
wards adopted with rezard to unbaptised children. If Hieracas 
asserted this of all children, including those who had been baptized, it 
follows, that he denied the connection of any supernatural influence 


716 GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. 

with infant baptism. Perhaps, on this principle, he combated infant 
baptism itself, and represented it as a practice of more recent origin, 
at variance with the end of baptism, and with the essential character 
of Christianity. The remarks which we have here made tend to con- 
firm also what was just before observed, that Hieracas by no means 
honored Christ merely as a moral Teacher. It is clearly evident, on the 
contrary, that he recognized him as one who had glorified human 
nature, and acqnired for it that highest grade of blessedness, to which 
men could not have attained by their own powers. 

From the position assumed by the later church orthodoxy, the charge 
was brought against Hieracas of entertaiming certain errors in regard 
to the doctrine of the Trinity. He is said to have employed the fol- 
lowing comparison: ‘‘'The Son of God emanates from the Father, as 
one lamp is kindled from another, or as one torch is divided into two.”’4 
Comparisons of this sort, drawn from sensible objects, were at variance, 
we admit, with the spiritual tendency of Origen ; but the older church- 
teachers, such as Justin and Tatian, had certainly been partial to them. 
He a‘tirmed again, that under the type of Melchisedec is represented 
the Holy Spirit, since the latter is designated, Rom. 8: 26, as an inter- 
cessor for men, consequently as a priest. He represents the image of 
the Son, being subordinate, indeed, to the Son but bearing the nearest 
resemblance to him of all beings ; — a notion altogether conformed to 
Origen’s theory of subordination, which long continued to maintain its 
place in the Kastern church.” 

From Palestine the influence of Origen was extended, by means of 
his friends and disciples, even to Cappadocia and to Pontus, as the three 
great church-teachers of Cappadocia in the fourth century still testify. 
Here it is proper to mention particularly his great disciple Gregory, 
to whom the admiration of the Christians gave the surname of Wonder- 
worker (@avzarovpyéc.) His original name was Theodorus. He was 
descended from a noble and wealthy family of Neoceesarea in Pontus. 
His father, a devoted Pagan, educated him in Heathenism. At the age 
of fourteen, however, he lost his father, and then first he was gained to 
Christianity ; affording another illustration of the fact, that it was often 
through children and women the gospel first found its way into fami- 
lies. He was acquainted with Christianity, however, as yet only 
through the oral teaching of others, being himself still ignorant of the 
scriptures. ‘The religious interest was with him as yet but a subordi- 
nate one, the strife after a splendid career in the world seeming to him 
vastly more important. His mother exerted herself to the utmost to 
have him taught everything which, under the existing circumstances, 


1 Ὡς λύχνον ἀπὸ λύχνου, ἢ ὡς λάμπαδα εἰς has shown him the Son of God, sitting at 


δύο. Arius ad Alexandr. apud Epiphan, 
heres. 69, ὁ 7. Athanas. T. I. P. 11. 68. 

* He appeals also to a passage in an 
apocryphal writing of some importance on 


account of its bearing on the history of the- 


oldest doctrines, — the ἀναβατικὸν Ἡσαΐου, 
i. 6. the account of Isaiah’s ascension to the 
several’ regions of heaven, and of what he 
there saw. After the angel attendant of Isaiah 


the right hand of God, ὁ ἀγαπητός, Isaiah 
asks: Kai τίς ἐστὶν ὁ ἄλλος, ὁ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ, 
ἐξ ἀριστέρων ἐλϑών ; καὶ εἶπε" σὺ γινώσκεις, 
τοῦτ᾽ ἐστι τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα τὸ λαλοῦν ἐν aot 
καὶ ἐν τοῖς προφῆταις. Καὶ ἣν, φησι, ὅμοιον 
τῷ ἀγαπητῷ. ‘This passage is found in the 
writing now published entire, after the old 
Ethiopic translation, by R. Lawrence, Oxo- 
nix, 1819; p. 58, 59, v. 82 --- 86, 


GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. T1L7 


could contribute to the successful prosecution of his aims. He received, 
therefore, a good rhetorical education, in order to place him on the step 
of preferment as a rhetorician or an advocate ; and he learnt, moreover, 
the language of the established government and laws, —the Latin. His 
teacher in the Latin language poimted out to him how very necessary 
to the attainment of his end was the knowledge of the Roman law. He 
commenced the study of this, and had already laid his plans to visit 
Rome, for the purpose of improving his knowledge of the Roman juris- 
prudence.. But Providence had chosen him to be an instrument for 
higher ends ; and, without dreaming of it or willing it, as he observes 
himself, in describing the remarkable vicissitudes of his life, he was to 
be formed for those higher purposes. 

His sister’s husband, who was legal adviser to the Preefect of Pales- 
tine, had been called by the duties of his office to Ceesarea. He had 
left his wife behind at Neoczesarea; and now she was sent for to follow 
him. His brother-in-law, the young Theodorus, was requested to attend 
her on the journey; and it was intimated, that he could thus most 
easily prosecute his plan of studying the Roman jurisprudence at the 
celebrated school of Roman law, not far distant from Ceesarea, at Bery- 
tus in Pheenicia. Theodorus accepted the invitation ; but this journey 
had a different result from what he had anticipated. At Ceesarea he 
became acquainted with Origen: the latter soon observed the talents 
of the young man, and sought.to direct them to a higher end than that 
which he then contemplated. Attracted, in spite of himself, by this 
great teacher, he forgot Rome, Berytus, and the study of law. To 
awaken in him the activity of his own mind, a free, unprejudiced spirit 
of inquiry, was, as Theodore himself describes it in his farewell dis- 
course, the principal endeavor of Origen. After having made him 
search for the scattered rays of truth in the systems of the Greek phi- 
losophy, he showed him what revelation furnishes of a higher order: he 
led him to the study of the sacred scriptures, and expounded to him 
their meaning. Theodore says of Origen’s exposition of scripture: ‘It 
is my firm belief that he was able so to discourse only by communion 
with the divine Spirit; for to be a prophet and to understand prophets 
requires the same power. And no man can understand the prophets, 
on whom the Spirit himself, from whom the prophecies came, has not 
bestowed the power of understanding his own language. This man had 
received from God that greatest of gifts, to be to men an interpreter of 
the words of God; to understand God’s word, as God speaks it, and 
to announce it to men, as men can understand it.’’! 

After he had spent eight years with Origen at Czesarea, where proba- 
bly he also received baptism and adopted the name Gregorius, he 
returned to his native land. With deep sorrow he took leave of the 
teacher to whom his whole soul was affectionately bound. He com- 
pared the tie that united them, with the bond of friendship between 
David and Jonathan. ‘To Origen, and to the Providence which, without 
his own knowledge or will, had conducted him to such a friend, he testi- 


1 Panegyric. in Orig. c. 15. 


718 GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. 

fied his thanks in the parting address, in which he describes the provi- 
dential events of his own life, and Origen’s method of instruction and 
training.+ 

In tearing himself with pain from the society of his beloved teacher, 
and from those sacred studies which had so long been his exclusive 
occupation, to engage with sorrowful heart in employment of an entirely 
different kind, which he must devote himself to in his native city, he 
exclaims: “‘ But why grieve at this? We have, verily, a Saviour for 
all, even for those that are half dead and fallen among thieves — one 
who cares for all, is the Physician of all, the watchful Keeper of all 
men. We have also within us that seed which we have been made con- 
scious by thy means, (Origen,) that we bear within us; and the seed 
which we have received from thee, those glorious doctrmes. Having 
these seeds, we part, with tears indeed, for we are leaving thee, but yet 
taking these seeds with us. Perhaps the heavenly Keeper will accom- 
pany us and deliver us; but perhaps we shall return to thee, and from 
the seed bring with us also the fruits and the sheaves; and if none are 
ripe, (for how could that be?) yet may they be such as can thrive 
amidst the thorns of civil employments.” And then, addressmg him- 
self directly to Origen, he proceeds: “‘ But do thou, beloved head, 
stand up and dismiss us with thy prayer. As thou hast guided us? all 
the long time we have been with thee, by thy holy doctrines, to salva- 
tion ; so now, when we are to leave thee, guide us to salvation by thy 
prayers. Give us over and commend us, or rather give us back, to that 
God who conducted us to thee. ‘Thanks to him for what he has hith- 
erto done for us; but do thou implore him also, that he would guide us 
in the future, that he would inspire our minds with his precepts, that 
he would imbue us with the fear of God, and make this our most whole- 
some discipline. For we shall not be able, far away, to obey him with 
the freedom with which we could obey him, so long as we were with 
thee. Pray him, that, to console us in our separation from thee, he 
would send with us a good angel to lead us. But pray to him also, 
that he would once more bring us back to thee; for the assurance only 
of this would be our greatest consolation.” 

After his removal, Origen still retained him in affectionate remem- 
brance. We have preserved to us a letter which he wrote him, full of 
paternal love.’ In this he assures him, that his distinguished talents 
fitted him for the station either of an able teacher of the Roman law, 
or of an eminent instructer of one of the famous philosophical schools ; 
but it was his wish, that Gregory would make Christianity his single 


1 This discourse we have followed, as the 
source chiefly to be relied on for the history 
of the early life and education of Gregory. 
The narratives of Gregory of Nyssa, in his 
biography of this Gregory, openly contradict 
the autobiography of the latter; and, as 
Gregory of Nyssa set out with rhetorical 
flourishes what he had taken from incredible 
or inaccurate stories, it were a fruitless labor 
to undertake to reconcile the two contradic- 
tory accounts with each other. The Pane- 


gyric of Gregory may be found in the fourth 
vol. of the edition of Origen’s works by de 
la Rue, and in the third vol. of the Biblio- 
theca Patrum of Galland. 

2 He speaks here in the plural, probably 
because he has in mind also his brother 
Athenodorus, who had come in company 
with him to Origen, and afterwards became 
bishop of a church in Pontus. Vid. Euseb. 
1. LV. ¢. 30. 

8 Philocal. ¢. 13. 


GREGORY THAUMATURGUS. 719 


aim, and employ his talents only as a means to this one great object. 
Following out his own principles, above exhibited, respecting the rela- 
tion of the sciences, and particularly of philosophy, to Christianity, he 
goes on to advise him to make himself master of everything in the 
general circle of the sciences and in philosophy, which he could apply 
to any use in behalf of Christianity. By a variety of beautiful allegoric 
expositions of the narratives of the Old Testament, he endeavors to set 
clearly before him the duty of making everything subservient to the 
divine calling, and of sanctifying every other interest by referring it to 
this ; instead of forgetting, as was frequently done, the divine calling 
itself in the crowd of foreign matters, or profaning it by letting it be- 
come mixed up and confounded with them. He then addresses him as 
follows: “Study, then, my son, before all things else, the sacred scrip- 
tures ; but let it be to thee an earnest study; for it needs a very ear- 
nest study of the scriptures, that we may not express anything, or judge 
anything, too rashly respecting their sacred contents. And if thou 
studiest the holy scriptures with a believing temper of mind, well pleas- 
ing to God,! then wherever anything in them seems shut up from thee, 
knock, and it shall be opened to thee by the porter, of whom Jesus . 
speaks in John 10: 3, Zo him the porter openeth. Search, with un- 
wavering faith in God, after the sense of the sacred word, which is hid- 
den from the great mass of readers. Let it not suffice thee, however, 
merely to knock and to seek; for prayer also is especially necessary to 
the understanding of divine things; in exhortmg us to which, the 
Saviour has said not only: Knock, and it shall be opened unto you, and 
seek, and ye shall find ; but also ask, and it shall be given you.” 
Gregory answered the hopes of his great teacher. In his native city, 
of which he became bishop, there were at first but seventeen Christians. 
Through his instrumentality, the majority of its inhabitants were con- 
verted, and Christianity became widely diffused in Pontus. It is to be 
lamented, that we have no exhibition of the labors of this remarkable 
man, more accurate and more worthy of credit than the legendary 
account of his life, set forth with so much of rhetorical ornament, which 
Gregory of Nyssa wrote a century afterwards. Perhaps, in following 
out those principles of the Alexandrian school which permitted and 
inculcated the practice of descending to the weakness of the multitude 
and held to a progressive course of religious education, he was in the 
habit of yieldmg too much, in order to increase the number of his 
heathen converts; perhaps he conceived, that, if they were but once 
introduced into the Christian church, the spirit of the gospel, and the 
continued labors of their teacher, would gradually conduct them onward 
to amore enlightened Christianity. Having observed that many of 
the common people remained bound to the religion of their fathers by 
their love for the ancient sports connected with Paganism, he deter- 


1 The Greek word πρόληψις hardly admits be fully persuaded beforehand, that the sacred 
of being well rendered in the present case. word 15 pervaded throughout with a divine 
Neither “ prejudice” nor “ prejudgment” spirit, and not allow himself to be embar- 
would answer here. “Presupposition” would assed at particular passages, where the di- 
come nearer to the sense. Origenmeansto vine meaning does not immediately appear. 
say, that the reader of the ecriptures should 


720 METHODIUS. 

mined to provide the new converts witha substitute for these. After 
the Decian persecution, under which numbers in this country had died 
as martyrs, he instituted a general festival im honor of the martyrs, and 
permitted the rude multitude to celebrate it with banquets similar to 
those which accompanied the pagan funerals (Parentalia) and other 
‘ heathen festivals. He imagined that, in this way, one main obstacle 
to the conversion of the heathen would fall away, and, if they once 
became members of the Christian church, they would, by degrees, of 
their own accord, after their mmds had become enlightened and spirit- 
ualized by Christianity, bid farewell to those sensual pleasures.!. But 
he did not seem to consider what intermingling of Pagan and Christian 
notions and customs might result from this loose accommodation, — an 
issue which was afterwards realized, — nor how difficult it would be for 
Christianity to penetrate directly into the life, when, from the very first, 
it had become adulterated by such an alloy.” | 

We have from Gregory a simple and clearly written Paraphrase of 
Ecclesiastes. A confession of faith on the doctrine of the Trinity, 
which he is affirmed to have written by special revelation, was appealed 
to in the fourth century in opposition to the Arians. In attestation of 
its authenticity, it was said that it remained in his own hand-writing, 
preserved in the church of Neoczsarea. But although the first part 
of this confession, in which the peculiar doctrmes of Origen are dis- 
tinctly to be recognized, might prove genuine; yet the second part is 
manifestly a later addition, inasmuch as it contains distinctions wholly 
unknown to the school of Origen, and which arose first out of the con- 
troversy with the Arians, in the fourth century. 

Among the violent opponents of the school of Origen, we have 
already mentioned in another place, Methodius,—first, bishop of 
Olympus in Lycia; afterwards, of Tyre, —a martyr in the persecution 
of Diocletian. Yet he seems not to have always stood im the same re- 
lation to this school. Eusebius of Czesarea, in continuation of the 
Apology of Pamphilus in behalf of Origen, affirms that Methodius 
contradicted his own earlier remarks, which had been in praise of Ori- 

en.2 The ecclesiastical historian Socrates asserts, on the other hand,* 
that Methodius had first declared himself against Origen, and after- 
wards, in his dialogue called ξένων, retracted his censures, and expressed 
his admiration of the man. There must be some truth lying at the 
bottom of these two accounts. Eusebius and Socrates derived their 
impressions from what Methodius himself had declared in his own writ- 
ings. But it seems not improbable, that these two authors determined 


and even to rob their own countrymen. 


1 Vita Gregor. c. 27. ( 
This letter furnishes, at the same time, evi- 


2 The canonical letter which we have from 


this Gregory, shows perhaps, that, in the 
conversion of large bodies of the people, 
there may have been a great deal which was 
barely outward and in appearance ; for it 
relates to a class of persons who took ad- 
vantage of the confusion occasioned by the 
devastation committed by the Goths in the 
country around Pontus, to make the public 
misfortunes a source of profit to themselves, 


5 


dence of Gregory's wakeful zeal for the 
morals of his people. 

8 Apud Hieronym. lib. I. adv. Rufin. 
Hieronym. opp. ed. Martianay, T. IV. fol. 
359: Quomodo ausus est Methodius nune 
contra Origenem scribere, qui hee et hxe 
de Origenis loquutus est dogmatibus ? 

4 Lib. LV. c. 13. 


* 


PAMPHILUS. 121 
the chronological order of these writings, not by any historical data, but 
each according to his own private conjectures ; and in matters of this 
kind the ancients were very far from being accurate. Methodius, in 
his Symposium, which we shall presently notice, appears to be by no 
means a stickler for the letter of the church doctrine. On the contrary, 
the work betrays a leaning to Theosophy, a fondness for the allegorical 
mode of interpretation ; it contains much, therefore, indicating the same 
general direction of mind as we find in Origen; indeed, expressions 
occur which at least favor the doctrine of the soul’s preéxistence.! But 
it also contains much which is directly at variance with the doctrines of 
Origen ; — for instance, a decided leaning to Chiliasm.? It may safely 
be conjectured, therefore, that Methodius, who was no systematic 
thinker, was in the first place drawn by many of the views and writings 
of Origen, which flattered his favorite opinions and pleased his taste ; 
which only prepared him, however, to be the more strongly repelled by 
that in the system of Origen which went counter to his own intellectual 
bent and his own dogmatic principles. 

The most important and authentic of the writings which remain of 
this Methodius is his Banquet of the Ten Virgins, in eleven conversa- 
tions, containing a eulogy, oftentimes exaggerated, of the unmarried 
life. 
The treatise which we have under the name of Methodius, on free- 
Will, (rep? αὐτεξουσίου,) seems to belong rather to the Christian church- 
teacher Maximus, who lived under the reign of Septimus Severus,® 
than to Methodius.* It is an attack on the Gnostic Dualism. 

One who stood up for Origen against those that accused him of being 
a heretic was the presbyter Pamphilus of Czesarea, in Palestine, a man 
distinguished for his zeal in the cause of piety and science. He found- 
ed at Ceesarea an ecclesiastical library, which contributed in no small 
degree to the furtherance of scientific studies even in the fourth cen- 
tury. very friend of science, and in particular every one who was 
disposed to engage in a thorough study of the Bible, found in him all 
possible encouragement and support. He exerted himself to multiply,® 
to disseminate, and to correct the copies of the Bible. Many of these 
copies he distributed as presents ; sometimes to women, whom he saw 
much occupied in reading the scriptures. He founded a theological 
school,’ in which the study of the sacred writings was made a special ob- 
ject of attention.? From this school probably proceeded the learned Eu- 
sebius, who owed everything to Pamphilus, and looked up to him as his 


359, vol. [V.: Quis studiosorum amicus non 


1 Orat. IT. Theophil. § 5. 
fuit Pamphili? Si quos videbat ad victum 


2 Orat. IX. § 5. 


3 Euseb. lib. V. c. 27, Hieronym. de vir. 
illustr. c.47. This Maximus can hardly be 
identical with the bishop of Jerusalem, of 
the same name. Enuseb. ]. V. c. 12. 

* See, on this point, my genetic develop- 
ment of the Gnostic system, p. 206. 

5 Vid. Montfaucon catalog. Mss. biblioth. 
Coislinian. f. 261. 

6 Eusebius says of him, in the account of 
his life, Hieronym. ady. Rufin. lib. I. f. ΤᾺ 

0 


VOL, I. 


necessariis indigere, preebebat large, que 
poterat. Scripturas quoque sanctas non ad 
legendum tantum, sed et ad habendum 
tribuebat promptissime. Nec solum viris, 
sed et feminis, quas vidisset lectioni deditas. 
Unde et multos codices preparabat, ut, quum 
necessitas poposcisset, volentibus largiretur. 

7 Ruseb. lib. VII. c. 82: συνεστήσατο δια- 
τριβήν. 

ὃ Euseb. de martyrib. Palestina, c. 4. 


ἢ 


122 HESYCHIUS. LUCIAN. 
paternal friend. Pamphilus communicated to his scholars his own rever- 
ence for Origen, as the promoter of Christian science, and exerted himself 
to counteract the narrow spirit that proceeded from those who accused 
Origen of being a heretic. As the ignorant zeal of these people, Pam- 
philus says, went to such an extreme, that on every one who did but 
occupy himself with the writings of Origen, they forthwith pronounced 
sentence of condemnation, — Pamphilus, while in prison under the Dio- 
clesian persecution, in the year 509,1 wrote a work in Origen’s defence, 
conjointly with his disciple Eusebius ;* which defence was addressed to 
the confessors who had been condemned to the mines. After the mar- 
tyrdom of Pamphilus, Kusebius added to the five books of the unfin- 
ished work a supplementary sixth book. The first book of this Apology 
we still possess, in the arbitrary version of Rufinus, with the exception 
of a few fragments of the Greek.® 

The example of this Pamphilus shows us how the comprehensive 
mind of Origen, which grasped and united together so many different 
pursuits, gave birth not only to the spirit of dogmatic speculation, but 
also to the thorough study of the Bible and the careful investigation 
of the letter of the scriptures, however much this may seem irrecon- 
cilable with his allegorizing licentiousness. Another example of ‘the 
same kind probably is that of the Egyptian bishop Hesychius, who pre- 
pared a new emended revision of the text of the Alexandrian version, 
which became the current one in Egypt. He likewise suffered mar- 
tyrdom under the Dioclesian persecution, in the year 310 or 311.5 
Finally, it was also owing in part perhaps to the imfluence of Origen, 
that a new and peculiar school of theology sprung up at Antioch, which 
first arrived at its full development in the course of the fourth century, 
whence the science of hermeneutics and exegesis received a healthy 
direction between the extremes of the grossly literal and arbitrary alle- 
gorical methods of scriptural interpretation. Learned presbyters, at- 
tached to the church of Antioch, who took a special interest in the study 
of biblical interpretation, may be regarded as the progenitors of this 
school; particularly Dorotheus and Lucian, of whom the latter died as 
a martyr, in the beginning of the year 312, under the Dioclesian 
persecution.® 


1 One illustration of the influence which 
Pamphilus had over those who lived near 
him, is furnished by his slave Porphyrius, 
a young man of eighteen years, whom he 
had educated with a father’s love, and in 
promoting whose religious and intellectual 
culture he had spared no pains. To this 
young man he had imparted a glowing love 
for the Redeemer. When Porphyry heard 
the sentence of death pronounced on his 
beloved master, he requested that he might 
be allowed the privilege, after the execution 
of the sentence, of paying him the last tribute 
of affection by committing his body to the 
grave. ‘This request at once excited the 
anger of the fanatical prefect. And, as he 
steadfastly confessed that he was a Christian, 
and refused to offer, he was subjected to the 


most cruel torture, and finally, after having 
been dreadfully lacerated, was conducted to 
the stake. All this he bore with the utmost 
constancy; only exclaiming once, when the 
fire reached him, — “Jesus, Son of God, 
help me.” Euseb. de martyrib. Paleest. 
c. 11, f. 388. 

2 The charge of the passionate Jerome, 
that Rufinus had falsely ascribed such a 
work to Pamphilus, deserves no credit. 

8 The loss of the Life-of Pamphilus, by 
Eusebius, is much to be regretted. 

4 Hieronym. adv. Rufin. lib. 11. f. 425. 

5 Kuseb. hist. eccles. lib. VIII. ¢. 13, f. 308. 

ὁ Lucian prepared a new revision of the 
corrected text of the Alexandrian version, 
and probably also of the New Testament. 
The codices written after this revision were 





CONCLUSION. 728 


Thus the historical development of doctrine in this period terminates 
with the conflict of opposite tendencies, which, in order that Christianity 
might not be maimed and crippled by partial human views, and in order 
that it might be preserved as that which is destined to overcome and 
reconcile all human antagonisms, should act as a counterpoise to each 
other. And as this process of development and purification is trans- 
mitted from one generation to another, so the conclusion of this first 
great stadium contains in it the foretoken and presage of all the suc- 
ceeding periods, which, by struggles and victories ever renewed, are to 
prepare the way for the last great struggle and the final victory which 
is to make an end of all strife. 


called Aovxcaveta. Hieronym. de vir. illustr. account which has been left by Alexander, 
c. 77, adv. Rufin. lib. IL. f. 425, vol. IV. bishop of Alexandria, since that account is 
What we are to believe concerning the liable to the suspicion of being colored by a 
earlier relation in which Lucian stood to polemical interest. Theodoret. hist. eccles. 
Paul of Samosata, is a point which cannot lib. I. ο. 4. 

be determined, with any certainty, from the 


END OF VOL. I. 









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GENERAL INDEX. 





A. 


Abgarus. See Uchomo and Bar Manu. 

Abraxas, p. 401. 

Absolution. See Church discipline. 

Elia Capitolina, 344. 

Africa, diffusion of Christianity in, 83. 

Agape, 325. See Lord’s supper—Tertullian 
—Clement of Alexandria. 

Agrippinus, bishop, 318. 

Acolytes, 201. 

Alcibiades, confessor, 275. 

Alexander of Abonoteichus, 30, 72, 104. 

Alexander, B. of Alexandria, 724. 

Alexander of Jerusalem, 703. 

Alexander Severus, 125. 

Alexandria, 49, 527,558. See Clement — 
Origen—Philo—Alexandrian. 

Alexandrian Gnosis. See Alex. theology. 

Alexandrian Judaism, 49—66. 

Alexandrian catechetical school, 306, 527. 

Alexandrian theology. History and char- 
acter of, 527—557. Doctrine of the Trin- 
ity, 571. Anthropology, 620. Sacraments, 
648. Chiliasm, 652. See articles, Alex. 
Catechetical school—Christian doctrines. 
Christian theology—Gnosis —Gnostics— 
Clement—Origen—Dionysius— Heraclas 
—Pierias—Theognostus. 

Alogi, 526, 583. 

Ambrosius, 700, 701, 706. 

Ambrosius on Apelles, 475. 

Ammonius Saccas, 698. 

Ammonius, church teacher, 699. 

ἀναγνῶσται, 201. 

Anicetus, bishop of Rome, 299. 

Anthropology, 610—630. 

Anthropomorphism, 561. 

Anthropopathism, 561. 

Antinomians, 449. 

Antioch, feast of the Epiphany, 301. School 
at, 722. 

Antitactes, 449. 

Arrius Montanus, 118. 

Antoninus Pius, conduct towards the Christ- 
ians, 101. 

Apelles, 474. 

Apokatastasis. See Eschatology. 

Apollinaris of Hierapolis, 298. 

Apollonius of Tyana, 26, 30, 31. 

Apollonius, Roman senator, 118. 

Apologists, 174, 661. See the _— 

61* 


Apostolic Fathers, 656. See Clement of 
Rome —Ignatius— Polycarp—Hermas— 
Barnabas—Aquila, 290 

Arabia, spread of Christianity in, 81. 

Archelaus of Cascar, 485. 

Aristides, letter to Hadrian, 101. 

Aristotle, 611. 

Arnobius, 687. 

Arian, the Stoic, 159. 

Artemon, Artemonites, 580. 

Ascetics, 275. 

Athanasius on Sabellius, 595. 

Athenagoras on Christianity, 78. Doctrine 

_of the Logos, 585. Apology, 673. 

Athenodorus, brother of Gregory Thauma- 
turgus, 718. ; 

Attalus, the Martyr, 113. 

Auditores. See Catechumens. 

Augustin on Christianity, 77. Popular ha- 
tred against the Christians, 92. On Ter- 
tullian, 685. 

Aurelian, edict of, 108. Situation of the 
Christians under, 141. 

Autun, persecution at, 114. 


B. 


Baptism, 305—307. Controversies respect- 
ing, 317—325. Baptism of heretics, 477. 
Doctrine of baptism, 645—647. See ar- 
ticles Catechumens—Catechists—Symbol 
—Infant baptism — Confirmation— Bap- 
tism of heretics—Gnostic worship—Mani- 
cheism—Irenzus—Tertullian—Cyprian. 

Bardesanes, 80, 304, 441. 

Barcochba, 103, 344. 

Bar Manu, Abgar of Edessa, 80. 

Barnabas, 295, 381. 

Bartholomew the Apostle, 81. 

Basilides, Spanish bishop, 216. 

Basilides, Egyptian bishop, 712. 

Basilides, Gnostic, 400—413. See Epiphani- 
us, Clement of Alex.—Basilideans. 

Basilideans, feast of Epiphany, 302. 413— 
416. See Basilides—Gnostics—Pseudo- 
Basilideans. 

Beryllus of Bostra, 593. 

Bishops. See ᾿Επίσκοπος. 

Blandina, 114. 

Blastus, letter to, 680. 

Brahmaism, 370. 

Britain, Christianity introduced into, 85. 

- 


726 


Buddas, predecessor of Mani, 480. 
Buddaism, 370. 


C. 


Cecilius of Bilta, on exorcism, 310. 

Caianians, 476. 

Cainites, Anti-Jewish Gnostics 448. 

Caius, 399. 

Candidus, Valentinian, 589. 

Canones Apostolici, 660. 

Caracalla, 122. 

Carpocrates, the Gnostic, 449-—451. 

Carpocratians, 451. 

Carthage, Christianity in, 83. 

Cassian Julius. See Encratites. 

Catechists, 306. 

Catechumens, 305. 

Catechetical schools, 517. 

Cathedra Petri, 213. ἶ 

Catholic church. Its formation, 207—217. 
Controversy with the Novatians, 246. 
See Church—Church divisions—Church 
discipline. 

Celibacy, 274, 385, 457. 

Celsus, 70, 88, 90, 160—166, 265, 272. 

Cerdo, 465. 

Cerinthus, 396—399. See Irenzus—Dio- 
nysius of Alexandria—@aius Epiphanius. 

Chiliasm. See Eschatology. 


Xwperioxorot. See Country Bishops and 
Ἐπίσκοπος. 

Chrism, 315. See articles Tertullian and 
Cyprian. 


Christianity, propagation of. In general, 69 
—78. In particular countries, 78—86. Op- 
position to, by force, 86-—156. By writings, 
157—178. See Christian life, manners, 
doctrines, church. 

Christian worship, 288—335. See articles 
Church—Images — Sign of the cross— 
Festivals—Sacraments—Baptism of here- 
tics—Agapze—Gnostic worship. 

Christian life in the family. Marriage, 280. 
Festivals in honor of the dead, 333. 

Christian festivals. See Festivals. 

Christian life, 249—288. See Christian do- 
mestic life—Ascetism—Clement of Alex- 
andria—Tertullian. 

Christian doctrine, history of, 336—656. 

Christian morals. See Christian life. 

Christ, doctrine concerning. See Redeemer 
—Redemption. 

Chrysostom on the Marcionites, 478. 

Church, situation of under the Emperors, 90 
—156. Apostolic Constitution 179—190. 
Novatian on the conception of the church, 
246—248. Outward mediation of the 
church, 645. See Christianity—Christian 
life—Christian morals, worship, doctrine 
—Tertullian—Cyprian. 

Churches, 291. 

Church offices, multiplication of, 200. 

Church Psalmody, in the New Testament, 
304. 

Church Hymns. Bardesanes. Paul of Sa- 
mosata, 304. 

Church doctrines. See Church theology. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Church teachers, their history, 656—722. 
See the individuals. 

Church divisions, history of, 221—248. See 
the articles Cyprian—Novatus—Novati- 
anus. 

Church fathers. See Church teachers. 

Church constitution. See Church. 

Church Assembly at Elvira, 296,301. At 
Carthage, 310, 313, 318,319. At Iconi- 
um and Synnada, 318. 

Church discipline, 217—221. 

Church theology, 506—626. See the arti- 
cles Christian doctrine—Church teachers 
— Montanism— Theology— Anthropolo- 
gy—Eschatology. 

Church teachers of Asia Minor, 674—683. 

Cicero, 8. 

Claudius Apollin. 117. Legio fulmin. His 
writings, 677. 

Claudius. Banishment of Christians from 
Rome, 94. 

Claudius Albinus, 119. 

Clement of Alexandria, on perecutions, 119. 
Fraternal kiss, 262. Asceticism, 272. Τίς 
ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος, 279. Community of 
goods, 280. Marriage, 281. Prayer, 286. 
Church, 289. Servant-form, 291. Images, 
292. Symbols, 293. Feast of Epiphany, 
301. Reading of scripture, 307. Agapz, 
326. Basilides, 402, 412. Heracleon, 434. 
Pseudo-Basilideans,447. Carpocrates,449. 
Nicolaitans, 452. Tatian, 457. Doctrines 
of Clement, 530—543. Doctrine concern- 
ing God, 558. Doctrine of the Logos, 586. 
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 610. Anthro- 
pology, 620. Christology, 631. Baptism, 
646. Life and writings, 691—693. 

Clemens Romanus, 189, 353, 644, 658. 

Clementines, 32, 353, 395. 

Commodus, 117. 

Commodianus, 237, 280, 288. 

Communion. See Lord’s supper. 

Confessors, 200, 228. 

Confirmation. See Imposition of hands. 

Constantius Chlorus, 154. 

Constitutiones apostolic, 197, 201. 

Continentes. See Ascetics. 

Coracion, 652. 

Cornelius, bishop of Rome, 136, 201, 237. 

Cosmas Indicopleustes, 82. 

Country bishops, 202. 

Creation, doctrine of, 564—570. 

Crescens, the Cynic, 671. 

Cross, sign of the, 293. 

Cultus. See Christian and Gnostic forms of 
worship. 

Cyprian. Flight in the persecution, 134. 
Care for the churches, 134, Thibaritani- 
ans, 136. Trial, 137. Martyrdom, 140. 
Relation to the Presbyters, 192. De lap- 
sis, 197. Council of the church, 200. De 
unitate ecclesia, 210. Cathedra Petri, 
214. Schism of Felicissimus, 222—236. 
Libri testimoniorum, 253. Liberality, 256. 
Gladiatorial shows, 263. Profession of 
stage-players, 267. Lord’s prayer, 287. 
Sprinkling in baptism, 310. Infant Bap- 


GENERAL INDEX. 


tism, 313. Baptism of heretics, 319. Idea 
of sacrifice, 331. Penance, 647. See 
Carthage — Tertullian — North-African 
church. 

Cyril of Jerusalem, 484. 


D. 


Decius Trajan, 130. 

Demetrius, 81, 197, 702. 

Demiurge. See Gnosis — Gnostics—Gnos- 
tic systems — Ophites. 

Demonax of Cyprus, the Cynic, 10. 

Demons, 28. 

Deacons, 188. 

Deaconesses, 188. 

Διατάξεις ἀποστολικαί. See Constitutiones 
apostolice. ; 

Dio Chrysostom, the Rhetorician, 27. 

Diognetus, letter to, 69, 642, 644. 

Dioclesian, 142,506. 

Dionysius of Alexandria. On the Decian 
persecution, 132. Valerian, 135, 138. 
Novatian, 241, 243. Christian brotherly 
love, 257. Baptism of heretics, 320. Six- 
tus II., of Rome, 320. Cerinth. 396. 
Sabellius, 599. Homoousion, 600. Chili- 
asm, 652. Life and character, 712. 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 12, 29. 

Dionysius of Paris, 84. 

Dionysius of Rome. Controversy with Di- 
onysius of Alexandria, 606. Onthe Holy 
Spirit, 610. | 

Dioscorides, 82. 

Dioscurus, the Martyr, 132. 

Disciplina arcani, 308. 

Docetism, 386, 630. 

Domitian, 96. 

Domitius Ulpianus, 126. 

Dorotheus, 722. 

Dositheus, 454. 

Dragomans, 303. 


E. 


Ebionites, 344—350. 

Ecclesiz apostolice, 204. 

Egypt, diffusion of Christianity in, 83. 

Eleutherus, 525. 

Elxaites, 352. 

Elymas, 352. 

Emanation, 372. See Gnosticism. 
Encratites, 458. Julius Cassianus — Seve- 
rus — Severians — Enoch, book of, 535. 

Ephraem Syrus, 462. 

Epicureanism, 8. 

Epiphanes, 450. 

Epiphany, feast of, 301. 

Epiphanius on the Ebionites, 344, 351,352. 
Cerinth. 398. Basilides,400. Valentine, 
417. Bardesanes, 441. Cainites, 448. 
Saturninus, 455. Marcion, 461. Mon- 
tanus, 513. Theodotus, 580. Sabellius, 
600. Gospel of the Egyptians, 600. 

’Exioxoroc, 190, 200. See Church offices. 

Episcopus epicoporum, 214, 

‘Episcopal system, 190. 

Epistole formate, 205. 


T27 


Eschatology, or doctrine of last things, 649 
—656. 

Esseans, 43—48. 

Ethiopia, diffusion of Christianity in, 83. 

Eucharist, 329. See Lord’s supper. 

Euemerus, 6. 

Euodius of Uzala, 400, 494. 

Eucrates, 447. 

Eusebius on the Abgar Uchomo, 80. De- 
metrius of Alexandria, 81. Pantznus, 
81, 82. Persecution of the Christians in 
Thebais, 83. Paul’s journey to Spain, 85. 
Hadrian, 101. Marius, the martyr, 140. 
Dioclesian, 176. Images, 292. Barde- 
sanes, 442. Tatian,458. Montanus, 513. 
Letter of the church of Lyons, 524. Alex- 
andrian catechists, 527. Beryll of Bos- 
tra, 593. Malchion, 605. Apology of 
Justin Martyr, 663. Death of Justin, 671. 
Florinus, 680. Symmachus, 708. Im- 
mortality of the soul, 710. Death of Ori- 
gen, 711. Methodius, 720. Apology of 
Pamphilus, 721. 

Exorcism, 309. 


FE. 


Fabian, Roman bishop, 238. 

Fabius of Antioch, 238. 

Faustus, the Manichean, 492, 501,502. See 
Mani— Manicheans — Manicheanism. 

Felicissimus, 225. See Church schisms. 

Felicitas, the Martyr, 124. 

Felix, the Manichean, 504. 

Festivals, 294—301. 

Fidus, 313. 

Firmilianus of Cesarea. Against Stephanus 
of Rome, 216. Church discipline, 220. 
Baptism of heretics, 320. Formula of 
baptism, 322. Origen, 707. 

Flora, letter of Ptolemy to, 437. 

Florinus, 680. 

Fortunatianus, the Martyr, 152. 

Fortunatus, 235. 

Frumentius, 83. 


G. 


Galerius, Caius Maximianus, Cesar, 145. 

Gallienus, Cesar, 136. 

Gallus, Cesar, 136. 

Germany, diffusion of Christianity in, 84. 
Gnosis, 360—395. Influence of, on church 
doctrine, 47. Alexandrian, 530—554. 

Gnosticism. See Gnostics. 

Gnostics, 366—478. 

Gnostic systems. See Gnostics. 

Gnostic worship, 476—478. 

Goetz, 71, 73. 

God. Doctrine concerning, 557—564. See 
Clement—Tertullian— Origen--Theophi- 
lus of Antioch — Marcion — Irenzus — 
Novatian — Alexandrian school — Crea- 
tion — Trinity — Holy Spirit. 

Γράμματα τετυπωμένα. See Epistole for- 
mate. 

Gregory of Nazianzen on the Apostle Tho- 
mas, 82. 


128 


Gregory of Nyssa on Gregory Thaumatur- 
gus, 718. 

Gregory Thaumaturgus, 287. His life, 716 
—720. 

Gregory of Tours, 84. 


H. 


Hadrian, 101. 

Ham, the Patriarch, 408. 

Hands, imposition of, 316. See Confirma- 
tion. 

Hegemonius, 485. 

Hegesippus, 675, 676. 

Heliogabulus, 125. 

Heraclas, disciple of Origen, 700, 712. 

Heracleon, the Gnostic, 434—436. 

Heraclian, bishop of Chalcedon, 485. 

Herculius Maximinianus, Ceesar, 147. 

Heretics, baptism of, 317. See the articles 
Baptism — Cyprian — Tertullian — Ste- 
phanus — Dionysius of Alexandria. 

Hermas, 278, 646, 660. 

Hermes, Trismegistus, 176. 

Hermas, Apologist, 673. 

Hermogenes. Doctrine of creation, 565— 
568. Anthropology, 616. See Tertulli- 
an — Creation — Theodoretus. 

Hesychius, 722. 

Hexapla. See Origen. 

Hieracas, Egyptian ascetic, 718, 

Hierocles against Christianity, 145, 173. 

Hilarianus, the Martyr, 152. 

Hilarius, 506. 

Hippolytus, celebration of the sabbath, 297. 
Celebration of the Lord’s suppér, 333. 
Noetus, 584. Life and writings, 681—683. 

Hormisdas, king of Persia, 488. 

Hystaspes, interpolated writings, 176. 


1. 


Jaldabaoth. See Ophites. 

Iconium, council of, 318. 

Idealism. See the article Alexandrians. 

Ignatius of Antioch. To Polycarp, 269. 
Festival of Sunday, 295. Docetism, 631. 
Lord’s supper, 647. His letters, 661. 

Images, use of images, 293. 

India, spread of Christianity in, 81. 

Infants, communion of, 333, 648. 

Infant baptism, 311—315. See the articles 
Cyprian — Irenzeus — Tertullian — Ste- 
phanus — Dionysius of Alexandria. 

Inspiration, 356, 511. 

Irenzus. Miraculous cures, 74. Christianity 
in Germany, 84. Persecutions, 119. Pres- 
byters — bishops, 192. Ecclesia apostol- 
ica at Rome, 204. Conception of the 
church, 209. Dispute about the passover, 

213, 300. Gladiatorial shows, 263. Phi- 
losopher’s cloak, 275. Places of assembly 
of the Christians, 290. Christ as arche- 
type, 311. Oblation, 331. Ebionites, 344, 
601. Doctrine of accommodation among 
the Gnostics, 388. Cerinthus, 396. Satur- 
nin, 455. Tatian, 456. Prodicians, 452. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Nicolaitans, 452. Intermediate position 
of Irenzus, 508. Montanistic proceed- 
ings, 524. Knowledge of God, 560. Cre- 
ation, 528. Soul of Christ, 634. Re- 
demption, 647. Faith and law, 645. Bap- 
tism, 646. Lord’s supper, 647. Chiliasm, 
651. Life and writings, 677—681. 
Isidorus, son of Basilides, 400, 408, 415. 


J. 


Jacob, ἀναβαϑμοί of, 352. 

Jamblichus, the Neo-Platonician, 173. 

John the Apostle, 191, 212, 237, 342. 

“ Disciples of, 376, 447. 

Josephus on false prophets, 38. Sadducees, 
42. Pharisees,42. Essenes, 43. 

Jews, religious condition of the, 35. 

Jewish Christians — two classes, 341. 

Jewish theology, 39—62. 

Jewish sects, 39—49. 

Jewish proselytes, 67. 

Jewish Goetz, 67. 

Judaism, in relation to Christianity, 62. 

Judas of Gamala, 37. 

Judas, gospel of, 443. 

Julia Mammea, 125. 

Julian in Cesarea, 707. 

Julius Africanus, 709. 

Justin Martyr. Infidelity of the philoso- 
phers,9. Jewish deniers of angels, 42. 
Proselytes, 67. Miraculous cures, 74. 
Christian , patience, 76. Extension of 
Christianity 129. Defects of Christians, 
254. Magistrates, 259. Divine worship, 
303. Form of baptism, 310. Celebra- 
tion of the Lord’s supper, 332. Baptism 
and the supper, 328. Two classes of 
Jewish Christians, 341. Doctrine of the 
Logos, 585. Christ’s humanity, 635. Sat- 
isfaction, 642. Sacrament of the supper, 
647. Chiliasm, 651. Life and writings, 
661—671. 


Κ. 


Κάνονὲς ἀποστολικοΐ, 660. 
Κήρυγμα ἀποστολικόν, 306, 
Κλῆρος, κληρικοί, 195. 


L. 


Lactantius on the Holy Spirit, 608. 

Laity, resistance of, to the catholic idea of 
the priesthood, 196. Participation in the 
choice of church officers, 199. 

Lapsi, controversies respecting their restora- 
tion to the fellowship of the church, 226. 
Synods on their account, 234. 

Lectores, 201. 

Legio fulminea, 115. 

Leonides, father of Origen, 693, 695. 

Libellatici, 132. See the article Church 
divisions. 

Libelli pacis, 229. 

Liter formate, 205. 

Logos, doctrine of the. 
Trinity. 


See doctrine of the 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Lord’s supper, views concerning the, 323. 
Doctrine of the, 646. See the articles 
Agapx—Justin— Irenzeus—Tertullian— 
Cyprian — Epiphanius —Ignatius. 

Lucianus, founder of the Antiochian school, 
722. 

Lucian, the Confessor, 230. 

Lucian, przpositus cubiculariorum, 143. 

Lucian, the opponent of Christianity, 8, 
157. 

Lucius, bishop of Rome, 136. 

Lucius, the British king, 85. 

Lugdunum, persecution at, 112. 

Lucan. See Marcionites. — 

Lucretius, 8. 


M. 


Maguseans, 489. 

Macrianus, 140. 

Malchion, Presbyter, 605. 

Mandezans, 376. 

Mani, 478—488. See Manichzism. 

Manichzans, 478—486. 

Manichzism, 478—506. 

Marcellus the Centurian, a martyr, 147. 

Marcion, form of baptism, 310. Missa fide- 
lium, 328. Marcion and his doctrine, 458 
—476. Doctrine concerning God, 559. 

Marcionites, 473. 

Marcionitism, opposed to the Clementines, 
395. 

Marcosians, 476. 

Marcus, the Gnostic, 440. 

Marcus, the Marcionite, 474. 

Marcus, presiding officer of the church at 
Zé lia, 344. 

Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 104. 

Marius, the Martyr, 140. 

Mark, the Evangelist, 83. 

Martialis, Spanish bishop, 216. 

Martyrs, feast of the, 334. 

Maximianus Herculius, 142. 

Maximilianus, the Martyr, 146. 

Maximilla, the Prophetess, 514, 

Maximinus, the Thracian, 126. 

Maximus, Church teacher, 721. 

Melito of Sardis, 101, 164. 

Menander, 454. 

Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, 150. 

Messiah, idea of among the Jews, 37. 

Methodius of Tyre, against Origen’s doctrine 
of the creation, 569. His writings, 720. 

Metropolitans, 203. 

Miltiades against the Montanists, 519. 

Minucius Felix, 11, 690. 

Minucius Fundanns, Proconsul, 101. 

Missa catechumenorum, missa fidelium, 478. 

Monarchians. 575—583, 591—606. 

Montanism, 508—537. Anthropology, 614. 
Position of the church to Montanism, 525 
—527. 

Montanists, public speaking of women, 182. 
Resistance of the evangelical spirit to 
them, 280, 294. See Montanism. 

Montanus. His importance as the founder 
of a sect, 509. His education, 513. On 
martyrdom, 521. Pepuza, 525. 


729 


N. 


Natalis, the Theodotian, confessor, 580. 

Nature, doctrine of human. See Anthro- 
pology. 

Nazareans, 349. See articles Paul—Sects. 

Nepos, Egyptian bishop, Chiliast, 652. 

Nero, persecution under, 94. 

Nerva, 96. 

Nicolaitans, 452. 

Nicolaus, pretended founder of a sect, 452. 

Nicomedia, meeting of Dioclesian and Gale- 
rius at, 147. 

Noetus, Patripassianist, 584. 

North-African church, its theological devel- 
opment, 683—689. See articles Carthage 
—Tertullian— Cyprian--Arnobius—Com- 
modianus — Church theology — Church 
divisions — Persecutions. 

Novatian, 237—248. Theology, 560. Against 
the Artemonites, 581. 

Novatus, exciter of the Carthaginian schism, 
224. Participation in the Roman, 241. 

Numidicus, confessor, 133. 


O 


Oblationes. See Lord’s supper. 

Ophites, 442—446. 

Oracles, Plutarch’s defence of the, 23. Por- 
phyry’s views of them, 171. 

Origen on psychological phenomena, 74. 
On the preaching of Christianity in the 
country, 79. Labors of Origen in Arabia, 
81. Correspondence with Julia Mam- 
mea, 125. Situation of the Christians 
under Philip the Arabian, 127. On the 
persecutions, 128. Celsus, 161. On hu- 
mility, 167. Ordination of Origen in 
Palestine, 197. Baptism, 253. The mili- 
tary profession, 272. Prayer, 283. Prayer 
in the study of the Scriptures, 287. Spir- 
itual worship of God, 289. Catechumens, 


305. Infant baptism, 314. Ebionites, 
845. Gnostic interpretation of the Bible, 
388. Ophites, 446. Simon Magus, 454. 


Origen, as a catechist, 520. Isaiah, 530. 
Gnosis and Pistis, 544—550. Principles 
in relation to the holy scriptures, 552— 
557. The divine attributes, 563. Doc- 
trine of creation, 568—570. Doctrine of 
the Logos, 587—592. Anthropology, 620 
—630. Christ's servant-form, 633. Hu- 
manity of Christ, 635. The human soul 
of Christ, 636—640, Redemptive activity, 
643. Doctrine of the sacraments, 648. 
Resurrection, 655. Life and works of 
Origen, 593—611. See the articles Le- 
onidas — Clement —Ammonius — Alex- 
andrian theology — Catechetical schools. 

Origen, the Pagan, 699. 

Origen, school of. Ante-Origenistie party, 
711—722. See the articles Orizen Cie 
ory Thaumaturgus — Pamphilus. 

Ostiarii. See Θυρωροί. 


oe 
Pacianus of Barcelona, 246. 


180 


Palladius, 708. 
Pamphilus, Presbyter at Czsarea, 720. 
Pantenus, Catechist, 81, 529, 691. 

Papias of Hierapolis, 650. 

Παρώδοσις ἀποστολικῆ, 306. 

Paraclete, 511. 

Parchor, the Prophet, 408. 

Parsism, 369. See articles Gnosis — Gnos- 
tics — Gnostic system. 

Παρϑένοι, 275. 

Passover, festival of, 298—299. 

Passover, controversies with regard to the, 
299. 

Paternus, the Proconsul, 137. 

Patripassians, 578, 583. 

Paul, the Apostle. Journey to Spain, 85. 
Universal priesthood, 180. Church disci- 
pline, 218. Observance of times, 294. 
Church singing, 304. Labors among gen- 
tile Christians, 342. Ebionitism, 349. 
The Nazareans concerning Paul, 349. 
Gnosis, 371. 

Paul of Samosata, 142, 309, 602. See articles 
Monarchians — Logos — Malchion. 

Pausanius, defence of the mythes, 12. 

Peccata venalia, mortalia, 221. 

Pella, 344. 

Penitence and penance. See Church disci- 
pline. 

Pentecost, festival of, 300. 

Pepuza, a place in Phrygia, 525. 

Pepuzians, 525. 

Perpetua, the Martyr, 123. 

Persecutions, 86—156. 

Persia, spread of Christianity in, 80. 

Pescennius Niger, 119. 

Peter, the Apostle, 213. See Cathedra Petri. 

Pharisees, 39. 

Phariseism, relation to Christianity, 63. 

Philemon, the Roman presbyter, 712. 

Philip, the Arabian, 126. 

Philip of Sida, the catechist, 673. 

Philo. His tendency, 52—60. The perpet- 
uity of the temple and the law, 65. The 
golden age of Jerusalem, 85. 

Philostratus, the Rhetorician, 173. 

Philumene, 475. 

Photius on Mani, 485. On Hippolytus, 
682. On Origen, 704, 711. 

Picrias, the Alexandrian, 713. 

Plato. View of Socrates, 18. His mo- 
notheism, 20. 

Platonism, 18. 
19, 33. 

Pliny the elder. On the spirit of nature, 10. 
Essenes, 43. 

' Pliny the younger. 


Relation to Christianity, 


Governor of Bithynia 
and Pontus, 97. Report to Trajan, 97. 
Plotinus, 31. Against the Gnostics, 390. 

Anthropology, 611. 
Plutarch. Against foreign religious cus- 
toms, 13. Superstition and infidelity, 13. 
Against epicureanism, 15. Relation of 
religions, 206. Hypocrisy of philosophers, 
21. Anthropology, 511. 
Pneumatology. See Anthropology. 
Peenitentes, 219. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Polybius on Roman superstition, 6. 

Polycarp of Smyrna, the Martyr, 109. Dis- 
pute about the passover, 299. Meeting 
with Marcion, 465. Letter to the Philip- 
pians, 661. 

Polycrates of Ephesus, 298, 299. 

Ponticus, the Martyr. 114. 

Porphyry, 27. Defence of image worship, 
27. Oracles, 30. Against Christianity, 
170—173. On Origen, 699. 

Pothinus of Lyons, 112. 

Pre-existence, doctrine of, among the Esse- 
nes, 50. Doctrine of, 624. 

Praxeas against the Montanists, 513, 525, 
583. ᾿ 

Πρεσβύτεροι, 184. 

Priesthood of all Christians,180. See Ter- 
tullian. 

Priscilla, 514. On celibacy, 521. 

Prodicians, 451. 

Procopius, the Presbyter, 154. 

Proculus, 119. 

Proselytes of justice, of the gate, 67. 

Protoctetus, the friend of Origen, 706. 

Provincial synods, 206. See Church consti- 
tution. 

Pseudo-Basilideans, 447. 

Pseudo-Paulinists, 342. 

Pseudo-Petrinists, 342. 

Ptolemeus, 437. 

Pupian, 236. 

Pythagoras, 173. 


Q. 
Quadrigesimal fast, 300. 
Quadratus, the Apologist, 101. 
Quintus, 109. 
Quintus, the African bishop, 319. 
Quirinus, 685. 


R 


Realist tendency. See the articles Poly- 
carp — Papias — Melito of Sardis — Ire- 
nzus — Tertullian — Montanus. 

Recognitions, 358. 

Resurrection. See Eschatology. 

Revocatus, the Martyr, 123. 

Rhodon. See Marcionites. 

Rome, 203. See Cathedra Petri. 

Roman church. It character, 508. Rela- 
tion to the Monarchians, 581. Its scien- 
tific importance, 689. 

Rufinus, 306, 722. 


Ss. 

Sabbath, 295. 

Sabellius, 594—606. See the articles Mon- 
archians — Logos — Epiphanius — Atha- 
nasius. 

Sadducees, 40, 

Sadduceism, 63. 

Sacraments. Their meaning, 304. Doc- 
trine of the Alexandrians concerning the 
sacraments, 648. See Baptism and the 
Lord’s supper. 

Saturnin of Toulouse, 84. 

Saturninus, 455. See the articles Gnosties 
— Irenzus — Epiphanias. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Saturninus, the Martyr, 123. 

Saturninus, the Proconsul, 122. 

Scapula, the Proconsul, 122. 

Scepticism, 12. 

Schisms. See Church divisions. 

Scillita, persecution at, 564—570. 

Scythianus, 485. 

Secundulus, the Martyr, 123. 

Sects. .See the particular. 

Seneca, 7. 

Serennius Granianus, the Proconsul, 101. 

Servianus, the Consul, 102. 

Seth, representative of the Pneumatici, 445. 

Sethians, 448. 

dence See Encratites. 

Severus Septimius, Emperor, 119. 

Severus, Alexander, 125. 

Severus of Asmonina, 485. 

Simon of Cyrene. See Pseudo-Basilideans 
and Carpocratians. 

Simon Magus, 395, 454. 

Simonians, 453. 

Simplicius against Mani, 490. 

Sixtus, bishop of Rome, 321. 

Slavery, 267. 

Smyrna, persecution at, 109. 

Socrates against the Sophists, 5 
mony concerning the divine, 18. 

Socrates, the Church Historian, 720. 

Sophists, 5. 

Sozomen on the serrhon, 303. 

Speratus, the Martyr, 122. 

Sponsors. See Baptism. 

Stationes, dies stationum, 296. 

Stephanus, bishop of Rome, 341. 

Stephanus, the Martyr, 341. 

Stoicism, 15—18. 

Strabo on superstition, 7. Craving after a 
simpler mode of worship, 9. 

Stromata. See Clement of Alexandria. 

Subdiaconi, 201. , 

Subintroductz, 277. 

Sunday. See Sabbath. 

Συνείσακτοι. See Subintroducte. 

Symbolum, 306. 

Symmachus, 708. 

Symphorian of Autun, the Martyr, 114. 

Synods. See Provincial Synods. 


Testi- 


=. 


Tacitus, 98. 

Tatian, the Gnostic, 456—458. Apologist, 
672, 673. 

Terebinth, 482. 

Tertullian. Relation of Pagans to Christ- 
ianity, 72. Conversion by means of ex- 
traordinary psychological phenomena, 75. 
Mutual love of the Christians, 76. Their 
courage, 77. Diffusion of Christianity, 77. 
Universal intelligibleness of Christianity, 
78. Diffusion of Christianity in Africa, 
84. On the participation of the Christ- 
ians in heathen festivals, 91. Tiberius’ 
proposal to the senate, 93. Rescript of 
Trajan, 100. Letter of Marcus Aurelius, 


731 


117. Extortion of money in the persecu- 
tions. 121. Favorable treatment of Chris- 
tians by magistrates, 121. To Scapula, 
122. The testimony of the soul, 177. 
Presbyters and bishops, 192. Summus 
sacerdos, 195. Universal priestly right, 
196. Prelectors, 201. Synods, 206. Ar- 
rogant claims of the Roman bishops, 214. 
Excommunication, 218. Penance, 219, 
220. Delay of baptism, 252. Deficien- 
cies of the church, 254. Mixed marriages, 
255, 282. Payment of their tribute by 
the Christians, 259. Fabrication of idols, 
262. Gladiatorial shows, 263. Spectacles, 
265. Pleasures of the Christians, 266. 
Christian freedom and equality, 269. Civil 
offices, 270. Necessity of Vaganism to 
the emperors, 272. Military profession, 
272. Life of Christians in the world, 273. 
Ascetics, 275. Hypocritical ascetism, 277. 
Christian marriage, 281. Female dress, 
282. Consecration of marriage, 284. 
Prayer, 286, 288. Worship not confined to 
place, 289. Symbols of the Christians, 292. 
Jewish and Christian festivals, 294. Law 
of the Sabbath, 295. Fasting on the Sab- 
bath, 296. Controversy on the Sabbath, 
297. Infant baptism, 312. Baptism 
and confirmation, 317. Baptism of here- 
tics, 318. Agapsze, 325. Catechumens 
and believers among the heretics, 328. 
The fourth petition, 332. Sacramental 
bread, 332. Ebion, 344. Ptolemzus, 437. 
Marcion, 461—473. Marcion’s disciples, 
474, Baptism by substitution, 478. Ter- 
tullian as a Montanist, 509. Prophetic 
extacy, 511. Progressive development of 
the church, 516. Montanistic revelations, 
517. Against the outward church, 517. 
Forgiveness of sin and sanctification, 522. 
Arrogance of the confessors, 523. Against 
the enemies of Montanism, 523. Divine 
attributes, 561, 562. Revelation, 562. 
Creation, 568. Monarchians, 576. Prax- 
eas, 583. Trinity, 605. Anthropology, 
614—620. Humanity of Christ, 635. Bap- 
tism, 646. Lord’s supper, 648. Interme- 
diate standing, 654. Life and writings of 
Tertullian, 683—685. 

Tertullianists, 685. 

Theodoret. ‘Tatian’s εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τεσσά- 
pov, 458. Hermogenes, 567. Noetus, 584. 

Theodorus. See Gregory Thaumaturgus. 

Theodotus, the Monarchian, 580. 

Theognostus, 713. 

Theoctistus, 703. 

Theology. See Church theology, and the 
articles God — Creation — Trinity. 

Theonas, bishop of Alexandria, 143. 

Theophilus of Antioch. Revelation, 559. 
Apology and commentaries, 674. ἣν 

Theophilus Indicus, 83. 

Theotecnus, bishop of Cesarea, 141. 

Therapeutz, 66—64. 

Thomas, pe Apostle, 82. 

Thoth, inferpolated sayings of, 176. 

Tiberius, 93. 


182 


Titus of Bostra, 501, 
Traducianism, 615. 
Trajan, 97. 

Trinity, 571—608. 
Ovpwpoi, 201. 


δον 


U. 


Uchomo, Abgar of Edessa, 80. 
Unity of the church, 180, 181. 


1G 


Valentine, the Gnostic, 417—438. Valen- 
tinian school, 434—442. 

Valerian, the Emperor, 136. 

Varro. Threefold theology, 7. On the true 
in religion, 9. 

Vattius Epagathus, the Martyr, 112. 

Victor, bishop of Rome. Arrogant claims, 


GENERAL INDEX. 


214. Dispute about passover, 299. Theo- 
dotus, 580. 
Victoria, the Martyr, 152. 


Virgines. See Παρϑένοι. 
W. 
Western church. See Roman church. 
= 
Xerophagians, 521. 
Ζ. 
Zabeans. See Disciples of John. 


Zealots, Jewish, 38. 

Zenobia, 693. 

Zephyrinus, Roman bishop, 581. 
Zoroaster, 369. 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 





I. CITATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 


Genesis, 1 : 26, 27, p. 444. 
658. 31: 13, Ρ. 397. 49: 11, p. 670. 
Exodus, 10 : 27, p. 613. chap. 28: p. 705. 

33:18, p. 558. 34: 20, p. 554. 

Leviticus, 20: 9. 24 : 20, p. 439. 

Numbers, 11: 29, p. 179. chap. 25, p. 452. 

Deuteronomy, 4: 19, p. 587. 22: 5, p. 267. 
27 : 26, p. 642. 32:8, 9, p. 380. 82 : 43, 
p. 409. 

Samuel, 1: 2, 25, p. 226. 

Isaiah, 7:9, p. 530. 7:14, p.348. 8: 23. 
9:1. 21: 7,8, p.349. 43:19, p.531. 53: 
2, p. 291, 633. 53: 4, 5, p. 643. 

Jeremiah, 31 : 33, p. 308 

Joel, chap, 3: p. 518. 

Zechariah, 3: p. 609. 

Malachi, 3:15, p. 451. 

Psalm, 19:4, p.568. 42:6, p. 706. 44: 
1,p.588. 45 : 5,p.636. 90: 4,p. 399, 650. 
Ob): 2 ἢ 563. 97:7, p.409. Ps. 110, p. 


574. 111:10,p.411. 145: 3, p.563. 

Job, 14 : 4, Ὁ. 412, 620. 

Proverbs, 22 : 28, p. 710. 

Maccabees II. : 6, p. 151. 

M@itcw, 3-10. 5:16, p: 253. 5:17, p. 
359. 5: 28, p.654. 19:14, p. 312. 10: 
23, p. 695. 11:13, p. 525. 11: 27, p. 
357, 574. 12:6, p.574. 13: 16, p. 675. 
13: 43, p. 623. 13:52, p. 360. 14:13, 
p. 695. 17:1, p. 563. 18: 20, p. 211. 

, 19:6, p.439. 19:12, p. 697. 19:14, 
p. 552. 21:16, p. 705. 22:19, 20, p. 


699. 22:21, p. 259. 

Mark, 6:13, Ὁ. 119. 10:46, p. 364. 15: 
2, p. 447. 

Luke, 1 : 31, p.580. 2:40, p.639. 9:50, 
p.313. 12:8, p.434—436. 12:49, p. 
707. 13:2,p.412. 13:50,p.707. 15: 
8, p. 420. 22: 24, p. 212. 

John, 3 : 29, p. 434. 4:34,p.436. 4:35, 

ΠΡ. 436. 4:48, p.434. 5:14, p. 253. 3: 
5, p. 648. 6:53, p. 648. 6:54, p. 324. 
7:49, p. 346. 8:24, p.544, 8: 48, 45, 


p-545. 10:3, p. 719. 10:30, p. 584. 
13:8, p.699. 14:9, p.584. 1611, p. 
171. 17:8, p. 572. 

VOL. I. 62 


P44, ΠΕ p,,) Acts os 17. p. 196. 


246, p.s2o, 8.27, 

10 : 46, p.186. chap.19, p. 
p. 295. , 20: 17, p. 192. 20°: 
23 : 8, p. 42. 


--- 40, p. 88. 
316. 20:7, 
17, 28, p. 182. 

Romans, 8:19, p. 625. 5: 20, 21, p. 411 
S26, p. 110: 93 Ὁ}, es. 75: TS! p. 
187. 12:11. 14:15, p.180. 16 : 5, p. 185, 
290. 16:14, p. 660. 

1 Corinthians, 11 : 19, p.341. 1: 21, p.621. 

_ 1:25, p. 705. 2:6, p. 388. 2:9, p. 531. 
675. 2:14, p. 628,, 3: 17, Ὁ: 359: 14: 
23, 25, p. 327. 5:4, p. 190. 5:7, p. 207. 
6 : 12, p..385. chap. 7, p> 680. 7: 21) p. 
269: 8 : 6; p.574.°, 8:9; p.a85. °8: 19; 
Ῥ. 189. 9: 22,p.245. 9: 24, p.258. 11: 
4,5, p. 619. 12:5), p. 182. 12:2, 4, p. 
189. 13:10, p. 487. 14: 30, p. 320. 14: 
34, p. 182. chap. 15, p.655. 15: 28, p. 
600. 15: 29, p. 478, 16:19, p. 185. 16: 
19, 20, p. 290. 

2 Corinthians, chap. 5, p. 546. 

Galatians, chap. 2, Ρ. 171. chap. 4, p. 548. 
5:19, p.499. 6: 6, p. 478. 

Philippians, 1: 1, p. 183. 1:16, p. 323. 2: 
15, p. 253. 4:3, p. 658 

Ephesians, 3 : 10, p. 382. 4:5, 6,p.318. 4: 
6, p. 572. 4:9,p.471. 5:4, p. 262. 5: 
5, p. 245. 5:16, p. 262. 6:11, p.133. 

Colossians, 2 : 21, 22, p.700. 4:16, p.185, 
290. 

i'Timothy, 3% 1, 184. 3.22) p,. 196. 3: 8, 
p. 184. 5:17, p. 188, 326. 6:12, p. 
366. 

2 Timothy, 2:14, p.199. 3:7, p. 506. 

Pitta) 5, p. 64. ob. 7p. 184; 

Philemon, v. 2, p. 185. 

Hebrews, chap. 2, p. 382. 2:13, p. 563. 4: 
12, p. 707. 11:3, p. 372,565. 12:14, 
p. 715. Ἰὼ 

1 Peter, 2:9. p.180. 3:21, p. 306, 308. ~ 

19, 

Lie], pr peo. 2: 


Revelation, 1:6, p.197. 1:10, p. 295, 


184. 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 


II. CITATIONS FROM WRITERS ON CHURCH HISTORY. 


Acta concilii Carthagin. p. 150, 308, 309. 

— concilii Niceni II., actio V., edid. Man- 
si, t. 13, f. 167, p. 500. 

—— martyrum (edid. Ruinart) Scillitanor- 
um. Perpetue et Felicitatis, p. 122. 
Perpetuz et Felicit. prefatio, p. 
516, 518. 

— Feliciss. p. 151. 

Justini, p. 269. 

Procopii, p. 303. 

martyrum coptiaca edid. Georgi, Ro- 

mez, 1797, prefatio pag. 109, p. 146. 
Saturnini, Dativi, et aliorum in Africa, 
(Baluz, Miscellanea, t. 2,) p. 152. 
Martyrii Justini, (Symeon Metaphras- 

tes,) p. 671. 
cum Felice Manicheo, 1]. 1, ¢. 9. (Au- 
gustin. opera, edid. Benedict, t. 8,) p. 




















487. 
— Thome, edid. Thilo; codex apocr. f. 10, 
p. 497.. f. 17, p. 492, 


Alexander Alexandrinus, apud Theodoret. 
histor. ecclesiast. 1. 1, c. 4, p. 723. 

Alexander Lycopolitanus, ce. Manichos, 
(Combefisii greecor. patrum auctarium no- 
vissimum, Paris, 1672, t. 2, f. 4,) p. 482. 
6. 3, p. 494, 500. ¢. 5, p.494, 500. ¢. 24, 
p- 497. ὶ 

Apollinaris Hierapolitanus. Chronicon pas- 
chale Alexandr. p. 298. 

Apollonius, (ap. Euseb. hist. eccles. 5, 18,) p. 
513, 

Arius ad Alexandrinos, (ap. Epiphanium 
heres. 69, ὁ 7,) p. 716. 

Arnobius, disputatio, c. gentes, 1. 1, 6. 13, p. 
688. 1,39, p. 688. 2,71, p. 689. 3, 7, 
p. 150. 4, 36, p.689. Arnobii conflictus 
cum Serapione, (Bibliothec. patr. Lugdu- 
nensis, t. 8,) p. 599. 

Athanasius, 6. Apollinarem, I. 2, ὁ 3, p. 602, 
603. historia Arianorum ad Monachos, 


ὁ 64, p. 154. § 71, p. 603. Oratio IV., 
c. Arianos, § 8, p. 598. § 11, p. 597. § 
12, p. 597. § 13, p. 595. ὁ 21, 22, p.598. 


§ 23, p.599. § 25, p. 595, 597, 598, 600. 
ὁ 26, p. 596. de sententia Dionysii, § 14, 
Ῥ. 606.*de synodis, ¢. 4, p. 602. ὁ. 43, p. 
606. de decretis synodi Niczne, t. 1. P. 
2, pag. 68, p. 716. § 26, p. 607. 

Athenagoras, legatio pro Christianis, f. 37, 
ed. Coloniensis, p. 522. 

Augustinus, c. Faustum Manichseum, 1. 11, 
p. 602. LT 11,c, 3, p..491.. 118, 9, 50g, 
]. 18, c. 5, p. 505. 1. 20, p. 494. 1. 32, p. 
500. c. Fortunatum, |. 1, (appendix, ) p. 
505. 6. Julian, opus imperf. 1. 3. α. 172, 
p- 494, 497. c. 174, p. 496. c¢. 177, p. 
497,498. c. 186, p. 496, 497. c. 187. p. 
497. c. epist. fundamenti. c. 5, p. 487. 
6. 8, p. 505. ο. 13, p. 490. de Genesi, c. 
Manicheeos, |. 2, c. 39, p. 497. de mori- 
bus Manich. ο. 10, seqq. p. 503. de mo- 
rib. eccles. cathol. ο. 35, p. 504. de natura 


boni, 6. 46, p. 495. breviculum colla- 
tionis cum Donatistis, d. 3, c. 13, p. 150, 
151. de heeresibus, ἢ. 32, p. 504. h. 86, 
p- 685. sermo, 202, § 2, p. 302. sermo, 
212, p. 307, 308. de civitat. Dei, 1. 5, ¢. 
l. 6) c. 5, sega. 71. 19, c. 28, 
de doctrina Christ. 1. 2, c. 11, p. 


Barnabas epistola, c. 9,15, p. 650. cc. 12, p. 
650. 

Basilides tractatus (ἐξηγητικά) in disputa- 
tione Archelai cum Mani, c. 55, p. 402. 
apud Clementem Alexandr. Stromata 1. 
6. f. 508, p. 405. ἢ, 509, p. 403. 

Basilius Cesar, epistol. 188, (ep. canon. 1,) 
p- 320. 

Canon, de canone novi testamenti fragm. 
(antiquit. italic. evi Jud. ed. Muratori, t. 
3,) p. 660. 

Celsus, λόγος ἀληϑῆς, (ap. Originem, c. Cel- 
sum,) I. L:c..9,p. 160. "Gali, ΠΡΟΤῚ, Ὁ: 
28, p. 161, 162. c. 67, p.169. 1. 3, ο. 13, 
p. 169. c. 27, p. 165. ὁ. 34, p. 169. «. 
41, 42, p. 169. 6. 55, 63, 67, p. 169. 1.3, 
c. 10, seqq. p. 164. ¢. 44, p. 164. ο. 59, 
Ρ. 166. c. 65, p. 166. 1. 4, c. 28, p. 171. 
c. 62, seqq. p. 166. c. 69, p. 167. c¢. 73, 
p- 169.:, οἱ 75,.p.. B67, 169. 5 ὁ. 76, p. 167, 
c. 81, p. 168. 6.99, p. 168. 1. 5, ὁ. 63, p. 
164. 6.6]; δ. 175. . 116. Gab, δι. ΤΌ). ὃ. 
41, p. 101. 1 7:0.489, τ το, p. 
165. c. 62, p. 165. 1. 8, 6. 17, p. 289. 6. 
21, p. 265. κατὰ μάγων, p. 161. 

Chronica Edessena, (Assemani bibl. orient. 
t. 1, £..891,) p. 291. 

Claudius Apollinaris, ap. Euseb. 1. 5, p. 117. 

Clemens Alexandrin. ed. Paris, 1641, προ- 
τρεπτικός͵ f. 45, p. 558. f. 69, p. 620. παι- 
daywyoc, 1. 1, ¢. 1, apes. 1 Be Gap. 
581. 1. 1,f. 108, p. 317. f. 118, p. 564. 
1, 2, c. 8, 1. 176. p. BBLS ae ὦ 12m, 282. 
f. 142, p. 326. ἢ, 194, ἅ. p. 286. 1.3, ο. 
1, p. 278, 292. f. 246, p. 293. f. 247, p. 
293, 312. f. 250, p. 281. f. 255, p. 274. 
f. 256, p. 817. f. 257, p. 262. Stromata, 
1.1, f. 272, Ὁ, 251. f, 278, a. p. 530. f. 
274, p. 691. f. 278, p. 534, 535. f. 291, 
p. 533. f. 292, p.533. f. 298, p. 539. ff 
304, p. 452. f. 309, p. 537. f. 311, p. 520. 
f. 313, p. 621. f. 818, Ὁ. 533. f. 319, p. 
308, 537. f. 320, p. 450. f. 340, p. 301. 
f. 360, p. 534. 1. 2, f. 362, a. p. 580. f. 
363, p. 414, 415. f. 364, p. 558. ἢ, 865, 
b. p. 531. ἢ 371, p. 414, 531. f. 372, p. 
530. f. 373, p. 530. £.375, p.425. ἢ, 379, 
p. 646. f. 381, p.532. ἢ, 884, p.531.. ἢ 
407, p. 419. f. 408, p. 402. f. 409, p. 432. 
f. 411, p. 385, 453. f. 414, p.119. 1.3, 
f. 427, p. 415, 416. f. 428, p. 451. f. 431, 
Ρ. 466. f. 436, p. 452. f. 488, p. 452. ἢ 
448, p.451. f. 444, p. 581.. f. 446, p. 278, 
457. f. 448, p. 188. f. 449, p. 280. ἢ 
451, p. 429. f. 453, p. 620. f. 457, p. 262. 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 


f 460, d. p. 452, 453, 632. ἢ. 465, p. 456, 
458. f. 466, p. 620. f. 469, p. 620. f. 
470, p. 620, 633. 1. 4, f. 490, p. 532. ἢ. 
503, p. 434. f. 503, p. 434. f. 506, p. 407, 
412. f. 507, p. 403. f.508, p.405. f.508, 
a. p. 406, 424. f. 509, b. p. 448. f. 511, 
p. 520, 610. £518, 519, p. 540. f 528. 
Ὁ. p. 530. ἢ 533, p. 280. ἢ. 536, p. 413. 
f. 539, p. 400. 1. 5, f. 546, p. 468. f. 549. 
p. 654. f. 554, p. 535. f. 565, p. 586. ἢ 
582, p. 307. f. 583, ἃ. p. 407. ἢ 587, p. 
533. f. 588, p. 558, 628. f. 591, p. 610. 
1. 6, f. 621, p. 402. f. 636, seqq. p. 638. 
f. 638, 639, p. 656. ἢ 641, p. 407, 409, 
427. f. 644, p. 537, 538. f. 647, p. 520, 
536. f. 649, p. 632. f. 652, p.540. ἢ 
655, p. 535. f. 659, b. p. 528, 535. f. 660. 
p. 528. f. 662, p. 620. f. 667, p. 622. f. 
672, p.176, 538. f. 675, p. 535, 539. ἢ 
677, p. 553. f. 680, p.364. f. 688, p. 538, 
f. 690, p. 683. ἢ, 691, p. 541. f. 693, p. 
Sar. 1.7, f. 700). ps 855 31,2 70 5. 0.941, 
f. 708, p. 586. f. 715, b. p. 289. f. 722, 
p. 286, 452. f. 728, p. 286. f. 730, p. 551. 
f, 732, b. p. 308. ἢ 732, p. 532. ὦ, 741, 
p- 281. f. 753, p. 164. f. 754, p. 307. ἢ. 
755, p. 308. f. 756, p.533. f. 757, p. 532. 
f. 759, p. 326. f. 762, p. 533. f. 764, p. 
417. τίς πλούσιος σωζόμενος, c. 11, p. 279. 
¢ 21, p. 621. ¢. 42, p. 196. Ὕποτυπώσεις, 
apud Euseb. prep. evang. l. 2, c. 2, p. 
691. epistoli. Euseb. b. 3, p. 691. 

Clemens Romanus, epistola I. ad Cor. ¢. 5, 
p- 85. ὁ. 32, 33, p. 644. c. 40, p. 659. 6. 
42, p. 79, 185, 189. 6. 44, p.189. Clem- 
entinz homiliaz, ἢ. 2, c. 6, p. 354. ¢. 9, p. 
354. c.17, p.362. c.38, p. 358. ἢ. 3, 
c. 19, p. 360. c. 20, p. 354, 355. h. 6, ¢. 
4, p. 357. c. 22, 23, seqq. p. 357. c. 26, 

c. 42, p. 864. ¢. 51, p. 359, 360. 

ΟΠ: 360.) 4¢) 10, p. 

OnbE, 12, p. 356. ¢.'22, 23, p. 356. 
h. 16, ¢. 10, p.358. c. 12, p. 601. ἢ. 17, 
6. 17, p. 369. 6. 19, p. 352. ἢ. 18, 6. 13, 

. 857. Clementinz Recognitiones, p. 32. 
1. 8, c. 53, p. 359. 

Commodianus, instructiones, p. 68. i. 2 
687. i. 47, p. 200. i. 48, p. 280. 1. 5 
ΟῚ 1.59% p. 281.) 2.61, p. 687... 3 
p. 260. i. 66, p. 198, 237. i. 76, p. 303, 
329. 1. 79, p. 288. i. 80, p. 687. 

Commonitorium, quomodo sit agendum cum 
Manicheis, (August. ed. Bened. t. 8, ap- 
pend,) p. 504. 

Concilium Mlliberitanum, c. 13, p. 277. 6. 


354. 


ES, p- 198. ¢..25, p. 229. c. 26, p. 296. 
c. 33, p. 277. ὃ. 36, p. 293. ὁ. 43, p. 301. 
¢. 77, p. 233. 


Concilium Neocesariense, c. 12, p. 238. 

Constitutiones apostolice, 1. 2, c. 28, p. 326. 
1. 8, c. 17, p. 703. c. 26, p. 201. c. 31, p. 
262. ὁ. 32, p. 197. 

Cornelius, ep. R. Epistola ad Fabium episc. 
Antiochenum, ap. Euseb. ἢ. eccles. 643, p. 
201, 238, 690. 

Cyprianus, ed. Baluz., ep. 1 ad Donatum, p. 
249, 263. ep. 2, p. 134, 231. ep. 3, p. 


7385 


206, 226. ep. 4, p. 134. ep. 5, p. 192, 
200, 224. ep. 6,. p. 329. .ep. 7, Ρ. 188. 
ep. 9,.p. 227. ep. 11, p. 297. ep. 12, p. 
231. ep. 13, p. 200, 231. ep. 14, p. 134, 
226, 231. ep. 18, p. 133. ep. 21, p. 1338. 
ep. 22, p. 229. ep. 26, p. 220. ep. 31, p. 
132, 239. ep. 33, p.199. ep. 38, p. 233. 
ep. 40, p. 131, 207, 223. ep. 42, p. 241. 
ep. 49, p. 224, 225, 233. ep. 52 ad An- 
tonianum, p. 220, 234, 235, 239, 240, 242, 
243, 244, 245,654. ep. 54, p. 234. ep. 55 
ad Cornelium, p. 136, 214, 233, 235. ep. 
56, p. 136. ep. 59, p. 313. ep. 60, p. 256. 
ep. 61, ad Euchratem, p. 267. ep. 62 ad 
Pomponium, p. 277. ep. 63, p.332. ep. 
66 ad Fernenesium, p. 198, 199. ep. 68. 
p- 200, 217, 604. ep. 69 ad Pupianum, 
p. 236. ep. 70, p. 315, 322, 323. ep. 71 
ad Quintum, p. 318, 219, 320. ep. 72 ad 
Stephanum, Ὁ. 316. ep. 72 ad Jubaja- 
num, p. 316. ep. 73, p. 320, 323. ep. 74 
ad Pompeiium, p. 214, 216, 822. ep. 75, 
p- 126, 201, 207, 216, 220, 318, 320, 322, 
329. ep. 76 ad Magnum, p. 307, 309, 310. 
ep. 77, p. 138. ep. 82 ad Successum, p. 
139. ep. 83, p.139. ep.ad Demetrianum, 
p- 258. de lapsis, p. 134, 230, 332, (edid. 
Baluz. f. 189,) p. 640. de habitu virgin- 
um, p. 277. de spectaculis, p. 263. c. 29, 
Ῥ. 265. de mortalitate, p. 258, 334. de 
opere et eleemosynis, p. 330, 647. de 
unitate ecclesiz, p. 210. de oratione do- 
minica, p. 329. apologia, p. 186. de tes- 
timoniis, initio, Ὁ. 686. c. 25, p. 253, 648. 
c. 26, p. 253: ὁ. 28, p. 227. c. 54, p. 620. 
finis, p. 686. de rebaptismate, p. 322, 
325. 

Diognetus, epistola ad, p. 69. § 11, p. 644. 

Dionysius Alexandrinus, apud Euseb, h. ec- 
cles. 5. 5, (epist. ad Stephanum,) p. 320. 
6. 41, (ep. ad Fabium Antiochenum,) p. 
130. 6.46, (ad Novatianum,) p. 241. 7. 
1, (ad Sixtum Secundum,) p. 320. 7.5, 


Ῥ. 318. 7.6, p.599. 7. 7, (ad Philemo- 
nem,) p. 712. 7. 8, p. 248. 8. p.'821. 
7.10, p. 187... 7..22;.p. 258. 7:24, {περὶ 


ἐπαγγελιῶν.) p. 653. Preeparatio evangel. 
]. 15, (περὶ φύσεως,) p. 713. apud Athan- 
asium, de sententia Dionysii, (ἔλεγχος καὶ 
ἀπολογία, ad Dionysium Rom.,) p. 608. 
§ 14, (ep. ad Ammonium et Euphranor.) 
p- 606. apud Routh, reliquiz sacre, vol. 
2, (ad Basilidem,) p. 712. 

Dionysius Rom. apud Athanasasium. De 
decretis synodi Niczene, ὁ 20, (dvatpor7,) 
p- 610. 

Disputatio Archelai cum Mani. Opera Hip- 
polyti ed. Fabricius, f. 193, p. 505. 

Ebed Jesu, catalogus scriptorum. Assemani 
biblioth. orient. p. 682. 

Ephraem Syrus. opera Syriace et latine, t. 2, 
sermo 1, f. 438, seqq. p. 462. sermo 14, 
f. 468, d. p. 466. sermo 102, § 6, f. 551, 
552, p. 471. f. 553, 555, p. 442. ap. 
Wegener de Manichzxorum indulgentiis, 
Lips. 1827, pag. 69, seqq. p. 533. 

Epiphanius, heres. h. 26, § 3, 9, p. 446. ἢ. 


736 


30, p. 346, 351, 352, 353. § 15, p. 358. 
§ 16, p. 381. § 18, p.358. ὁ 25, p. 345. 
h. 33. § 8, p. 437. h. 38, p. 331. h. 44. 
§12,p. 475: hi 48, ΡΌΘΙ δ᾽ ἢ. 1. pi $26. 
h. 57, p...580. h. 64, p..696. h. 62, p. 
596, 597, 601. ἢ, 67, p. 602, 718. ex- 
positio fidei catholice, c. 21, p. 303. 
Epistole, Ecclesie Romane ad ecclesiam 
Carthageniensem, (Cypr. ep. 2,) p. 182, 
231. confessorum ad Cypr., (Cypr. ep. 
26,) p. 220. ecclesize Smyrnens, (Euseb. 
1. 4, c.15,) p. 109, 335. ecclesiarum Lued. 
et Vienn. (Euseb. |. 5, ὁ. 1, seqq.,) p. 112, 
276. Petriad Jacobum (prezefatio Clemen- 
tinarum,) p.361. Synodiad Paulum Samo- 
satenum, (Mansi cone. 1, f. 1034,) p. 503. 
Ἡσαΐου αναβατικόν, ed. Lawrence, Oxon. 
1819, p. 716. f. 38, 59, v. 32, 36, p. 716. 
Euodius Uzal. de fide contra Manicheos, c. 


4, p.501. ¢. 10, p. 494. ©. 11, p. 490. 
c. 28, p. 500. 
Eusebius. Historia eccles. 1. 1, ¢. 7, p. 769. 


©, 10;:p.82;, eG) § 2p. Bo ee ee, 
p. 681. c. 18, p. 665. c. 23, p.675. 1. 
3, ¢. 1, p. 80. c. 5, p. 343. δ. 28, p. 399. 
]. 4, ¢.3, p. 661. c. 6, p. 344. ¢. 18, p. 
467. c. 15, p. 109, 335, 472. ¢.16, 17, p. 
665. c. 23, p. 204, 206. c. 26, p.101, 104, 
299, 676. ¢. 29, p. 458. c. 30, p. 718. c. 
87..8:.601.:.1..5.οὐ p: 112.0 0, 3p. 524. 
ς, 5, ἣν 127). 320, 821.0.e012, p, 751: oc 
13, pr4i4. ie. 16, p. 518, 515.) 1 7}: φ.: 
6612, ΟΣ. Ὁ. 19} το 20) p..67- 70/2/21, 
p. 118. c. 24, p. 194, 298, 300, 332. «. 
26, .p..680.. ΟἿ, pi2ll, 72%. .¢.28,.p. 
575, 580, 581, 582. 1. 6,¢. 1, p. 83, 691. 
©..6, pi 527, 694. 6.7. Dp. 121. wie, ΤΌΣ. 
$27... 661k, p. 692... eo18)p. 691, ΠΕ, 
p. 693, 694. ¢.15,p. 700. «. 17, p. 708 
c. 19, p. 81, 171, 197. c. 20, p. 593, 601, 
108k: οὐ 27, po 10%: .c. 28, ps 126.: 16. 51]; 
p: 409. ..c. 82; p. 710."..6.33, Ῥ. 592." <c. 
OG, θά... 6.. 9 7. 710.0 C.39\ip. 711: tc. 
41, p. 130. ὁ. 48, p. 201, 238, 316, 690. 
CcAG, 5». 243. - 1.7, οἱ ὩΣ, pvt. δον. 
320, 712. 6. 8, p. 243. 6. 9, p. 809, 321. 
ὁ. 10, pi kat. 6.11. p. 188, (ὦ p.472. 


οι 13, 15, p. 140. c. 18, p. 292. “Ὁ, 19, p. 
306. c. 22, p.258. c. 24, Ὁ; 653. ¢. 30, 
p: 602,608,659... ¢..82; Ὁ. 721. 1. 8c. 


2, p. 148. ὁ. 4, p. 147. preeparatio evan- 
gelica, 1..2,.¢..2,-p..691.' 13, ¢. 7; pi 27. 
L 4, c. 2, Ὁ. 1461 Ὁ, δ ΠΟ Tapp; 26. 
Οἱ 21, 22, p. 28. 1.5,¢.1, p. 146. 1. 6,¢. 
10, p. 80. fin. p. 442. 1.7, ὁ. 8, p. 44. 
demonstratio evangelica, 1. 3, pag. 134, p. 
172. vita Constantini, 1. 2, c. 82, seqq. p. 


148. ὁ. 50, p.145. de martyribus Pal- 
est. Ὁ, 1, 3, 9, p. 154. ὁ. 4. p. 721. ¢. 10, 
6. 11, f. 388, p. 722. adversus 


Σ 472. 

ieroclem, p. 174. 

᾿Εναγγέλιον κατ᾽ Αἰγυπτίους, apud. Epiph. h. 
62, p. 601. 

Evangelium ad Hebrzos, apud Epiph. ἢ. 30, 
§ 13, p. 348. apud Hieron. in Micham. 1. 
2, ¢. 7, (t. 6, f. 520,) apud Orig. in Joann. 
t. 2, § 6, p. 350. 

Faustus Manicheus, apud Agust., c. Faus- 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 


tum, 1. 11, 18, p. 503. 1. 20, p.494. 1. 32, 
p- 500, 502. 

Felix Manicheus, apud Agust., c. Felicem, 
]. 1, ¢. 19, p. 604. 

Firmilianus, episc. Ceesar. epistola ad Cypr. 
(Cypr. ep. 75,) p 126, 201, 207, 216, 220, 
318, 320, 322. 

Gennadius, c. 15, p. 686. 

Gobarus, apud Photium cod. 235, p. 675. 

Gregorius Naz. orat. 25, p. 82. 

Gregorius Nyss. vita Gregorii Thaumatur- 
gi, c. 27, p. (20; 

Hegesippus, apud Euseb., 1. 2, c. 23, p. 675, 
1.4, ¢.22) p. 70: 

Heracleon in evang. Joann. apud Orig. in 
Joann. t. 2, ὁ 15, p. 423. t. 9, § 12, p. 
441. § 23, p. 373. t. 10, § 14, p. 481. 
Ὁ 19, p.431. t.13,§ 11, p. 373, 431. § 16, 
p. 422. § 25, 30, p. 422. § 48, p. 423. 
ὁ 51, p. 422. § 59, p. 422. t. 20, § 20, 
p. 422. in evangel. Luce, apud Clement. 
Strom. 1. 4, f. 503, p. 434. 

Heraclianus, episc. Chalcedon., ap. Phot. 
cod. 95, p. 485. 

Hermas, Pastor, Fabr. cod. apocr. cod., 3, 1. 
2, (p. 1009,) p. 464. 1. 8, p. 278, 296. 

Hieronymus, (ed. Martianay.) Epist. 5 ad 
Ctesiphont. p. 697. ep.27 ad Marcellum, 
Ῥ. 521. ep. 29 ad Paulum, p. 705. ep. 
41 ad Pamach. et Ozean. p. 608, 702. 
ep. 71 ad Lucin. p. 333. ep. 72 ad Vi- 
talem, p. 297. ep. 83ad Magnum. p. 661. 
ep. 146 ad Evangel. p. 190. ep. 148, p. 
82. de viribus illustribus, c. 1, p. 227. 6. 
3, p. 349. ὁ. 20, p. 661. ©. 25, p. 269. 6. 
36, p. 527.. c. 42, p. 118. ¢. 47, p. 721. 
c. 53, p. 685. Ὁ. 60, p. 222. c. 72, p. 485. 
c. 77, p. 723. c. 79, p. 688. adversus 
Rufinum, vol. IL, p. 1, p. 512. vol. 4, 1. 
1, f. 358, p. 721. 1.1, f. 359, p. 720, 721. 
]. 2, δ. 411, p. 705. ἢ, 413, p. 589. f. 414, 
p. 704. f. 425, p. 722. commentar. in 
Isaiam, 1. 1, 6.1, Ὁ. 8, f. 71, (ed. Vallarsi, 
Venet. 1767, t. 4, p. 21,) p. 349. 1. 2, ¢. 
5, ad Isai. 5, 18, f. 83, (ed. Vallarsi, p. 
130,) p. 849. 1. 9,¢. 29, v. 18, f. 250, (ed. 
Vallarsi, p. 398,) p. 349. ad Isai. 31 : 7, 
8, f. 261, (ed. Vallarsi, p. 428,) p. 349. 
commentar. in Micham. 1. 2, ο. 7, t. 6, f. 
520, p. 350. 

Hilarius in epist. ad Ephes. ec. 4, v. 12, p. 
182. in epist. ad Timoth. IL. ο. 3, 7, p. 
506. de synodis, § 86, p. 606. 

Hippolytus contra Noetum, § 1, p. 584. apud 
Phot. cod. 121, 202, p. 682. 

Ignatius, epistola ad Ephes. c. 11, p. 196. 
c. 20, p. 647. ep. II. ad Polycarp, § 5, p. 
284. ad Magnes. c. 9, p. 295, 296. ad 
Smyrn. ᾧ 2, p. 631. 

Trenzeus, (ed. Massuet.) Heeres. 1. 1, ¢. 1, 
§3,p.418. ¢.3,§5,p.420. o. 5, § 2, p. 
424, c.6,p. 263. ὁ, 7, § 3, 4, p. 426. c. 
8, § 4, p. 423. ¢. 10, p. 84. ©, 11, § 2, p. 
438. 6. 19, ὁ 3, p.424. ¢.21, § 4, p.476. 
c. 24, p. 400, 448, 471. ο. 25, p. 450. c. 
26, p. 348. § 2, Ρ. 848, 397, 452° ὁ. 27, 
§ 2, Ὁ. 471. ©. 31, p. 448. 1.2, ¢. 4, p.375 
c. 10, § 1, p. 613. 6. 16, p. 400. 6. 22, ὁ 4, 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. Tot 


p. 311. (ὁ. 28, ὁ 3, p. 613, 619. ὁ. 32, § 4, Minucius Felix, Octavius, p. 92. ὁ. 8, p. 78, 
: . 3, 9. 2, p. 389. 6. 3, p. 196, 204. mil. .c:.9, p. 86. 
ΠΟ p. 85)". δ, p- 889. 6. Montanus, apud Epiphan. heres. 48. Euseb. 
a) Ὁ. 679i<e, 11 p. 453... §.9, ps bate ὁ. Ba ef 'Gsp: S15: 
. ¢. 13,§ 4, p. 560. ο. 14, p. | Novatianus de trinitate, c. 6, 8, p. 560. epist. 
192.' Ὁ 15, p. 390, 393. 6. 17, p. 646. ἃ. ad Dionys. Alexandr. ap. Euseb. 1. 6, ¢ 
18, 20, (alias 22,) p. 642. 6. 22, p. 635. 46, p. 241. 
c. 24, § 1, p. 209. ¢. 31, p. 642. 1.4, c. | Optatus Milevensis de schismate Donatista- 
13, 14, p. 645. 6.18, Ὁ. 330. Ὁ 4, p. 331. ae ed. Du Pin, (p.174,) p. 150. 1.1, ὁ. 
c. 26, p. 192. c. 30, p. 119, 274. -ο 33, 22, p. 155. 
§ 6, p. 678. § 7, p. 209. ὁ 9, p.119. 1.5, | Origenes, c. Celsum, 1. 1,¢. 1, p. 74, 88, 108. 
ce. 1, § 1, p. 635, 641. ὁ. 32, p. 651. ¢.35,| 6. 2,p.4. 6. 4, p. 160, 559. ς. 9, p. 164, 
p- 651. epistola ad Victorem, ap. Euseb. 544..." er 28, perlGl) 162. ¢.)'32;-p./.639. 
5, 24, p. 215, 310, 332. epistola ad Flori- 6546: Py 70.0) Or D0, 454.09 C.)67, p. 169, 


num, ap. Euseb. 5. 20, p. 677. 2003, 1.02, Οὐ Sep. vance wy Pp. 1695 Ὁ. 
Isidorus, comment. in prophet. Parchor. ap. 23, p. 629. c. 27, p. 165. c. 34, 41, 42, 
Clem. Strom. 1. 6, f. 641, p. 406. Pa tess c. $563,967, Ρ' 109... art’ 55, 


Julius Africanus, epistola ad Aristidem, ap. DLCOSC. hips 69) 06: Sy ΡῈ ΤΟ, ΟΣ: p. 
Euseb. 6. 31, (Routh, reliq. sacr. vol. 2, p. 795) Ὁ 10. "pr 6a. e) 14s p89. ver ls, p. 
115,) p. 709. 1528: 6x24) pro: 6. 27.) py A74, » το 99, 

Justinus Martyr, (ed. Colon. 1686,) apolo- p- 250. ¢. 41, p. 636. c.42, p. 640. ο.Ψ 
gia 1. § 66, p. 648. f. 540, p.69. f.48,p.} 44, p.164. «. 46, p.544. «. 50, p. 305. 
586. f. 50, 51, p. 662. apologia II. p. Calin. 219) 8050 5 6.59: a 160: 40065, 
250, 259, 275, 283, 303, 662. f.56,p.609.| p.166. c. 70, p. 570. «ὁ. 76, p. 627. 1. 
f 74, p.670.. £. 75, p. 580: f. 81, p. 667. 4,¢. 15; p. 639. ‘c. 16, p. 633, ‘¢. 36; p. 
ea; p: 62.° £ 92)-p. 601: f. 98, ‘—p. 79. TOG. 702740, pw627 2%, Ὁ: 46,0 pe lib, 57, 
ὁ 10, p. 635. § 61, p. 305. dialogus, c. Try- P..G95.0 C)62;69; ps 16S: .6 5 69:5}: 656. 
phone Judzo, f. 218, p. 9, 975. ἢ 247, p. €. 695175, 76,81 p. 167: 168.0. 7875, p. 
669. ἢ 267, p.342, 585. f. 273, p.670.| 169. ς. 99, p. 168. 1.5, 6. 14, p. 570. 6. 
f.291, p. 347. f. 315, p.348. ἢ 817, p.| 58, ρ. 570. ὃ. 54, p.475. ὃ. 61, p. 177, 
642. f. 320, p. 668. f. 322, p.642. f.| 348. c. 63, p. 164.! 1. 6, c. 12) -seqq. p. 
327, 331, p. 585. f. 338, p.298. f. 344,| 544. ¢.13,p.544. ©. 15, p. 167. ©. 24, 
p- 609. f. 345, p. 129, 330. ἢ 370, p. 62. Pp: 99 7. Ὁ 25, prio.) G 2B 1882), ὁ. 
cohortatio, p. 15, p. 666. Δόγος πρὸς 35; p- 170: 696. 42 ps 161, /e, 42) p. 
Ἕλληνας, p. 666. editio Benedict. apol. I. 402. Ὁ. 44, p.623. c. 75, p. 639. c. 77. 
§ 4, 6, 8, p. 665. p. 639. 1.7, ὁ 26, p. 128. 1.8, ὁ 12, p. 

Lactantius, institutiones, 1. 4, ὁ. 27, p. 145. 5177. DOS. es 171 pi 90: 2840) 6, 21%p,i265, 
1 Ὁ C4 ΤΠ ρ΄ .196...} 6, ¢c. 18) p. 172.) de €..22,. 500: “Ὁ. 41; 108. σ᾽ 657 07. p. 
mortib. persecutorum, ο. 10, p. 150, 152. ¢. 91: ΤΟ 68; "p. 129.) Ὁ 69. pwlLOsie e770, 
16, p. 154. ps 12927 Ὁ, 72)" po-90” Tin pra. In 

Leontius Byzantinus contra Nestorium et | Joannem, t. 1, ὁ 9, p. 548,552. 11, p. 
Eutychen, (translation,) Greek fragments 550. 16, p. 623. 17, p.103.° 22, p.544. 
in Erlich dissertatio de erroribus Pauli 30, p. 636. 32, p.588. 40, p. 564. 42, 
Samosateni, Lips. 1745, (p. 23,) p. 602. p..598:- 45209 1, pe 588:"'2, PuBee, 577, 

Mani, epistola fundamenti, ap. August. de 587, 590. 8, p. 578. 4, p. 552. 6, p. 350. 
epist. fund. c. 13, p. 490. de fide contra 7, (p. 623, 624. 15. p. 628: ΒΡ 5. 577. 
Manichzos, (Euod. Uzal.,) ¢. 4, p. 501. ὁ. 21, p. 643. t. 5, § 4, p.367. (edit. Lom- 
11, p. 490. thesaurus, ap. August. de matzsch, vol. 1, p. 172,) p. 473. t. 6, § 1, 
natura boni, c. 46, p. 495. epistola ad p- 704. .2, p. 520. (12, p..441.° 17,.p. 
Scythianum Fabricius bilioth. graeca, vol. 258, 648. 23, p. 430. 24, p. 703. 28, 
7, f. 316, p. 486. epistola ad virginem p- 447. t.10,p.590. §4,p.556. 13,p 
Menoch, ap. August. opus imperfect. c. 202234, 19, Ὁ». 900... aay pai 7.) 27, p. 
Julian. 1. 3, c. 174, p.496. ο. 172, p.498.| 547. t.12, ὁ 3, Ρ. 431, 587. t. 13, § 5, 
ad Patricium, ap. August. op. imp. c. Ju- Ὁ. 551. 10, p. 432. 11, p. 432. 16, p. 
lian. c. 186, p. 497. ad Abdam, Fabr. 421, 422, 427. 20, p. 432. 21, p. 560. 
biblioth. greeca, (edit. nova,) vol. 7, f. 316, 25, p. 568, 590, 591. 34, p. 627. 38, 41, 
p- 499. epistole Fabr. biblioth. greeca, p- 476. 48, p.425. 52, p.546. 59, p. 


vol. 7, f. 316, p. 502. 432, 624. t.18, § 1, (ed. Lomm. vol. 2, 
Melito Sard. apud Euseb. 1. 4, 6. 26, p.101,] Ρ. 143,) p. 591. 3, p. 251. 4. p. 643. 5, 
102. p. 624, 625, 630, 638. {. 19, δ 1, p. 591. 


Methodius, Combefis. biblioth. grec. patr. t. 20.§ 16, p.590. 20, Ὁ. 421, 422. 28, 
auctar. noviss. P. 1. f. 113, p. 358. “περὶ p- 549, 633. t. 28, § 14, p. 643. t. 32, 
κτισμάτων, ap. Phot. cod. 235, p. 569. de §5, p. 700. 11, p. 627, 628, 636. 16, p. 
libero arbitrio, Galland, biblioth. patr. t. 3, 649. 18, p. 568, 569, 587. In Math. ed. 


ο΄ £. 762, p. 422. Huet. t. 2, § 10, p. 624. t. 10, § 2, p. 623. 
Miltiades περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν προφήτην ἐν 9, p. 646. (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p. 26,) p. 
ἐκστάσει λαλεῖν, p. 519. 548. t.11,§ 12, p.345. 14, p. 649. 17, 


62" 


7388 


p.694. t.12,§6,p.647. 37,p.633. t. 13, 
§ 1, (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p. 210,) p. 571. 
7, p- 201. 22, p. 630. 26, p. 622, 636. t. 
15, § 3, p. 697. 7, (ed. Lomm. vol. 3, p. 
340,) p.552. t.15,§14,p.709. t.16,§ 1, 
p- 695. 8, p. 594, 603, 636, 640, 644. 9, p. 
530. 12, p.345. 16, p.528. 22, p. 233. 
25, p. 705. 1. 17, § 14, p.578. 26, p. 699. 
30, p. 625. t. 25, § 1, p. 564. f. 268, p. 
850. f. 290, p. 550. f.344, p. 636. f. 
363, p. 522. f. 367, (t. 15,) p.698. f. 374, 
875, p. 552. f. 878, p. 563. f. 381, (t. 
15,) p. 708. f. 402, p. 656. f. 423, p. 636. 
f. 445, (t. 16.) p. 705. opera de la Rue, 
vol. 3, f. 887, p. 639. f. 898, p. 649. 
Commentar. series in Matth. § 100, (ed. 
Lomm. t. 4, p. 446,) p. 634. Homilize in 
Jeremiam, ἢ. 2. 16, p. 626. ἢ. 8. 8, p. 705. 


h. 9.3, p. 569. h. 9. 4, p. 589. ἢ. 14, p. 
6275 hb, 15. 6, p. 636. ἢ» 18:6. p. 5635 h. 
18. 12, p. 346. h. 19. Ae pr πὶ, περὶ 
ἀρχῶν, ‘pref. f. 4, p. 568. 1. LG 2, 65}: 
568. (ed. de la Rue, t. 1, f. 76,) p. 627. 
¢,°8:3,presg.. 12) ¢. yopsG24i9e, 1. 4, 
Bp 568. 2.2, p 623.. c:4, WiGob.C: 
5.3, p. 688. c. 5.5, p. 638. c. 6, p. 636. 
c. 8, p. 625. ὁ. 8. 3, p. 697. 6. 9, p. 570. 
c. 10, p. 463. de oratione dominica, @ 7, 
p. 625. (οἱ 12.9: 286: ews, p: 285. Ὁ: 
165.». 590. 6.392. p.285. 6.29. pi 629, 
630. Commentar. in epist. ad Rom. ]. Ἢ 
. (ed. Lomm. vol. 5, p. 250,) p. 636. 1. 1, 
(ed. Lomm. vol. 5, p. 251,) p. 571. 1. 2, 
(ed. Lomm. vol. 6, p. 107,) p. 628. ο.9, 
(ed. Lomm. vol. 6, p. 108,) p. 629. 1. 4, 
(ed. de la Rue, t. 4, f. 549,) p. 404. 1.5, 


p- 314. commentar. in Genesin, init. p. 
568. ed. de la Rue, t. 2, f. 25, p. 676. 
Selecta in Psalmos, ed. de la Rue, t. 2, f. 
570, p. 651. ed. Lomm. t. 11, p. 388, p. 
655. commentar. in Exod. 10: 27, p. 629. 
ed. Lomm. t. 8, p. 299, p.613. ed. Lomm. 
τ. 8, p. 300, ». 5064. commentar. in Titum 
fragm. p. 578. homilia in Isaiam, 4, 1, p. 
625. homilia in Lucam, 14, p. 314. de mar- 
tyribus, § 4, p. 706. 7, p.625. 12, p. 637. 
epistola ad Greg. Thaumaturg. p. 287. epis- 
(οἷα δα Jul. African. § 4, p.710. 5, p. 708, 
epist. ad Demetrium, (apud Hieron. adv. 
Rufinum, 2, f. 411, ed. Mart.) p. 704. 
epist. ad synodum, (Hieron. adv. Ruf. 2, 
f. 411, ed. Mart.,) p. 705. epist. t. 1, f..3, 
(ed. de la Rue,) p. 701. dialogus de recta 
in Deum fide, (opp. de la Rue, t. 1, f. 807,) 
p- 474. Philocalia, c. 1, p. 17, p. 557, 681. 
Ῥὶ 28, Ὁ. 554. p. 51, Ὁ. 554. ¢. 2, p. 6, 10, 
» 553.) e183, ip. 718, c. 14, p..387, ἱ 
15, p. 544, 553. p. 139, Ὁ. 556. ὁ. 24, (ed. 
Lomm. t. 11, p. 450,) p. 630. c¢. 26, (de 
la Rue, t. 2, f. 111; Lomm. t. 8, p. 305,) 
p- 629. 
Pacianus Barcelonensis, epist. 8, contra No- 
vat., (Galland. biblioth. patr. t.7 ,) Ρ. 246. 
Palladius, Lausiaca, ο. 147, p. 708. 
Pamphilus, apologia Origenis, (ed. de la 
Rue, t. 4, Γ΄ 35,) p. 640. 
Papias, λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεις, fragm. 


+ 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 


J. A. Cramer Catena in acta apost. Oxon. 
1838, p. 12, p. 650. 

Paulus. Samosatenus, ap. Epiphan. heeres. h. 
67, p. 602. ap. Leont. Byzant. contra 
Nest. et Kutych. p. 602. 

Περίοδοι ἀποστόλων, act. conc. Nic. 2, actio 
5, (ed. Mansi, t. 13, f. 167,) p. 501. 

Philostorgius, hist. eccles. 1. 3, 6. 4, 5, p. 83. 

Photius, cod. 95, p. 485. cod. 111 70}. 692. 
cod. 118, p. 693, 704. cod. 121, p. 681. 
cod. 202, p- 682. cod. 255, p. 675. 

Polycrates, ap. Euseb. h. eccles. 5. 24, p. 194, 
298. 

Pontius diaconus, vita Cypriani, p. 222, A. 
1, p. 223. 

Preedestinatus, ἢ. 26, 86, p. 685. 

Ptolemzus, ep. ad Floram, p. 487, 438. 

Rhodon, ap. Euseb. h. eccl. 5. 13, p. 467. 

Rufinus, expositio symboli apostolici, p. 307. 
de adulteratione librorum Origenis, (opp. 
Hieron. t. 5, f. 251, ed. Martianay,) p. 705. 

Sabellius, ap. Athan. ¢. Arian. or. 4, § 8, p. 
598. § 11, p. 597,597. § 12, p. 598, 600. 
§ 13, p.595. § 20, 21, 22, p. 598. § 23, 
p. 599. § 25, p. 595, 597, 598, 599. ap. 
Basilium, ep. 210, 214. §3, ep. 235, § 6, 
p. 596. ap. Epiphan. heres. 62, p. 596. 
ap. Justin. Mart. dial. ο. Tryph. Jud. ἢ, 
358, (ed. Colon.,) p. 597. ap. Theodoret. 
heeret. fab. 2. 9, p. 600. 

Severus Asmonin., (Renaudot, hist. patri- - 
arch. Alexandr. p. 40,) p. 485. 

Socrates, ἢ. eccles. 1. 3, 6. 7, p. 598... ὁ. 23, 
p. 170. 1. 4, ¢. 13, p. 720. ¢. 28, p. 294. 

Sozomenus, ἢ. eccl. 1. 7, ο. 19, p. 303. 

Tabenistanensis, annales regnum atque le- 
gatorum Dei, vol. 2, p. 1, Gryph. 1835, p. 
103, p. 350. 

Tatianus, oratio contra Grecos, § 19, p. 
671. 

Tertullianus, Apologeticus, vol. 2, f. 63, p. 
76. .f. 98, p.-79.. God Dea oe, 
c, 4, p. 84. c. 5, p. 93, 116. Ὁ p. 327. 
c.17, p. 177. ¢. 21, p. 272, 685. c. 34, 
p. 90. ¢. 39, p. 76, 191, 325. c. 42, p. 
259, 273. c. 46, p.78. ad Nationes, 1. 1, 
c. 5, p. 218, 254. c¢.18,p.77. ad Scapu- 
lam, c. 2, p. 175. .c..4,p; Lie, ΠῚ 26.6, 
p- 102, 119. ad Martyres, c. 1, p. 230. 
de idololatria, c. 6, p. 262. ὁ. 11, p. 262, 
c. 14, p. 277,301. c.15,p. 91,259. . c..18, 
p- 271. ὁ. 19, p. 273. de spectaculis, c. 
1, p. 265. c. 2p. (ar 0G, 28) p. 200.. ge 
corona militis, c. 2, Ὁ. 273. ¢.3, p. 293, 
308, 309, 334, 517. ὁ. 4, p/ 269. ὁ. 11.p. 
270. c. 13, p. 269. de fuga in persecu- 
tione, c. 12, p. 121, 122, 521. ον 1s, p. 
121. c. 14, p. ἼΞΞΙ. de padicima.c 1, 
Ῥ. 214, ¢.4,p.522. c..7, p.202. st 22, 
p. 517. c. 19, p. 221, 315, 523. c. 21, 
p. 517. 6. 22, p. 523, de poenitentia, δ, 
5, p. 220. ὁ. 6, p. 2382. © Bp. ιν σον 
c. 10, p. 219. de jejuniis, Ὁ. 11, p. 525. 
c. 13, p. 206, 256, 280, 521. ¢. 14, p. 294, 
296. ὁ. 17, p. 256. de exhortatione cas- 
titatis, 6. 5, p. 680. c. 11, p. 334, 522. de 
baptismo. c. 7, p. 315. c. 8, p. 816. Ὁ 15, 


. INDEX ΤῸ THE CITATIONS. 


p. 318. ¢.17, p. 195,196. c. 18, p. 312, 
. 615. de virginibus velandis, c. 1, p.516. 
c. 9, p. 188, 214. de pallio, p. 275. de 
monogamia, c. 1, p. 522. ec. 12, Ὁ. 197. 
c. 20, p. 522. ad uxorem, I. 2, ο. 4, p. 255. 
c. 8, p. 255, 281, 284. de cultu foemina- 
rum, 1. 2, 6. 8, p. 282. ¢. 9, p. 275. ¢. 11, 
p- 280. de patientia, c. 1, p. 616, 619. 
de oratione, c. 6, p. 648. c. 19, p. 332. ὁ. 
23, p. 259, 296. c. 25, 26, p. 286, seqq. ὁ. 
28, (Muratori Anecdota bibl. Ambros. t. 
3,) p. 284. De anima, c. 9, p. 521. c. 10, 
p. 615. «. 31, p.617, 619. «. 22, p. 616, 
518. c. 41, p.616, 646. ¢.47,p.75. c. 
55, p. 654. c. 56, p. 523. c. 58, p. 654. 
de testimonio anime, c. 1, p. 559. de 
carne Christi, c. 5, p. 631. c. 6, p. 642. 
¢€. 9p. G31... c. 11, seqq. p..560, 625.. Ὁ. 
c. 14, p. 631. de resurrectione carnis, c. 
2, Ὁ. 474. c. 8, p. 315, 648. c. 48, p. 308. 
478. adv. Judzos, c.7, p. 85. adv. Va- 
lentinianos, c. 4, p.437. ¢.5, p.678. adv. 
Praxeam, ¢.3, p. 576. c. 7, p. 560. c. 10, 
p.584. c.1l,p.642. c.14, 26, 27, p. 584. 
contra Marcionem, |. 1, c. 2, p. 684. c. 5, 
c. 7, p. 466. ¢. 10, p.559. 6.11. 
ce. 14, p. 315. 6 15, p. 466. 6. 
19, p. 469, 559. ο. 20, p. 680. «ὁ. 28, p. 


6720-0. 84, p. 473. 1. 2. 12) 13, p. 
561. c. 16, 27, p.562. ς. 39, p.562. 1]. 
3, δὲ 3, p.470. ΘΟ 4, p. 471. ον 15, p. 
470. c. 24, p.468. 1.4, p. 462. c. 2, 3, 


p. 473. c.5, p. 474. ¢. 9, p.465, 470, 561, 
c. 17, p.469. Ὁ. 22, p.518. ¢. 29, p. 471, 


Ill. CITATIONS FROM 


#flius Lampridius, vita Alexandri Severi, 
c. 24,p. 103. δ. 45, p. 199. vita Com- 
modi, c. 6,7, p.119. vita Heliogabali, c. 
3, 6, 7, p. 175. 

fflius Spartianus, vita Hadriani, c. 22, p. 
102. vita Caracallx, c. 1, p. 703. vita 
Septimii Severi, c. 17, p. 120. 

Ammianus Marcellinus, 1. 25, c. 4, p. 107. 

Apollonius Tyanensis, apud Euseb. prepa- 
rat. evangel. ]. 4, c. 13, (Porphyr. de abstin. 
carn. l. 2, § 34), p. 26. epistole, (Philostra- 
tus opp. ed. Olearius ep. 58, f. 401,) p. 31. 

Arrhianus, diatribe, |. 4, ¢. 7, p. 159. 

Aristides, encomium Rome, p. 88. 
neajp. 73 . - 

Aristoteles, ethica Nicomach. 1. 3, c. 7, p. 
611 9.13, p. 267. 10.7, p. 628. ethica 
magna, 1, (ed. Becker, p. 1197,) p. 558. 
1. 34, p. 281. ethica Eudem. 3. 3, p. 19. 
Metaphysica, 10. 8, (ed. Becker. t. 2, p 
1074,) p. 7. Politica, 1. 2, p. 46. 3. 5, p. 
29. de anima, 3. 5, p. 426. 

Artemidorus, Oneirocrit. 1. 4,5,¢. 18, p. 275. 

Athenzus, Deipnosoph. 1. 1, ὁ 36, p. 205. 

Aulus Gellius, noctes attics, 1. 12, ¢. 11, p. 
158. 

Cicero de legibus, 1. 2, ¢. 8, p. 86. 


oratio- 


199. 


ς. 35, Ρ. 470. 6.86, p.465. 6. 40, p. 648. 
]. 5, ὁ. 1,10, Ρ. 478. adv. Hermogenem, 
p- 566. ς. 15, p. 366. ο. 86, Ρ. 617. Pra- 
scriptio hereticorum, c. 13. p. 685. ¢. 19, 
p. 582. c. 22, p. 218. c. 30, p. 462, 463, 
474. c. 39, p. 463. 6. 41, p. 201, 328, 478. 
addit. p. 462. addit. c. 53, p. 580. 

Testamentum XII. patriarcharum. Test. 
Ill. ¢.8,p.174. t.1V. (Jud.) Ὁ: 21, p. 365. 
t. IV. c. 23, p. 348. t. VII. (Dan.) c. 5, p. 
348, 352. 

Theodorus, Panegyricus in Originem, ¢. 15, 
p. 717. 

Theodoretus, heret. fab. I. 14, p. 444. 19, 
p. 567, 618. 20, p. 458. 21, p.458. ἢ 
ΤΙ. 8, p. 396. 9, p. 600. f. III. 3, p. 584. 

Theodoretus, ἢ. eccl. 1. 1, ¢. 4, p. 723. 

Theodotus, didase. Anatol., (opp. Clem. ed. 
Par. 1641,) f. 794, p. 404. f. 796, D. p. 
411. f. 797, B. p. 425, 433. f. 800, col. 2, 
D, p: 477. 1 806, p. 457. 

Theonas Alexandr. epist. ad Lucianum, 
(d@’Achery Spicilegium, f. 297. Galland. 
bibl. patr. t. 4,) p. 143. 

Theophilus ad Autolycum, I. 1, ¢. 2, p. 559. 
Or 2; δ Ὁ patale, OL. 9. ἡ Dy pe 121} 

Titus Bostrensis, c, Manicheos, 1. 1, 6. 12, 
p. 492. c. 30, p. 500. pref. ad lib. 3, 
(Can. lect. ant. ed. Basn. Απίν. 1725, t. 
1, f. 137,) p. 496. 1. 3, initio, p. 501. 

Victorianus, episc. Patab., (in Pannonia,) 
hist. creationis (ed. Cave, hist. ap. Galland. 
bibl. patr. t. 4; Routh, rel. sacr. vol. 3, p. 
273, Oxon. 1815,) p. 296. 


PROFANE WRITERS. 


Digesta, t. 12,1. 12, c. 1, § 14, p. 120. 1.14, 
1. 1, ¢. 4, p. 126. 

Dio Cassius, p. 96. 1. 55, Ὁ; 23, p. 116. 71, 
p. 116. 72.4, p. 118. 

Dio Chrysostomus, (orat. att. ed. Reiske, 
vol. 1, pag. 405,) orat. 12, p. 27, 86. 

Diocletianus, edictum contra Manich., (Hi- 
larius in epist. sec. ad Timoth. 3, 7,) p. 
144. edictum, c. Christian. (Euseb. h. 666], 
1. 8, 6. 2; vita Constant. |. 2, c. 32; Lac- 
tant. de mort. persecut. c. 10,) p. 148. 

Dionysius Halicarn. antiquitt. Rom. 1. 2, c. 
18, p. 6. 19, Ρ. 88. 20, p.29. 68, p. 12. 
4. 62; 7. 56, p. 177. 

Domitius Ulpianus de officiis Proconsulum 
fragm. Digest. t. 14, 1. 1, 6. 4, seqq. p. 
126. 

Flavius Vopiscus, Saturninus, c. 8, p. 102. 
vita Aureliani, c. 20, p. 142. 

Galenus de differentia pulsuum, (ed. Char- 
ter,) 1. 3, c. 3, (t. 8, f. 68,) p. 164, 172. 

Galerius, edictum, p. 144, 156. 

Hadrianus, ep.ad Cons. Servianum, ap. Flav. 
Vopise. in Saturnino, c. 8, p. 102. 

Hierocles, λόγοι φιλαλήϑεις πρὸς τοὺς Χρισ- 
τιανούς, (ap. Lact. institut. 1. ὅ, 6, 2; de 
mort. persecut.’c. 16,) p. 173. 


740 


INDEX TO THE CITATIONS. 


Ye 


Historia Edessena enummis illustrata, (auct. | Philostratus, 1. 4, (f. 200, ed. Morelli, Paris, 


Bayer,) 1. 3, pag. 73, p. 80. 

History of the East Moguls, (in German: 
Schmidt, p. 271,) p. 482. 

Homerus, Ilias, 1. 2, v. 204, p. 154. 

Josephus, Archzol. 1. 16, c. 2,§ 4, p. 88, 1. 
18, c. 1, p. 38, 41,48. § 4,p.48. de bello 
Judaico, 1]. 2, c. 8, § 1, p.38, 43. § 6, p. 45. 
§ 9,0. 47. ὁ 10, p.43. § 13, Ὁ. 45. con- 
tra Apionem, l. 1, § 8, p. 41. 

Julius Capitolinus, vita Antonini Pii, ec. 9, p. 
105 "C1 Diy pea. 13; 21, p: 107. Ve. 
24, p. 105. [p. 87. 

Julius Paulus, sententie recepte, t. 21, 1. 5, 

Juvenalis, Sat.2,p.16. Sat.3.v. 75, p. 103. 

Lucianus. ᾿Αλιεύς, p. 9. Demonax. Cypr. 
p- 10. Hermotimos, ὁ 81, p. 16. Ζεὺς 
ἐλεγχόμενος, p. 24. Jupiter Trageedus, p. 
93. Peregrinus Proteus, p. 158, seqq. 
᾿Αλέξανδρος ἢ Ψευδομώντις, § 21, p. 161. 

Mare. Aurelius, εἰς ἑαυτόν, 1. 1, ο. 6, p. 73. 
c.17, p. 106. 1.1, fin. p.116. 1. 10, c¢. 14, 
pe lis 118, ¢. 13; p 106: eS) 0 106. 
1.12, ο. 28, p.106. edict.in Pandect. p.106. 

Malalas, Johannes, ed. Niebuhr, 1. 11, p. 273, 
p. 39. 

Mihr Nersch. Proclamation, (St. Martin, 
memoires hist. et geograph. sur ’Armenie, 
t.2,p.47. Paris 1819. Eliszeus, history 
of the religious wars between the Armen- 
ians and the Persians, transl. into English 
by Prof. Newman, p. 1099, Lond. 1830,) p. 
489. [p. 116. 

Notitia dignitatum imperii Romani, sec. 25, 

Pausanias, |. 8, c. 2, § 2, p. 12. 

Pherecides, fragm., (ed. Sturz. p. 46,) p. 402. 

Philo. Quod omnis probus liber, § 1 
44,48. Oratio in Flaccum, § 6 
de vita Mosis, 1.1, f. 607, p. 51. 
625, p.52. 1.2,§3, p. 65. § 88, p. 55. 
LS, §17,;/p. 65. {19} 681; p.shlde 
confusione ling. § 2, f. 320, p. 51. de 
nominibus mutatis, ὁ 8,p.1053,p.51. de 
caritate, ὁ 2, f. 699, p. 52. de Abrahamo, 
§ 19, f. 364, p. 52. f. 367, p. 601. de vic- 
timis, f. 238, p. 52. de victimas offerent. 
f. 854, p. 61. § 12, f. 856, p. 52. de plan- 
tat. Now, § 17, p. 53. 1. 2, § 8, f. 249, Ὁ. 
54. Queestiones in Genesin, I. 1, § 55, p. 
57. 1. 3,¢. 3, (ed. Lips. opp. Philonis, t. 
7, p- 5,) p. 53. Quis rerum divinarum 
heeres. § 16, f. 492, p. 55. Legis allegoria, 
Lia gee, p..66.. 1. 2, $7, δὲ ὅθ8 BI, p. 
59. 1. 3, § 88. p. 57. § 78, p. 397. Quod 
deterior potiori insidiatur, § 6,0. 56. § 7, 
p- 60. Quod Deus immutab. ὁ 11, p. 
54,58. § 14, Ὁ. 58. § 16, p.66. de pre- 
mio et pona,$7,p.57. § 18,19, p. 65. 
de. Cherubim, § 5, p. 58. de migratione 
Abrahami, § 16, p. 58. f. 402, p.59. de 
decalogo, ὁ 22,p.59,60. f.760,p.62. de 
profugis) ὁ 1, p. 59. § 6, p. 60. § 6, ἢ 
454, p. 609. § 7, p. 60. § 15, 18, p. 66. 
de monarchia, 1. 2, p. 407. 1. 2, § 3, p. 64, 
65. f..816, p. 61, de vita contemplativa, 
§ 3, p. 62. de execrationibus, § 9, p. 65. 
de mundi opificio, § 24, p. 396. -opp. f. 
186, p. 703. de somniis, 1. 1, f. 580, p. 54. 


3 
σι 


1608; c. 40, f. 181, ed. Olearius,) p. 31. 
ep. 58, (ed. Olear. f. 401,) p. 31. vita 
Apollonii Tyanensis, c. 6. 29, p. 174. 
Plato, Pheedrus, (ed. Bip. vol. 10, p. 285,) p. 
5. de legib. 1. 4, (ed. Bip. vol. 8,) p. 19. 
1..10, 87, 91, (ed. Bip. vol._9,) p. 375. 
Timeus, p. 25, 26. Tim. (t.9, p.326, ed. 
Bip.) p. 396. de republic. p. 26. 1. 2, (p. 
257 ); 1. 3, (vol. 6, p. 266, ed. Bip.,) p. 58. 
Philebus, p. 26. [p. 10. 
Plinius, hist. nat. 1. 2, ¢. 4, seqq.; 1. 7, ¢. 1, 
Plinius, see. epist. 1. 1, ep. 12, 22; 1. 3, ep.7; 
]. 6, ep. 24, p. 16. 1. 10, ep.'97, 'p.'97,: 99. 
Plotinus, (anecdota greca, t. 2, p. 237, ed. Vil- 
loison, Venet. 1781,) p. 26. Ennead, I.1. 8, 
ὦ. 121, ps 976. IL 19 0 560. 1:10... 9, 
Ρ. 29. ΠΙ1. 23, p. 406. 1. 7, p. 569, 586. 
Plutarchus de superstitione, c. 33, p. 13. 
περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ ἀϑεότητος, p. 13, 14. 
de Iside et Osiride, ο. 1, p. 38. ὁ. 20, p. 
23. ὃ. 87, p. 20." €) 71 ΡΥ Non posse 
suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, c. 20. 


p- 15. ¢. 22,p.21. de Stoicorum repug- 
nantiis, c. 34, p. 16. ¢.6, p. 18. ¢. 13, p. 
16. ¢ 15, sp. 22. 98: p.22. > de sera 


numinis vindicta, c. 3,p.19. de defectu 
oraculorum, 15 1) Ὁ. 2. ΡΠ 0. Ὁ. 9 p.\21. 
c. 12, p. 28. ¢. 47, p. 23. adversus Stoi- 
cos, ¢: $1) pi 30. Peveles, 1¢.«7, p23. 
de Pythiz oraculis, c. 9, p..176. οἱ 7, p. 
24. ¢.24,p.514. de εἰ apud Delphos, 
c. 20, p. 25. Oratio 1, de Alexandri vir- 
tute sive fortuna, ὁ 6. 10, p.50. Quees- 
tiones Platonice, qu. [V. p. 375. de anima 
procreatrice in Timzo, ec. 9, (opp. ed. Hut- 
ten. t. 12, p. 296,) p..876. 

Polybius, 1]. 3. 6, c. 6, p. 3. 1. 6, ¢. 56, p. 6. 

Porphyrius de abstinentia carnis, 1. 1, ¢. 40, 
seqq. Ρ. 385. 1. 2, ὁ. 34, p. 26. vita Plo- 
tini, p. 27. ὁ. 2p. Sl) eas, 8.590. 
περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, Euseb. pre- 
par. evang. I..4, 6. 7; ip. ΘῚΣ δἰ. 578,1 p. 
171. ap. Augustin. 46 civitate Dei, 1. 19, 
c. 28, p. 171. ap. Euseb. demonstrat. 
evang. |. 8, p. 134, p. 171. ep. ad Mar. 
cellam uxorem, ¢. 18, p. 172. α. 24, (ed. 
Maji, Mil. 1816), p.170. κατὰ Χριστια- 
νῶν Euseb. 1. 6,¢. 19, p. 699. Euseb. ἢ. 
eccl. 1. 6; ¢. 10; / pai? i 

Pseudosibylline, p. 96. 

Seneca, ep. 41 ad Lucil. p. 18. 

Septimius Severus in Digestis, 1. 12, tit. 12, 
§ 14, p. 120. 

Sextus, Gnome, 12, p.697. [336, p. 354. 

pix Niaz in Eisenmenger, Part I.c. 8, pag. 

Stobeeus, Ecloge, 1. 2, c. 1. 11, (ed. Heeren, 
P. TL paid, yp. a6: 

Strabo, I. 1,'¢. 2, p. 7. 1.10. 00. 

Suetonius, vita Claudii, c. 24, p. 604. 

Tacitus, Annal. 1. 2, c. 85, p. 89. 1.11, ¢. 
15; 1. 13, c. 32, p. 89. 1914)-¢.42, p. 88, 
268. 1. 15, ὁ. 42, p. 96. ὃ; 44, p. 94, 
95. Hist. 1. 2, ὁ, 8, p. 96. 

Themistius, or. 15. τίς ἡ βασιλικωτάτη τῶν 
ἀρετῶν, p. 116. 

Varro, pag. 15, p. 86. 

Virgilius, IV. p. 177. 





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